Jean Smart's eighth Emmy, for the final season of Hacks, ties the all-time record for a performer
Deborah Vance has one more trophy than she did an hour ago, and Jean Smart now shares the highest total any performer has ever reached at the Emmys. The show she won it for has already ended, which makes this the last time anyone wins anything for Hacks.
Jean Smart has won the Emmy for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Hacks. It is the fifth time she has won for playing Deborah Vance, the last time she can win for it, and the eighth Emmy of her career — which puts her level with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Cloris Leachman for the most ever won by a performer.
She kept the speech short. "What a ride this has been," she said, and that was the end of it.
Hacks has finished; the season she won for is its last. Five wins in the same role across a completed run is the kind of record that does not get broken by attrition, and the eighth statuette arrives in a year when the show had nothing left to campaign on but the ending.
Eight is the ceiling for a performer at the Emmys. Three people are standing on it, and one of them got there tonight for a character she will not play again.
The rest of the acting races
Noah Wyle repeated as Lead Actor in a Drama Series for The Pitt, the HBO Max hospital show that came into the night with 25 nominations. It is his third Emmy; the first came last year as a producer on the same series.
Rhea Seehorn won Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Apple TV's Pluribus — a first-season show, and her first Emmy after two nominations for Better Call Saul. Matthew Rhys took Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series for Netflix's The Beast in Me, his second career win, with a second nomination still pending tonight in the comedy category.
Read more: Four of the five Emmy categories cut from tonight's broadcast were swept by DTF St. Louis
Widow's Bay is the night's machine
Apple TV's Widow's Bay arrived with 19 nominations and eight Creative Arts wins already banked, and it has kept going.
- Kate O'Flynn took Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series — the first award of the telecast, and her first Emmy.
- Stephen Root took Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for the same show, also a first after decades of work.
- Allison Janney won Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for Netflix's The Diplomat, her eighth career Emmy.
- The Traitors took Reality Competition Program, on top of six Creative Arts wins last weekend.
As of the halfway mark, Widow's Bay is the only programme with more than one win on the telecast itself, which is a strange sentence to write about a show that already had eight trophies before the broadcast started.
Two performers reached eight Emmys in the same three hours. The Academy cut five categories from this ceremony to save time and still produced a night with two career milestones in it.
The drama, comedy and limited series prizes are still to come, and The Pitt, Hacks and Widow's Bay are all still live in them. Whatever happens there, the line people will repeat tomorrow was five words long.
Previously we wrote: Tonight's Emmys will hand out 19 awards instead of 26
