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Eddie Murphy Scores First Primetime Emmy Win In Guest Actor Comedy Series Category For Hosting ‘SNL’ – Updated

UPDATED, Saturday 8:24PM: It turns out Eddie Murphy did have an acceptance speech which he pre-recorded for his Guest Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy win tonight; the telecast didn’t air it. Here it is below from the Television Academy’s Twitter feed.

Says Murphy below, “Thank you to everybody at the Emmys. Thank you so much for giving me an Emmy. I don’t have an Emmy. This is 40 years since I started Saturday Night Live, this is my first Emmy, so thank you so much. I want to thank Lorne Michaels for putting this whole thing together, and making this happen. And I want to thank, the cast, the writers and the crew at SNL. This was a very, very special thing for me to come back and have the show turn out the way it did. I’m still floating from it. And thank you to everybody for giving me an Emmy.”

PREVIOUS, Saturday 5:13PM: Following five nominations throughout his career, Eddie Murphy finally hooked his first Primetime Emmy win for hosting Saturday Night Live in the Guest Actor Comedy Series category.

Murphy’s appearance last December repped his first time on SNL in 35 years; the NBC latenight sketch series having launched him when he was a young stand-up into the blockbuster star of The Nutty Professor and Beverly Hills Cop and Oscar nominated supporting actor of Dreamgirls.

Murphy won tonight in a very competitive category against Brad Pitt and Adam Driver who were also up for hosting duties on SNL, Fred Willard in Modern Family (in a posthumous nomination), Dev Patel in Amazon’s Modern Love and Luke Kirby as Lenny Bruce on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Murphy wasn’t available virtually to accept his first Emmy tonight on the Creative Emmys FXX telecast.

In Murphy’s return to SNL he reprised a number of his famed SNL characters such as Gumby, Buckwheat, Mr. Robinson, and more.

Murphy was previously nominated for Emmys for SNL in 1983 (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy, Variety, or Music series), 1984 (Writing in a Variety or Music Program, Outstanding Individual performance in a Variety or Music Program), and in 1999 for The PJs (Outstanding Animated Programming, Hour or Less).

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