Emmy Countdown: A look at the Emmy Awards greenroom (and a few of the folks who’ll use it)

Emmy Countdown: The greenroom and its inhabitants

LOS ANGELES — The 61st Primetime Emmy Awards are days away, but Hollywood is already gearing up for Sunday’s awards. Here’s a look at what’s already going around about Tinseltown:

IN THE GREAT GREEN ROOM

Martyn Lawrence-Bullard has pitched a tent backstage at the Nokia Theatre.

The interior designer created a Moorish 18-foot-high tented enclave for the lavish backstage space where celebrities can luxuriate during next Sunday’s 61st annual Primetime Emmy Awards. Lawrence-Bullard filled the 625-foot built-from-scratch greenroom with Syrian, Turkish and Moroccan antiques, flooring made of leather tiles and various types of seating.

“I asked my friend Minnie Driver, who had been nominated before, what she thought of the greenroom,” said the first-time Architectural Digest greenroom designer. “She said it was great but was in a long gown and couldn’t sit down anywhere because it would crease. I thought, ‘OK. I’ll do bar stools for those dramatic gowns, so they can perch on the edge.’”

For presenters and winners who aren’t worried about wrinkles, Lawrence-Bullard flanked the room with two huge sofas, the same kind he said he used when decorating Cher’s Malibu house. He also custom-designed the greenroom’s fabric wall coverings, wooden mirrored panels and the hand-knotted rug featuring a burnt red tracery relief made of silk thread.

PRESENT TENSE

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences says Tina Fey, Kiefer Sutherland and Simon Baker will be among the presenters at this Sunday’s primetime Emmy Awards.

Each is a nominee. Baker’s freshman hit “The Mentalist” earned him a nomination for best actor in a drama. Sutherland won that award in 2006, and is nominated this year for his role in a special “24″ movie. Fey is up for best actress in a comedy, the award she won last year.

The live telecast is scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday.

The academy says other presenters include Jon Hamm of “Mad Men” and the “Gossip Girl” twosome of Blake Lively and Leighton Meester.

Also taking the stage to hand out trophies will be Alyson Hannigan and Jason Segel of “How I Met Your Mother,” Stephen Moyer of “True Blood,” NBC late-night host Jimmy Fallon, Dana Delany of “Desperate Housewives” and Chandra Wilson of “Grey’s Anatomy,” the academy said Monday.

MY EMMY MOMENT:

Past winners recall the moments they won their first Emmy awards:

“The only time I wanted to win, really wanted to win, was when I had something planned to say in the speech that I thought could get a laugh. … And that night, I just got lucky because my parents had come four years in a row. That year, I presented at the Emmys and said to the audience, ‘My parents will keep coming every year until I win.’ I go, ‘I have to win this year.’ And then I actually won. So, it was a great moment to come up and just say, ‘Mom and Dad, we are going right to the airport after this.’”

— Ray Romano, who won lead comedy actor in 2002 for “Everybody Loves Raymond.”