Matthew Rhys makes Emmys history, winning two lead actor awards on the same night
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There’s something in the fog — it’s Emmys history for Matthew Rhys.
The “Widow’s Bay” star won the award for lead actor in a comedy series at the 78th Emmy Awards on Monday. This follows Rhys’ win earlier in the evening for lead actor in a limited or anthology series for his work in “The Beast in Me.”
With his two latest wins, Rhys is the first performer to ever win a lead acting Emmy for drama, comedy and limited series.
“Stephen Root is right that this is purely because of the depraved and twisted mind of [‘Widow’s Bay” creator] Katie Dippold,” said Rhys as he accepted the comedy actor award. “Her genius really does live in the recesses of her disturbed brain.”
In the Apple TV horror-comedy “Widow’s Bay,” Rhys portrays Tom Loftis, a devoted single dad and the mayor of a cursed New England island town who is desperately trying to boost its tourism despite the supernatural hurdles.
Here is a list of winners for the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards, which recognize achievement in the television industry.
His character in Netflix’s eight-part crime thriller, meanwhile, is cut from a different cloth. Rhys plays Nile Jarvis, the menacing and manipulative real estate scion suspected of murdering his first wife. The series sees Jarvis go tête-à-tête with his neighbor Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes), a grieving mother and struggling author who is convinced to make him the subject of her next book.
“We had a beautiful holy trinity of scribes in the glorious form of Daniel Pearle, Gabe Rotter and the inimitable Howard Gordon, who really brought up the beast in all of us,” Rhys said as he accepted the award for limited series actor. “We were guided so beautifully by Antonio Campos, but certainly led ferociously, fiercely, fervently by the incredible Claire Danes. Thank you for letting me join the mystery machine and bringing out the beast. You are an intimidating scene partner, but I’m very grateful for for all this.”
The Welsh actor told The Times in July that playing the harried mayor was “exhausting” in a way that playing Jarvis wasn’t.
“I always spent the end of the day on ‘Widow’s Bay’ going, ‘My God, I’m exhausted’ — because you’re just vibrating on a higher level with Tom,” Rhys said. “It’s always like, ‘Listen, please!’ The pitch is always higher; you’re always like, ‘You’ve got to listen to me!’ Or if you’re terrified, you’re just hyperventilating.”
“Widow’s Bay” dominated the night with 14 wins. Matthew Rhys, Sally Field and Stephen Root all made Emmys history. “The Pitt” and Jean Smart took home more hardware at the 78th Emmy Awards.
Rhys also previously said the “big draw” of “The Beast in Me” was the dynamic between Jarvis and Wiggs.
“[T]hese two people ... they’re like two magnets in a way,” he told the Envelope podcast. “They’re so drawn, they are so repulsed, they’re kind of images of each other’s shadow self. They see so much of each other while [being] polarizingly different. That to me was part of the great draw of that piece, with these two people and how they connected or seemingly didn’t.”
Rhys won for lead actor in a drama series in 2018 for his work on FX’s espionage thriller “The Americans.” It was his first win for the role after also being nominated in 2017 and 2016. Rhys was also nominated for drama lead actor in 2021 for his performance as Perry Mason in the HBO reboot and for comedy guest actor in 2017 for his performance as Chuck Palmer in “Girls.”
The other nominees for lead actor in a comedy series were Yahya Abdul-Mateen II of Disney+‘s “Wonder Man,” Steve Carell of HBO’s “Rooster,” Jason Segel of Apple TV’s “Shrinking” and Martin Short of Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.”
