Over the course of his career, Don Roy King has been nominated 37 times for his work as a director and received 20 awards (via IMDb). That includes a 2022 Emmy Award nomination for a ‘Saturday Night Live’ episode hosted by Billie Eilish, which he shares with co-director Liz Patrick, but so far King has won 11 Primetime Emmy Awards and been nominated. for 16 in total.
That’s also not even counting his five Daytime Emmy nominations and his 1977 win for directing “The Mike Douglas Show.” King has also received eight awards from the Directors Guild of America for his work on “SNL” and has been nominated a total of 15 times (via IMDb).
As evidenced by his awards, King’s career has garnered much esteem and respect. The secret could be that he sees live TV as a football game. “My job is to keep making the decisions like a quarterback,” he said. “It’s my job to go for it and save as I go, and not let one mistake start snowballing on the others as we try to figure out who failed where” (via Backstage) . It’s a healthy way to deal with such a difficult task, although it’s his replacement, Patrick, who will now have to be the one to drive the game forward (via Gold Derby).
