Chicago’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jill Soloway win Emmys — again

Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jill Soloway, two accomplished women of comedy with roots on Chicago stages, won Emmy Awards on Sunday for the second year in a row.

Louis-Dreyfus, a Northwestern grad who was discovered while performing with Practical Theater Company in the 1980s, won her fifth straight lead comedy actress Emmy for playing politician Selina Meyer on HBO’s “Veep.” She set a new record for consecutive wins in the category, passing up Helen Hunt of “Mad About You.”

Her hand trembling, the “Seinfeld” and “Saturday Night Live” alum dedicated the award to her father, businessman William Louis-Dreyfus, who died Friday, “because his opinion was the only one that really mattered.”

Soloway, an alumna of Lane Tech and the Annoyance Theatre, won her first Emmy in 2015 for directing “Transparent,” the Amazon series she created, and repeated the honor Sunday.

“Being a director is so f—ing easy,” she said in accepting the comedy series directing award. “I get to make my dreams come true. It’s such a privilege.”

As she did last year, Soloway took advantage of the platform to speak up for diversity and the transgender, closing with a chant of “Topple the patriarchy! Topple the patriarchy!”

Backstage, she further turned up the heat, telling reporters said Donald Trump is “the most dangerous monster to ever approach our lifetime. He’s a complete dangerous monster, and at any moment that I have to call him out for being an inheritor of Hitler I will.

“He’s otherizing people, he calls women pigs if they don’t look like beauty pageant contestants, he blames Muslims and Mexicans for our problems. He makes fun of disabled people,” Soloway said.“This is otherizing with a Capital ‘O’…. He needs to be called out.”

• Chicago also has bragging rights for the winners for best variety sketch series. “Key & Peele” creators and stars Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele both performed on Chicago improv stages before teaming up on “MADtv.” Their subsequent Comedy Central show aired its final episode earlier this year.

• Evanston-raised D.V. DeVincentis won two Emmys for his work on “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” as a co-executive producer of the best limited series winner, and as writer of the episode honored for best limited series writing.