The 2025 Emmys couldn't keep politics out of a flat but fresh-faced ceremony

The 77th Primetime Emmy Awards were announced in a starry televised ceremony on Sunday night, with Hollywood shows created by expat Canadians dominating the biggest night in American television.

As expected, Apple TV+’s stylish Hollywood-spoofing series The Studio won outstanding comedy. Its Canadian co-creator and star, Seth Rogen, won in every category he was personally nominated for, getting up on stage four times.

The more surprising win was for The Pitt, the HBO Max hospital drama (streaming on Crave in Canada) created by Ontario-born ER veteran R. Scott Gemmill, which triumphed in the outstanding drama category.

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All night The Pitt had been trading awards back and forth with Severance, Apple TV+’s sci-fi cross between Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit and the Dilbert comic strip.

But it was Gemmill who came up to give the last acceptance speech of the night, dedicating the win to front-line health care workers: “Respect them, protect them, trust them.”

Between minting new stars and speeches that reflected heightened political tensions between the Trump administration and the TV powers that be, the Emmys could have been a most memorable edition – so it’s too bad that the worst moments outnumbered the best. Here’s a recap of some of both.

The worst

A host that was not the most

Nate Bargatze, a low-energy comedian from Tennessee, may have been the highest grossing stand-up comic in 2024 – but whatever he does on tour simply did not translate to hosting the Emmy Awards in the tail end of summer 2025.

Bargatze kicked things off with a perfectly acceptable opening sketch in which he played Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television. The deadpan punchlines were about Farnsworth making seemingly ridiculous pronouncements about the future – such as that there would one day be a channel called History devoted to shows about aliens.

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Alas, once he appeared back on stage at L.A.’s Peacock Theater out of costume, Bargatze never again seemed comfortable in his own skin.

A comically slow style of speech with frequent stammering and stumbling may be part of his shtick – but doing so over people’s names made him come across as underprepared and even rude at times.

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The running gag that backfired

In lieu of writing zippy one-liners for his onstage appearances, Bargatze came up with a single, overextended bit that dragged down the entire evening. He told the assembled crowd of writers, directors, actors and producers that he was going to donate $100,000 to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America charity – but that $1,000 would be subtracted from that total every time a winner went a second over their allotted time in acceptance speeches.

Instead of fixing the problem of bad long speeches, it made people giving good ones cut theirs short, and undercut candid moments that were emotionally engaging – and, thanks to an evening of flaccid presenter banter, the televised ceremony still ran past 11 p.m.

Television under attack

Bargatze, whose comedy is as neutral as his vocal tone, was presumably chosen for his apolitical approach.

But the Emmys took place at a time when television and freedom of expression on the small screen has come under attack by political forces in the United States – and that roiled barely beneath the surface all night even as most winners kept their speeches away from direct political commentary. (The exception being Hacks co-star Hannah Einbinder, who finally won a best supporting actress in a comedy Emmy and used the opportunity to curse at ICE and declare her support of a “free Palestine.”)

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Stephen Colbert, whose Late Show on CBS was cancelled three days after he made a joke that slammed the network’s parent company, Paramount Global, for settling a lawsuit with President Donald Trump, was the first presenter of the night and got a standing ovation.

“While I have your attention, is anyone hiring?” he said

Colbert got a second standing ovation later that night when he took the stage again after winning outstanding talk series. In a typically eloquent speech, he spoke about how he initially wanted to make Late Show “about love” when he began working on it 10 years ago.

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It’s worth quoting the rest in full:

“At a certain point, and you can guess what point that was, I realized that we were doing a late-night comedy show about loss. And that’s related to love, because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it.”

“Ten years later, in September of 2025, my friends, I have never loved my country more desperately. God bless America, stay strong, be brave, and if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and punch a higher floor.”

The best (but could have been better)

The Seth Rogen sweep

The Studio came into the main Emmy broadcast having already won a number of awards a week earlier – and most observers had the Apple TV+ show pegged to win outstanding comedy.

So it didn’t seem particularly humble of Seth Rogen to have nothing prepared – with nothing to say about the industry or the world or even his own show – when he walked up on stage to accept the award for leading actor in a comedy series.

“I could not wrap my head around this happening,” he said – stunned, or stoned, or both.

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Over the course of the evening, Rogen was joined by more and more people on stage – his long-time (also Canadian) collaborator and The Studio’s co-creator, Evan Goldberg, for a directing award; then Goldberg again, plus Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez to collect an award for writing for a comedy series; and then that whole crew and other producers and cast for outstanding comedy.

It took one of Rogen’s colleagues to briefly grab the mic to point out that Perez, a producer, was the first Latina to take home an outstanding comedy trophy at the Emmy Awards. (And how could everyone forget to thank Sal Saperstein?)

The best – and worst?

The Lorne giveth, and Lorne taketh away

Lorne Michaels, the Canadian and American creator and producer of Saturday Night Live, got one of the biggest compliments of the evening when those assembled gave him a standing ovation after SNL’s 50th Anniversary Special won an outstanding variety special (live) award.

Alas, Bargatze then gave him one of the worst after the break when he addressed Michaels directly: “I honestly probably wouldn’t be here hosting if it wasn’t for you.”

The best

The kid is all right

Owen Cooper, the 15-year-old English actor who played troubled teen Jamie in Netflix’s earth-shaking miniseries Adolescence, won for supporting actor in a limited series – becoming the youngest Emmy-winning male actor of all time.

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Cooper was as authentic a teenage presence on the Peacock Theater stage as he was in the series about an adolescent boy immersed in the online manosphere who commits a shocking act of violence.

In a year chock full of shows channelling society’s fears about teen boys today, Cooper’s win was a positive one for boys and young men – whom he spoke to in their own language in his acceptance speech: “Step out of your comfort zone a little; who cares if you get embarrassed,” he advised other young would-be artists.

Talent winning out over celebrity

Lesser-known actors triumphing over the major stars that congregate on television these days was the theme of the early evening as two first-time nominees became first-time winners.

Katherine LaNasa, who plays down-to-earth nurse Dana Evans on The Pitt, thanked her children for keeping her real as she accepted the award for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series.

Tramell Tillman, who plays the sinister supervisor Seth Milchick on Severance, meanwhile, thanked his mother – who was in the audience – while collecting the gong for supporting actor in a drama series.

Later, Severance’s Britt Lower was also a first-time nominee, first-time winner for lead actress in a drama for her dual roles of Helena and Helly R. So too was Jeff Hiller, who played Joel on Somebody Somewhere, HBO’s cult and critically acclaimed Kansas-set comedic drama, which quietly wrapped a three-season run last fall.

The better late than never: A shoutout for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

It took a while but eventually Cris Abrego, the chair of the Television Academy, came on stage to speak about the crisis at PBS (and NPR) precipitated by a recent Congress vote to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That agency, which channels federal funds to these public media entities, is winding down operations.

Abrego’s speech about the importance of storytelling in bringing people together didn’t seem like the trite spiel it would have in another time.

“Television and the artists who make it do more than reflect society, they shape our culture,” he said. “And in times of culture regression, they remind us what’s at stake – and what can still be achieved.”

Quote of the evening

“We share this category, and are honoured to share it, with all writers of late-night political comedy – while that is still a type of show that’s allowed to exist.” – HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver writer Daniel O’Brien collecting the show’s eighth consecutive Emmy for outstanding scripted variety series.