Eddie Murphy Won His First Ever Emmy For Hosting ‘SNL’

Eddie Murphy was one of the bigger snubs at this year’s Oscars, with many thinking he deserved at least a nomination for raucous Rudy Ray Moore biopic Dolemite is My Name. But there’s one major awards body that knew not to snub him: the Emmys. On Saturday night, Murphy was named Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for hosting SNL last year. And it was amazingly the first time he’d ever won one of their awards.

Murphy’s SNL gig was part of the actor and comic’s comeback, following years of him being largely absent from screens and stages. It was the first time he’d been involved with SNL, where he got his start in the early ’80s, since the show’s 2015 anniversary special, in which he didn’t participate in any of the sketches or do much beyond wave to the audience. Murphy threw himself into the shenanigans with gusto, unearthing classic SNL characters such as Buckwheat, Gumby, and Mr. Robinson, looking like he was having the time of his life. His reward is his first-ever Emmy, and the fifth time he’d been nominated. (Previous ones were for SNL, in 1983 and 1984, and another in 1999 for his animated comedy The PJs.)

Naturally, Murphy could not accept the trophy in person, but he made sure to leave a video speech, posted on the Television Academy’s Twitter account.

“Thank you to everybody at the Emmys,” Murphy said. “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.”

The big Emmys show airs Sunday on ABC starting at 8 p.m.

(Via Deadline)