Without the usual array of after-Emmys private parties planned this year, the place to be seen following Sunday's ceremony was the TV's Academy's officially sanctioned Unity Dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel, directly across the street from L.A.'s Shubert Theater, site of the ceremony, reports PEOPLE. It was a low-key affair, where attendees, dining on haute cuisine and champagne, highly praised the evening's show host, C. "The Practice" star Camryn Manheim, sitting next to Calista Flockhart, couldn't say enough good about her. "I think Ellen DeGeneres is the very best of our generation. How she handled this evening with such grace and dignity and humor and spirit and sensitivity and humanity makes me want to become a lesbian. I'm madly, madly in love with her!" Chimed in the "Ally McBeal" star: "Brilliant . . . sensitive and inspired and touching and yet light-hearted, it was a little bit of everything," she said, eager to get back to her dinner. DeGeneres herself tried to shy away from the praise, but admitted she was happy with the show's outcome. "I feel very, very good," she told PEOPLE "I'm always hoping to do the best job I can, and I feel really good about it." More than anything, said DeGeneres, she's happy that the anxiety of preparing for three different Emmy broadcasts was over. "I thought we could have been a target," she admitted. "I was a little nervous, but we had a lot of security and a lot of people that took risks to come here."