James R | On 26, Jan 2015

Netflix took home its first SAG Awards this year, as House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black dominated the TV categories.

The film prizes were largely as predicted, with Eddie Redmayne winning Best Lead Actor for The Theory of Everything, Julianne Moore winning Best Lead Female Actor for Still Alice, and JK Simmons and Patricia Arquette nabbing the supporting gongs for Whiplash and Boyhood respectively. Birdman also took home the prize for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

In the TV arena, though, Netflix was ahead of the pack, taking home three of the major awards – the most of any network.

HBO dominated the mini-series arena, with Mark Ruffalo winning Best Actor for The Normal Heart and France McDormand taking home Best Female Actor for Olive Kitteridge. ABC nabbed Best Female Actor in a Drama Series for How to Get Away with Murder and William H. Macy won Best Actor in a Comedy Series for Showtime’s US remake of Shameless.

But it was Netflix’s programming that bagged the most plaudits, with Orange Is the New Black’s Uzo Aduba winning Best Female Actor in a Comedy Series for her scene-stealing turn as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren. The series’ strength has always been the variety of its ensemble, though, so it’s only fitting that it also won Best Ensemble in a Comedy Series too – opposite Downton Abbey, which took home Best Ensemble in a Drama Series.

After his first ever Golden Globe win this year, Kevin Spacey again walked away with the Best Actor (Drama) award for his calculating Frank Underwood in House of Cards. The political thriller was also nominated for Best Female Actor (Robin Wright) and Best Ensemble in a Drama Series too.

While the Screen Actors Guild were content to follow in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s footsteps, though, they did not echo Jeffrey Tambor’s landmark Golden Globe win for Amazon’s Transparent. Indeed, Amazon’s TV show was nowhere to be seen at the SAG Awards, with not even one nomination.

House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black’s success mark the latest in a string of award nominations for Netflix projects. While many have been for its original documentary feature films, its TV productions have been equally lauded, with House of Cards also winning prizes in previous years from the Writers Guild of America and the Emmy Awards, and Orange Is the New Black winning at the PGA Awards, the AFI Awards and racking up four nominations at the Golden Globes.

Other awards issued on Sunday include the Stunt Ensemble prizes for Motion Picture and TV series, which went to Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken and HBO’s Game of Thrones respectively. Carrie Fisher also presented her mother Debbie Reynolds with the union’s highest honour, the 51st Annual Life Achievement Award.

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