🎧 Highs, Lows & Whoas of the 2026 Emmys

You know an awards show is off to a great start when the first hour includes a genuinely shocking win (The Diplomat star Allison Janney pulling off an upset for drama supporting actress), a genuinely emotional win (Rhea Seehorn for Pluribus) and the chance to watch a Hollywood power couple at work (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell).

But then you realize there are still two hours left to go and nearly all the acting awards have been handed out — well, that was the experience of the 2026 Emmys for you, with the delightful and the baffling often sitting side by side. 

My colleague Christopher Rosen and I got to do something truly fun and brand-new this year — livestreaming through the entire Emmys broadcast together in person from the couch at our Airbnb in Toronto.

We’ve been very, very busy here at the Toronto International Film Festival, which you can tell if you’ve visited The Ankler’s YouTube page or checked out our daily livestream dispatches. But on Monday night we pivoted back to TV mode, both enjoying and being frustrated by the Emmy Awards — and then sticking around to record today’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast and break it all down. 

How did Widow’s Bay become such a juggernaut, setting a record for comedy series wins with 14 (one more than The Studio, the previous record holder, won last year)? Why did The Pitt lose so many categories — including Janney’s upset over Katherine LaNasa — only to triumph in the end? And why were the Emmys suddenly so interested in spreading the wealth for everyone except Widow’s Bay, giving single awards to Hacks (Jean Smart, triumphant again), Task (Tom Pelphrey makes good), The Diplomat, Remarkably Bright Creatures (huzzah to Sally Field) and The Beast in Me (the first of three awards Rhys won last night).

We break it all down in today’s podcast episode — and discuss the baffling production choices that left the show feeling like it was gasping for air in the final hour as the last awards dragged out. But if you want more, you can revisit our epic three-hour watchalong, which includes a few surprise cameos from fellow friends here in Toronto and, as you might expect, a lot of digressions and fall festival chatter, too. 

We’ll be back next week with a much longer episode, featuring our final breakdown of the Toronto audience award winners and the live onstage conversation I hosted yesterday with Los Javis, the directors of Cannes sensation La Bola Negra. See you soon!