Forget big nominees like Cate Blanchett, Australia has already won at the Emmys

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While Cate Blanchett and the stars of Severance, The Penguin and The White Lotus will be the focus at the Primetime Emmy Awards this weekend in Los Angeles, an Australian feelgood story has quietly emerged at the lead-in ceremonies.

The team behind the Australian and US versions of Love on the Spectrum have won two Emmys at the Creative Arts awards to add to the five – plus one International Emmy – they have previously won.

Karina Holden and Cian O’Clery with the Emmys they won for Love On The Spectrum US.

“It was just extraordinary,” Australian producer Karina Holden says about the awards. “Having people from these big prime-time shows and celebrities coming up to [stars] Connor and Tanner who were there with us saying, ‘You’re my hero’. It was just the most beautiful thing.”

The reality series, made by Australian production company Northern Pictures and centring on dating among young adults on the autism spectrum, is a success for more reasons than reaching a fourth season on Netflix. Since the first of two series on the ABC, now also screening on Netflix, Love on the Spectrum has been warming hearts and changing perceptions about autism.

Holden and fellow Australian producer Cian O’Clery won Emmys for “outstanding unstructured reality program” for Love on the Spectrum US, beating high-profile shows Welcome To Wrexham, America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked! and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

O’Clery also won for outstanding casting for a reality program alongside Sean Bowman and Emma Choate.

With two Australian seasons – the first of which launched Austin star Michael Theo into an acting career – and a fourth American season in post-production in Sydney, Holden admits she is surprised by how far the show has gone.

“When we were making the show for the ABC, it was always the hope that it was the type of show that we’d be able to make in different territories,” she says. “It just felt very much like it was a show that would work really well in the US.

“We’re a long way from Hollywood [so] the opportunity to be able to make this show and have it so embraced by a global audience – and the American audience – has just been extraordinary for Cian and myself.”

Love on the Spectrum US has now won the unstructured reality program category – as opposed to reality shows with a recurring structure such as Queer Eye and Shark Tank – in two of the past four years.

Kassandra on a date in season two of Love on the Spectrum.

The idea for the series came up while the duo were making Employable Me, about people with disabilities trying to find a job, in 2017.

“We just loved the idea of watching these people at this really meaningful time in their lives, reaching out and going through these challenges and reflecting this life journey that we all go through,” Holden says. “A lot of them at the time talked about how, well, ‘I want a job but actually I want a girlfriend’ or ‘I want a partner’ or ‘I want a boyfriend’ even more so. It triggered this idea.”

Australian costume designer Michael Wilkinson also won a Creative Arts Emmy for outstanding fantasy/sci-fi costumes for the Harvest episode of the Disney+ series Andor, alongside fellow costume supervisor Kate O’Farrell and assistant costume designers Richard Davies and Paula Fajardo.

At the Primetime Emmys, Blanchett is nominated for outstanding lead actress in a limited or anthology series or movie, for playing journalist and documentary maker Catherine Ravenscroft in the Apple TV+ series Disclaimer.

Cate Blanchett and Sacha Baron Cohen in Disclaimer.

Other Australians nominated are Shannon Murphy for directing a limited or anthology series or movie for the FX series Dying for Sex, and Zoë White, for outstanding cinematography for a non-fiction program category, for the Netflix series Will & Harper.

The Apple TV+ sci-fi office drama Severance leads the nominations with 27 nods, followed by The Penguin with 24, The Studio and The White Lotus with 23, The Last Of Us with 16, Andor and Hacks with 14 and Adolescence, The Bear and The Pitt with 13.

Australian cinematographers Tony Gardiner and Heath Kerr have been nominated for a Daytime Emmy for Neighbours, in the outstanding technical direction, camerawork, video category. Those awards are announced on October 17.