Emmys 2026: Matthew Rhys makes history as Widow’s Bay sweeps awards

Well, at least Matthew Rhys had a good night. The 51-year-old Welsh star became the first person in Emmys history to win two acting awards in different leading categories on the same night. His bravura performance as a psychopathic real estate magnate in The Beast in Me and his hilarious turn as the put-upon mayor in Widow’s Bay had very little in common, other than showcasing his remarkable range and the subtlety of his performances. Anyone who’s seen The Americans will know that Rhys could already make a credible case for being the finest actor working today. Now he has the silverware to back it up.

Rhys’ twin triumphs, accompanied by snatches of celebratory Welsh, were high points in an awards ceremony that too often felt flat and uninspiring. Host Mariska Hargitay just about got away with kicking off proceedings with an extravagant cover of Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n Roll,” reworked as “I love TV screens,” but each subsequent musical interlude was harder to stomach.

Hargitay even recruited her fellow New York Knicks fanatic Taylor Swift for a pre-taped sketch that riffed, as did too many of her jokes, on her 27-year stint on Law & Order: SVU. Strangely, her laugh-free skit opposite Swift was pretty much the only time all night she didn’t burst into song.

Hargitay always seemed like a strange fit for a job more suited to a stand-up comedian, so perhaps it’s unfair to lay too much blame for the ceremony’s blandness at her door. When Stephen Colbert, accepting the final Emmy his (late) late night show will ever win for Best Variety Series, pointed out that his former writers had provided the jokes for this year’s awards show it felt more like an indictment than an endorsement. Whose idea was it to put a ‘we all come from humble beginnings’ speech in the mouth of Jayne Mansfield’s daughter?

The funniest moment of the show was provided by John Mulaney, recruited to hand Noah Wyle his Best Actor in a Drama trophy for The Pitt, who turned his few minutes on stage into an entertaining digression on what constitutes a “real man” and had many viewers begging him to take over as host in the future.

If Rhys was the night’s biggest winner (other than Mulaney), his victory should also be understood in the context of Widow’s Bay pulling off pretty much a clean sweep of the comedy awards. There were well-earned wins in the supporting categories for Stephen Root and Bury-born Kate O’Flynn, as well as a writing award for the show’s creator Katie Dippold. The Apple TV+ hit is set to begin filming a second season early next year, and could well be set to dominate the Emmys for years to come.

Jean Smart, for one, will be happy the show didn’t have a female lead. A lack of competition from Widow’s Bay allowed the Hacks star to win her fifth consecutive Emmys for her outstanding work as stand-up comedian Deborah Vance. Not to blow my own trumpet, but back in 2021, before nominations were even announced, I predicted the character would win Smart an Emmy. With the show coming to an end this year, she become only the second actor to win an Emmy for every season of the same show after Bill Cosby did the same for all three seasons of I Spy from 1966 to 1968. A rare occasion when Cosby is desirable company to be in.

In the drama categories, The Pitt continued its dominance, and there was a long overdue win for Rhea Seehorn for her work in Pluribus, after years of being overlooked for her staggering performances in Better Call Saul. There was also a crowd-pleasing fourth win for Sally Field, for the one-of-a-kind octopus-based drama Remarkably Bright Creatures.

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The final award of the night went, predictably by now, to Widow’s Bay for Best Comedy. The Emmys proved it knows good what good TV looks like, it’s just a shame it couldn’t recreate it here. Deserving winners, but the jokes may as well have been written in another language. As Rhys put it: “Diolch yn fawr iawn.” Thank you very much, indeed.