Apple TV+'s horror-comedy series Widow's Bay dominated the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday, sweeping the comedy categories to set a new record with 14 total wins across the season — surpassing the 13 won by fellow Apple TV+ show The Studio just a year earlier. The first-season series, set on a mysteriously cursed island off New England where an anxious mayor struggles to boost tourism while ignoring supernatural warnings, took six major Primetime prizes including Outstanding Comedy Series, with its remaining eight wins collected at the earlier Creative Arts Emmy ceremony.
The evening's most remarkable individual achievement belonged to Welsh actor Matthew Rhys, who won Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as mayor Tom Loftis in Widow's Bay and then Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series for Netflix crime thriller The Beast in Me — becoming the first male performer to win two lead acting categories at the Emmys in the same year. Combined with his 2018 Drama Actor win for The Americans, Rhys is now the first male actor to have won Emmys in all three lead acting categories. Widow's Bay also won for directing (Hiro Murai) and writing (creator Katie Dippold, a first-time Emmy winner and nominee), as well as supporting actor for Stephen Root and supporting actress for British theatre actor Kate O'Flynn. "Thank you Apple, for letting us take this crazy, creative swing," Dippold said on stage. "They truly just let us do this weird show."
Jean Smart delivered the night's other defining record, winning Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Hacks for a fifth consecutive year — one for each season of the HBO Max stand-up comedy drama — making her the first performer ever to win an acting Emmy for every season of a show's run. The win brought her total to eight acting Emmys, tying the all-time record held by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Cloris Leachman and Allison Janney. Hacks, despite leading all comedy nominees with 24 nominations for its final season, converted only Smart's win on the night. "What a ride this has been," an emotional Smart said after receiving a standing ovation.
In drama, The Pitt — an HBO Max medical series set in a Pittsburgh emergency room — retained its Outstanding Drama Series crown for a second consecutive year, with star Noah Wyle winning Lead Actor in Drama for the second straight time. Apple TV+'s political thriller Pluribus delivered wins for Rhea Seehorn as Lead Actress in Drama, finally rewarding her after two previously unsuccessful nominations for Better Call Saul, and for writer-creator Vince Gilligan. Limited series DTF St. Louis won its category, while 79-year-old Sally Field won Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series for Remarkably Bright Creatures, becoming the oldest woman to claim that prize and securing her fourth Emmy across a career spanning more than six decades. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, cancelled by CBS earlier this year, won Outstanding Variety Series.
Apple TV+ emerged as the night's dominant platform with 27 total Emmy wins, well ahead of HBO/Max with 20 and Netflix with 14 — a substantial escalation for a streamer that had already set a platform record with 25 wins in 2025. Several heavily tipped contenders went home empty-handed: The Bear, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and Beef failed to convert major nominations into Primetime wins, while The Pitt — which led all shows with 25 nominations — managed only two major prizes. The ceremony also honoured Michael J. Fox with the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award for decades of Parkinson's disease advocacy and research fundraising, and included an onstage tribute to Dolly Parton, who died in August at the age of 80.