The 77th Emmy Awards offered an important reminder that stats are interesting, but, at the end of the day, the members of the TV Academy march to the beat of their own drum.
Best drama series was always going to be a race between the second season of Apple TV+’s Severance and the first season of HBO Max’s The Pitt, two outstanding options, but most indicators suggested that Severance would pull out a win. It was, after all, the most Emmy-nominated TV show of the season, with an astounding 27 nods, more than twice as many as The Pitt’s 13, and the year’s most nominated drama had won the best drama series Emmy every year since 2017, when HBO’s Westworld (22) lost to Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale (13). Plus, The Pitt did not receive a picture editing nom, without which few shows have won best drama series (the picture editors peer group is the TV Academy’s third largest).
And yet… best drama series went to The Pitt.
The Pitt was surely helped by being the shiny new toy, and Severance was surely hindered by the nearly three-year gap between its first and second seasons. TV Academy members with whom I interacted spoke about “falling in love” with the characters on The Pitt, while finding the characters on Severance a bit too “cold.” They also got the message that The Pitt was and is shot in town, whereas Severance was and is not. And while they certainly have a great fondness for Scott, they have a longer history with Wyle, and many found his comeback to be something of “a Cinderella story.” Any or all of these things may have tipped things slightly towards The Pitt.
I suspect that the vote was awfully close. The two shows evenly split the four dramatic acting awards: Severance’s Britt Lower, who wasn’t even nominated for her show’s first season, won best actress (in a slight upset over Kathy Bates, the sole representative of network TV in the entire field of dramatic acting nominees), and Tramell Tillman won best supporting actor (prevailing over two of his own castmates and three stars of HBO’s The White Lotus), whereas The Pitt’s Noah Wyle won best actor (over Severance‘s Adam Scott) and Katherine LaNasa won best supporting actress (over Severance’s Patricia Arquette). And both shows lost best director (for which they each had two nominees) to Apple TV+’s Slow Horses and best writing (for which The Pitt had two nominees and Severance one) to Disney+’s Andor.
I’m sure that Apple TV+ is a little bummed, because if Severance had won best drama series on an evening on which another of its shows, The Studio, won best comedy series, the streamer would have become the first platform to claim both of those top honors in the same year since 2016, when HBO did it with Game of Thrones and Veep. Even so, Apple TV+, had its best showing ever, with 22 wins, thanks largely to The Studio, a new show, like The Pitt, which came in with a comedy rookie-record 23 noms and utterly dominated the comedy field, collecting 13 wins (which breaks the record for most wins by a comedy in a single year that had been set last year by FX’s The Bear, with 11), including four for Seth Rogen (the first person ever to win Emmys for comedy producing, directing, writing and lead acting in a single year).
I suspect that much of the country doesn’t “get” what the big deal is about The Studio, because it’s essentially “inside baseball” for those of us who work in Hollywood. (I don’t think most people in the rest of the country know or care about “oners” or Sarah Polley cameos, although we do!) But most of the people who vote for the Emmys work in Hollywood, and The Studio’s strong showing is a reminder of how much the industry likes watching stuff about itself.
HBO Max’s Hacks, which won best comedy series last year, is, of course, also about the biz, and claimed two of this year’s comedy acting awards: best actress for Jean Smart (it’s her fourth win for the show and seventh win overall, which thrusts her into an elite club of actresses with seven or more wins, the other members being Allison Janney, Cloris Leachman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Mary Tyler Moore), and best supporting actress for Hannah Einbinder (it’s her first win for the show, and long overdue).
As for the last comedy acting award? Best supporting actor went, in one of the biggest Emmy upsets of all time, to Jeff Hiller for the final season of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere. Hiller’s nomination caught almost everyone by surprise, and his win — over The Studio’s Ike Barinholtz (aka “Sal Saperstein”), Harrison Ford for Apple TV+’s Shrinking, Ebon Moss-Bachrach for The Bear (who won last year), Colman Domingo for Netflix’s The Four Seasons and Bowen Yang for NBC’s Saturday Night Live — was even more shocking. If Somebody Somewhere was watched and liked by enough people for Hiller to win, as it clearly was, then I don’t understand why it received only two nominations across its three seasons. But hey, I’m happy for Hiller, and his win is a reminder that nobody should be counted out next Emmy season.
The limited/anthology series categories also defied stats, albeit less unexpectedly. HBO’s The Penguin came in with 24 noms, second among all shows only to Severance, but was always going to face an uphill climb in its matchups with Netflix’s Adolescence, which had just 13 noms, but captured the cultural zeitgeist in a way that few recent shows have. (The same was true for the other recent Netflix shows that won in this category, The Queen’s Gambit in 2021, Beef in 2023 and Baby Reindeer in 2024.)
In every major category in which the two shows went head-to-head, Adolescence prevailed over The Penguin: for best limited/anthology series, actor (Stephen Graham over Colin Farrell, a slight upset), supporting actress (Erin Doherty over Deirdre O’Connell), directing and writing. Plus, the face of Adolescence, 15-year-old Owen Cooper, won supporting actor, becoming the youngest male ever to take home an acting Emmy. The Penguin’s sole major win was best actress, for Cristin Milioti, who deserved it.
A few final thoughts…
It was great to see the TV Academy send a message of support to Stephen Colbert and CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in the wake of the Tiffany Network announcing the show’s cancelation — which may or may not have been caused by pressure from Pres. Donald Trump, who certainly celebrated its demise — by awarding it best talk series for the first time. (It also won best directing for a variety series at one of the Creative Arts ceremonies last weekend.) However, some may be surprised to find that the show will be back on the ballot next year, given that it won’t be terminated until May 2026.
Network TV’s only other win on Sunday night, on a show that aired on network TV (CBS, specifically), was for NBC’s Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special in the category of best live variety special. Why, as I ask every year, do the broadcast networks want to continue taking turns promoting their competition? It seems like it would be wise for them to get together and insist on separate categories for network shows and/or an expansion of existing categories to improve their shows’ chances of being included.
It’s particularly egregious that the main Emmys-eligible area in which network TV excels, late night, is minimized by the TV Academy: best talk series had only three slots this year, while best scripted variety series had just two, once again pitting against each other HBO’s Last Week Tonight and SNL — which are truly apples and oranges — with Last Week Tonight winning yet again. (Last Week Tonight also beat SNL, again, in the category of best writing for a variety series.) Are CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX gluttons for punishment, or do they want to get their act together and finally do something about this?
While we’re on the topic of category reappraisals, would someone please have a word with the team behind The Bear? The show is great, but after winning 10 Emmys for its first season and 11 for its second, it went 0-for-13 for its third. That’s not because the show stopped being good. It’s because, I would submit, the show has become a punchline among members of the TV Academy, who find it absurd that it continues to be submitted as a comedy series rather than as a drama series. I’m fairly certain that, if it had been submitted as a drama series this season, it would have been nominated in a bunch of categories, including best drama series, and might have actually won something. Showtime’s Shameless and Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, among other shows, changed their genre classifications midway through their runs. So what is The Bear waiting for?
Finally, congratulations to HBO/HBO Max and Netflix, the two biggest behemoths each Emmy season, which, rather poetically, finished in an exact tie for most Emmy wins for a platform this season, with 30 each. That should tide them over for the few weeks until they start going at it again for the SAG, Critics Choice and Golden Globe awards.