Chuck Lorre wins a best comedy award after 23 years

It’s about time?

Even though Chuck Lorre has created many, many successful sitcoms for TV, the last time he won a major comedy award was for Cybill in 1996. It was a Golden Globe.

Twenty-three years later, he’s finally earned some more recognition in the top category. On Sunday, he won another Globe for creating The Kominsky Method for Netflix. Maybe that’s why he began his acceptance speech by saying “This doesn’t happen to me.”

“This is spectacular,” he said on stage. “Thank you to the Hollywood Foreign Press for this extraordinary acknowledgement. I am so grateful. I don’t even know what to say. I’ve been doing this a long time and I’m up here trembling like a leaf.”

Lorre has never been on stage to collect best comedy Emmys — much less best comedy Golden Globes — for successful broadcast TV sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory or Two and a Half Men or even Mom and Dharma & Greg. (He did win a Globe in 1993 for Roseanne but he didn’t create the sitcom). That doesn’t mean his shows aren’t awards-worthy: stars like Jim Parsons (TBBT), Jon Cryer (Men), Allison Janney (Mom) and Melissa McCarthy (Mike & Molly) have collected Emmys for their work in his sitcoms.

At least the Hollywood Foreign Press Association seems to have a soft spot for Lorre. The HFPA also gave a Globe to Kominsky star Michael Douglas for playing an ex-actor who, together with his longtime agent played by Alan Arkin, lament their advanced age.

Backstage, Lorre continued to share his astonishment. “I’m absolutely stunned. I’m grateful our work was acknowledged and is held up as being worthy. I’m shaken. I’m overwhelmed.”