LOS ANGELES — 78th Emmy Awards arrive Monday night with a first-time host, a crowded field of high-profile contenders and several potential milestones for television’s most established stars and newest breakout series.
Mariska Hargitay, the longtime star of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, will host the ceremony from the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles. The awards will air live coast-to-coast on NBC and stream live and on demand on Peacock beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. Pacific.
This year’s Emmys come at a moment when television remains deeply fragmented, spread across broadcast networks, cable channels and competing streaming platforms, but the awards still offer a rare shared stage for the industry. HBO Max’s The Pitt, HBO Max’s Hacks, Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay and Apple TV’s Pluribus are among the shows expected to dominate conversation as voters decide the biggest prizes of the night.
The ceremony is the final live event in a three-night Emmy schedule. Creative Arts Emmy Awards were held Sept. 5 and 6, honoring achievements in categories including casting, cinematography, costumes, editing, reality programming and nonfiction television. Those events were edited into a single broadcast that aired Saturday on FXX and became available on Hulu.
Monday’s telecast will bring the attention back to the marquee categories: best drama, best comedy, limited or anthology series, acting honors and the high-profile awards that help define television’s cultural and commercial hierarchy for the next year.
When and where to watch
The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards will be held Monday, Sept. 14, at the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live in Los Angeles.
The live ceremony begins at:
- 8 p.m. Eastern
- 7 p.m. Central
- 6 p.m. Mountain
- 5 p.m. Pacific
NBC will carry the broadcast live across the United States, and Peacock will stream it live and make it available on demand afterward.
The red-carpet coverage begins earlier. Live from E!: Countdown to the Emmys starts at 5 p.m. Eastern, or 2 p.m. Pacific, and will be available through YouTube and Peacock.
NBC’s presentation also arrives during the network’s 100th anniversary year. The network has rolled out a peacock-blue carpet, a visual tribute to both the Emmys’ venue and NBC’s own historic branding.
For viewers, the broadcast will be one of the few large live-entertainment events still designed for a broad national audience. Awards show face continuing pressure from declining traditional television ratings, shorter attention spans and the rise of social-media clips. But the Emmys retain influence because an award can translate into renewed streaming interest, additional seasons, talent leverage and a lasting place in television history.
Mariska Hargitay makes her hosting debut
Hargitay will host the Emmys for the first time, placing one of network television’s most enduring stars at the center of an industry event increasingly dominated by streaming services.
She is best known for playing Capt. Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a role she has carried for more than two decades. Hargitay is a three-time Emmy winner and will become the first woman to host the Emmy Awards solo in 15 years.
Her selection gives the ceremony a recognizable, cross-generational face. Hargitay’s career spans the traditional network era and the contemporary streaming landscape, making her a fitting host for an Emmys ceremony that must speak to both.
She has also already had an eventful awards season. Hargitay won two Emmys at earlier ceremonies for My Mom Jayne, her documentary about her late mother, actor Jayne Mansfield.
The host has become more important to awards telecasts as producers try to balance ceremony, comedy, tributes and a fast-moving format. Hargitay’s presence may give this year’s broadcast a warmer and more actor-centered tone than a traditional stand-up-comic-hosted show.
She will also serve as an executive producer of the telecast, alongside Jesse Collins, Dionne Harmon and Jeannae Rouzan-Clay of Jesse Collins Entertainment.
The drama race: Can ‘The Pitt’ repeat?
The biggest drama question centers on The Pitt, HBO Max’s real-time emergency-room series.
A year ago, The Pitt was a breakout newcomer. It won best drama series, Noah Wyle won best actor in a drama, and Katherine LaNasa won best supporting actress. This year, it returns not as an underdog but as the defending champion.
The series is expected to contend again in its major categories, and its nomination haul reflects unusual strength across its ensemble. The show received four supporting-actress nominations and three supporting-actor nominations, while Wyle is nominated for three trophies overall.
That breadth gives The Pitt a chance to repeat in several categories, but it also creates a familiar awards-show complication. When performers from the same series compete against each other, vote-splitting can weaken a show’s prospects in individual races.
Still, the drama’s appeal is clear. Its emergency-room setting gives it urgency, while the real-time format creates a compressed, immersive experience that has distinguished it from more conventional medical dramas. In a television climate dominated by franchise spinoffs, prestige mysteries and elaborate genre worlds, The Pitt has benefited from feeling direct, human and high stakes.
Its success would also reinforce HBO Max’s continuing ability to produce major awards contenders despite industry-wide consolidation, production slowdowns and fierce competition from Apple, Netflix and Disney.
The strongest individual drama-actress storyline belongs to Rhea Seehorn, nominated for Apple TV’s Pluribus. Seehorn plays the show’s lone central character and could win her first Emmy after years of acclaimed work, including her celebrated role in Better Call Saul.
Her competition includes Zendaya, nominated for the third and final season of Euphoria. Zendaya won previously for the first two seasons, in 2020 and 2022, and remains one of the most recognizable performers in the Emmy field.
The category represents the Emmys’ broader generational contrast: a veteran character actor seeking overdue recognition and a younger star whose performances have already reshaped the history of the category.
Comedy: ‘Hacks’ farewell meets ‘Widow’s Bay’ momentum
The comedy categories may provide the evening’s most competitive races.
Hacks received the most nominations of any comedy for its fifth and final season on HBO Max. The series, starring Jean Smart as comedian Deborah Vance, has become one of the Emmys’ most consistently rewarded shows. Smart is considered a favorite for best actress in a comedy, a win that would make her five-for-five in the category for the show.
The potential victory would cap an extraordinary Emmy run for Smart and give Hacks a satisfying awards-show farewell. The series has turned an intergenerational creative partnership into both a critical success and a recurring awards narrative.
But Widow’s Bay, Apple TV’s horror comedy, could disrupt that ending.
The show entered the main ceremony with eight wins at earlier Emmy events and can win as many as six more awards Monday. If it reaches that total, it would break the record of 13 Emmys for a comedy in a single season, a mark set last year by The Studio.
Matthew Rhys is considered a leading contender for best actor in a comedy for Widow’s Bay, while Kate O’Flynn is a strong candidate in the supporting-actress race.
The show’s momentum highlights a shift in the comedy category. Traditional sitcoms still matter, but the definition of a “comedy” has become broader and stranger, spanning dark satire, dramedy, genre hybrids and stylized streaming shows that may be as unsettling as they are funny.
The possible Hacks–Widow’s Bay showdown reflects more than a vote count. It is a contest between a beloved established series finishing its run and a newer, more unconventional show arriving with awards-season velocity.
Harrison Ford seeks a first Emmy
One of the most closely watched individual stories of the night involves Harrison Ford.
At 84, Ford is nominated for best supporting actor in a comedy for playing a therapist living with Parkinson’s disease on Apple TV’s Shrinking. The nomination is notable because it is Ford’s first Emmy nomination, and he has never won a major competitive Hollywood award.
Ford’s career includes some of the most commercially successful and culturally influential film roles of the modern era, including Han Solo in Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Yet awards recognition has often eluded him.
An Emmy win would therefore carry an emotional weight beyond the category itself. It would honor a performance that has shown a different side of Ford: dryly funny, vulnerable and willing to play against the action-hero image that defined much of his career.
Whether he wins or not, Ford’s nomination illustrates a larger Emmys trend. Major film stars are increasingly drawn to television, where limited series, streaming dramas and prestige comedies offer roles with more time for development and more creative flexibility than many studio movies.
Presenters and anniversary moments
The Emmy telecast will include a long list of presenters spanning television, film, music and comedy.
The newly announced group includes Stephen Amell, Awkwafina, Jamie Lee Curtis, Emma D’Arcy, Julia Garner, LL Cool J, Woody Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey, John Mulaney, Emmy Rossum, Sofía Vergara and Shailene Woodley.
Previously announced presenters include Linda Cardellini, Macaulay Culkin, Alan Cumming, Sally Field, Jon Hamm, David Harbour, Dan Levy, Julianna Margulies, Annie Murphy, Niecy Nash-Betts, Keke Palmer, Amy Poehler, Florence Pugh and Zendaya.
The range of names is designed to give the ceremony both nostalgia and contemporary relevance. The show will also mark two major television anniversaries:
- The 30th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz.
- The 50th anniversary of Charlie’s Angels, with Kate Jackson, Cheryl Ladd and Jaclyn Smith.
Anniversary reunions have become a standard awards-show device, but they serve a larger purpose. They remind viewers that the Emmys are not only about the newest streaming hit. They are also a celebration of television’s long cultural memory — from broadcast-era icons to today’s global streaming franchises.
The In Memoriam segment will feature singer-songwriter Noah Kahan performing “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
That choice is likely to be among the ceremony’s most emotional moments, honoring television figures who died in the past year while giving the telecast an opportunity to step outside the competitive tension of the awards.
Why the Emmys still matter
Awards shows are often criticized as self-congratulatory, predictable or disconnected from the way audiences actually watch television. Those critiques have some basis. Viewership has changed, streaming libraries are vast, and many acclaimed shows reach relatively small audiences compared with the broadcast hits of earlier decades.
But the Emmys still matter because they offer a form of cultural sorting.
A win can revive an overlooked series, create new interest in a streaming platform, make an actor more bankable or persuade viewers to try a show they missed. For writers, directors, craftspeople and performers, an Emmy remains one of the industry’s most visible forms of recognition.
The awards also provide a snapshot of television’s changing power centers.
HBO Max remains a major awards force through The Pitt and Hacks. Apple TV is pressing hard through Widow’s Bay, Pluribus and Shrinking. Network television has a symbolic place in the show through host Hargitay and NBC’s broadcast, even as the nominees show how thoroughly the center of prestige television has shifted to streaming.
Monday night’s results will not settle every debate about what makes “good television.” They will, however, establish the shows and performances that the industry will carry forward into the next season as benchmarks of acclaim.
By the time the final award is presented, The Pitt may have confirmed its status as television’s leading drama, Hacks may have earned a farewell triumph, Widow’s Bay may have set a comedy record, and Ford may finally have an Emmy.
What is certain is that the 78th Emmy Awards will bring television’s fragmented world together, at least for one night, under the lights of the Peacock Theater.
