Jean Smart now has an Emmy for every season of Hacks. Nobody had ever managed that
The 78th Emmys were handed out on Monday night in Los Angeles. Widow's Bay took six on the night and 14 across the year, a record for a comedy, and The Pitt won drama series again.
The 78th Emmy Awards were handed out on Monday night at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, hosted by Mariska Hargitay, the first woman to front the ceremony in fifteen years. They ended with something the Television Academy had never recorded before.
Jean Smart won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Hacks, the fifth the show has given her, and became the first performer to win an Emmy for every season of a series. It is also her eighth career acting Emmy, which puts her level with Allison Janney, Cloris Leachman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus at the top of the all-time list. Janney got there on the same night, winning supporting actress in a drama for The Diplomat.
The big winner
The night belonged to Widow’s Bay, the Apple TV comedy-horror set on a haunted New England island. Six statuettes at the telecast, including Outstanding Comedy Series, and fourteen across this year’s three ceremonies, beating the thirteen The Studio took last year and standing as the most any comedy has won in a single year.
One of those six was unprecedented. Matthew Rhys won lead actor in a comedy for Widow’s Bay and lead actor in a limited series or movie for Netflix’s The Beast In Me. No one had ever won two leading-performance Emmys in the same year. Add his 2018 win for The Americans and Rhys becomes the only person with lead acting Emmys in all three of drama, comedy and limited series.
Over on the drama side
The Pitt won Outstanding Drama Series for a second straight season, making it the first show since Mad Men to take the category for its first two seasons. Noah Wyle did the equivalent in lead actor, which had not happened since Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad in 2009. Apple TV did not leave empty-handed: Pluribus took two, with Rhea Seehorn winning her first Emmy and Vince Gilligan his first individual writing award, after years of collecting Breaking Bad statuettes as a producer.
Elsewhere, DTF St. Louis took Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, The Traitors won a third consecutive reality competition award and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert a second consecutive variety series.
Two age records, and one honour
Sally Field became the oldest winner of lead actress in a limited series or movie, for Netflix’s Remarkably Bright Creatures; she turns 80 in November. Stephen Root did the same in supporting actor in a comedy. Hiro Murai became the first Asian director to win comedy directing.
Outside the membership vote, the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award went to Michael J. Fox for his foundation’s work funding Parkinson’s research. We wrote last week that this year’s broadcast cut the live-presented categories from 26 to 19, and that shorter telecast is the one that handed out everything above.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Television Academy (78th Emmy Awards telecast photograph)
