Bill Hader Wins Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in Comedy in Evening’s Biggest Surprise Yet

It’s shaping up to be a “Saturday Night Live” kind of night.

Bill Hader pulled off the evening’s first big surprise at the 70th Emmys, winning for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy for his work in the title role of the HBO series “Barry.” on the FX series he created. It’s the second acting award on the night for the show, which now looks like a potential candidate to take over for “Veep” as the new Outstanding Comedy Series winner.

Going into the ceremony, the heavy favorite was last year’s winner, Donald Glover, who was looking to repeat his double wins last year for acting and directing. (Hader is also up for directing the “Barry” pilot.)

Hader singled out his Second City LA teaching while accepting the award in front of the audience at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. “I was taught there that you should always make the other people look good, so what I did was I hired a bunch of really great actors that made me look really good,” Hader said, singling out fellow 2018 winner Henry Winkler, Stephen Root, Sarah Goldberg, Anthony Carrigan, and Paula Newsome.

Hader faced some heavy Best Actor competition in 2018. Ted Danson has also earned plenty of acclaim for his role on the NBC comedy “The Good Place” in his first time in the category since being nominated 11 times in a row for his work on “Cheers.”