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April 5, 2024
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Northwestern alumni Julia Louis-Dreyfus, one of the most-nominated comedic actresses in Emmy Award history, and novelist George R.R. Martin were among the big winners at the 67th annual television awards show.
Louis-Dreyfus was named best actress in a comedy for her role in the HBO show “Veep.” It was her fourth straight Emmy for “Veep” and her seventh win overall. She has been nominated 20 times.
HBO’s “Game of Thrones” won for best drama series. Martin, the author of the international bestselling series of epic fantasy novels, “A Song of Ice and Fire” -- later adapted for HBO’s “Game of Thrones” -- is a co-executive producer of the wildly popular show and has scripted four episodes. He has been nominated five times for the series.
Time Magazine called Martin “the American Tolkien” and has named him one of the most influential people in the world. He will be on Northwestern’s Evanston campus in November for induction into the “Hall of Achievement” at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.
“Veep,” a political satire in which Louis-Dreyfus plays gaffe-prone Selina Meyer, a vice president-turned-president, also won an Emmy for outstanding writing for a comedy series; Louis-Dreyfus is a producer of the show.
Her best acting award was “one of the only routine events in a year that saw several notable acting wins,” The New York Times observed.
In her acceptance speech, she took a jab at Donald Trump. “What a great honor it must be to honor me tonight,” she said, before pausing mischievously. “Oh, wait. I’m so sorry. Donald Trump said that. It’s getting trickier and trickier to satirize this stuff.”
In 2013, the “Seinfeld” star made Emmy history when she received her 14th nomination for best actress in a comedy series, surpassing the record long held by Lucille Ball, her acting idol and star of “I Love Lucy.”
Louis-Dreyfus, an alumna of The Second City comedy troupe, studied at Northwestern’s School of Communication in the early 1980s and left school after her junior year to work on “Saturday Night Live.”
In 2007, she received an honorary degree and described herself in her Commencement speech as “an aging sitcom actress,” before poking fun at her own academic credentials, according to the article “On the Wild Side,” published in Northwestern’s alumni magazine.
“You have managed to do something today spectacular, something important, something I never did after years of trying,” she said. “You have graduated from Northwestern University.”
Here's a full list of the Emmy winners.
