Emmy Awards: Behind-the-scenes moments and viral highlights from TV's biggest night

The Emmy Awards came to the Peacock Theatre in downtown Los Angeles on a Monday night in September, and with them came the kind of controlled chaos that only television's biggest celebration can manage. The streets around the venue had been shut down. Security details and publicists in black moved through the area in practiced formations. Across the street sat the JW Marriott, where ballrooms had been converted into a sprawling backstage operation—though calling it backstage was generous. Winners who had just accepted their awards on live television were escorted through covered walkways to get their statues engraved, pose for photographs, and answer questions from reporters stationed in separate cordoned sections. It was less behind-the-scenes and more next-door, a carefully choreographed relay that kept the celebration moving while the cameras kept rolling elsewhere.

Matthew Rhys, the Welsh actor, made history that night. He became the first person ever to win the Emmy for best lead actor in a comedy series twice in the same year—once for his role in Widow's Bay, the Apple TV supernatural comedy that had quietly become a phenomenon, and again for The Beast In Me, a psychological thriller. When he finally made his way to the reporters' section, he had waited first to confirm that Hiro Murai, the show's director, had won in his category. Rhys seemed genuinely disoriented by what had happened. He joked about the friendly competition at home with his partner, actress Keri Russell, who had been nominated for her work in The Diplomat. He had bet money on himself, he said. The kids had run a book. It was going to be rough for her. But then he softened, calling her the real winner, always the class act.

Widow's Bay had claimed six awards that night, with eight more coming at the Creative Arts Emmys earlier in the month. The show had arrived as what the industry calls a sleeper hit—smaller, less known to mainstream audiences, but it had found its audience through the kind of organic promotion that streaming services dream about. Writer and creator Katie Dippold stood backstage and reflected on that journey. The people online talking about it, tweeting about it, sharing it with friends—that was what had spread the word. Rhys, with the kind of self-deprecating humor that seemed to come naturally to him, suggested that those people were predominantly their parents. But Dippold was genuinely grateful. She had been terrified, she said, that the show might get even more attention with all these Emmy wins. The cast and crew seemed caught between disbelief and a kind of giddy ascent that had been building for months.

Kate O'Flynn, who played Patricia, the assistant to the mayor in the show's haunted New England setting, was overwhelmed. She used the word gobsmacked. She said her character had an awkwardness and bravery and humor that seemed to resonate with people because everyone had felt like Patricia at some point. She had been pleasantly surprised to see an army of people dressed as her character at DragonCon this year. Now she was joking about Halloween, about antlers taking over the world. To her family and friends back home, she had a simple message: We did it.

Allison Janney's shock at winning best supporting actress in drama became a meme almost instantly. When her name was called, the camera caught her with her mouth open, both hands cupping the sides of her face, her expression frozen in genuine surprise. She played the U.S. President in The Diplomat, and she had been convinced that The Pitt, the medical drama that had become a cultural juggernaut, would take the category. She had been a hundred percent sure she wasn't going to win. So when she did, the surprise was real and visible and human in a way that made people stop and watch it again.

Mariska Hargitay, the Law & Order SVU star, was hosting for the first time in fifteen years that a woman had held the role. She opened with a musical number riffing on Joan Jett, singing about loving TV screens instead of rock and roll. She brought in NBA star Jalen Brunson for a cameo—a nod to her love of the New York Knicks. She filmed a pre-recorded skit with Taylor Swift that took viewers on a tour of the nominees and Swift's own life and albums, closing with one of Swift's cats, named Olivia Benson after Hargitay's character on the show. The whole thing was designed to feel like television celebrating itself, which, on a night like this, was exactly what was happening.

Megan Stalter, nominated for best comedy supporting actress in Hacks, arrived on the blue carpet as a living Emmy statuette. She had covered herself in gold body paint, added angel wings, and carried an enormous replica of the atom that sits atop the award. She told reporters that she and her stylist had just thrown it together, that her co-star Paul W Downs had airbrushed her himself. She dodged the deeper questions about what inspired the look, but the look itself was the answer—a kind of joyful, absurdist celebration of the night itself.

Arlan Ruf, who played David Harbour's son in DTF St Louis, the HBO dark comedy about a murder stemming from a dating app, made a joke backstage about who was actually watching his show. His friends probably weren't, he said. But their mothers were. Every friend's mom he knew was watching. It was a knowing nod to the true crime audience, predominantly female, that had made the show resonate in ways that went beyond the traditional television demographic. The Emmys, in their way, were reflecting back what audiences had already decided they wanted to watch.