Alan Cumming beat RuPaul for the hosting Emmy, and a lesbian sci-fi show took four

via PinkNews and GCN, with the full winners list at TVLine.

The Creative Arts Emmys are the two nights before the Primetime ceremony where television hands out the awards for the work that actually makes television: editing, sound, production design, main titles, and the hosting categories. They ran on September 5 and 6. They are usually the part of the season nobody live-tweets. This year the queer half of the ballot walked off with an armful.

alan cumming beat rupaul

Start with Alan Cumming, who won Reality TV Host for The Traitors, out of a field that included RuPaul and Ariana Madix. That is a category where a man in a cape beat the most decorated drag queen in television history, and the correct response is not a scandal, it is that there were multiple queer people to choose between.

Cumming's own read on the show is better than any acceptance speech: "I think it's a really positive thing to see so many queer people and, hopefully, trans people in a show that also celebrates dressing up, androgyny, femmeness, and queerness." He is describing a reality format in which contestants murder each other by vote while wearing capes in a Scottish castle. He is also, annoyingly, correct.

pluribus took four

Then Pluribus, which took four: Original Main Title Theme Music, Sound Mixing for a Drama Series, Production Design for a Narrative Contemporary Program, and Picture Editing for a Drama Series. If you have not watched it, the premise is that an alien invasion turns almost all of humanity into a single blissful hive mind, and one of the few people left out of it is Carol, a lesbian romance novelist who is miserable and difficult and now responsible for the species. Rhea Seehorn is up for Lead Actress in a Drama at the main ceremony, and Miriam Shor is up for Guest Actress.

Hacks took Picture Editing for a Single Camera Comedy Series on the back of a record 24 nominations this year, which is a startling number for a show about a woman doing crowd work in Las Vegas. Jean Smart is up for Lead Actress in a Comedy.

The Primetime Emmys are on September 14. Set something to record. The technical categories are where a show's real support gets counted, and three of the shows that got counted this weekend are ours.