The 2019 Emmys' biggest winners and losers

(Image credit: Illustrated | ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images, omyos/iStock, Aerial3/iStock)

published 23 September 2019

When the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards weren't busy shamelessly plugging The Masked Singer on Sunday night, they were actually, well, pretty great! Sure, the jokes could be lame and Game of Thrones ultimately did what Game of Thrones always does (win), but there were more upsets than shoe-ins. And that's a big deal! The usual wisdom concerning television's biggest night is that the previous years' winners will just win again — the Emmys doesn't exactly have a reputation for being daring — but that rule went out the window in 2019.

For a complete list of the honorees and nominees of the 2019 Emmy Awards, you can go here. For a list of the biggest winners and losers that you might have missed while you were busy streaming the new episode of Succession instead, you've come to the right place.

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Fleabag is easily the best show I've watched this year, and the second and final season of the series about "a sex addict" (in the not-exactly-accurate words of Ben Stiller) was the dark horse of the night. The Amazon show ended up walking away with one of the biggest awards of the evening, Outstanding Comedy, with star and creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge additionally winning Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and an award for writing.

But while Fleabag got all the glory, the 2019 Emmys were really a monumental night for comediennes on the whole. Waller-Bridge's biggest competitor for Lead Actress in a Comedy was Emmy favorite Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Veep, but the category was stacked, also including last year's winner, Rachel Brosnahan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; Catherine O'Hara of Schitt's Creek; Natasha Lyonne of Russian Doll; and Christina Applegate of Dead To Me. Each one easily could have been picked the winner; Vulture called it "the strongest lineup of nominees for anything in any awards show in recent memory," and I don't disagree.

The entire Pose cast looked incredible on the Emmy's purple carpet (seriously, if you haven't seen Indya Moore's custom Louis Vuitton gown or MJ Rodriguez's bright pink Jason Wu ensemble yet, fix that), but it was undoubtedly Billy Porter's night. For one thing, he made history by becoming the first openly gay black man to win the lead drama actor Emmy for his performance in the critically-acclaimed FX series.

Okay, so maybe she didn't win Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, but Gwendoline Christie was the Emmys Lord and Savior anyway. For one thing, there was the fact that she was nominated at all; Christie submitted herself for her turn as Brienne of Tarth on Game of Thrones after HBO failed to do so. For another — and I cannot stress this enough — she showed up to the Emmys basically dressed as her character?

The red carpet wasn't the only Emmys staple to get the pink slip in 2019. In a change reportedly intended to "keep the audience involved," in the words of The New York Times, the award ceremony also did away with its live orchestra, choosing instead to pipe in songs by the Black Keys, Bee Gees, and Florence + The Machine, among others. Deadline writes that "the approach is reminiscent to the walk-up songs used at football games and wrestling events, which would fit into Fox's identity as home of NFL games and WWE SmackDown."

For a lot of fans, watching Game of Thrones' controversial final season win Outstanding Drama Series on Sunday might have been a bit of a shock. The show was widely considered to have lost its wheels during season eight, complete with plot twists like Daenerys becoming evil and Bran being named King of Westeros. Adding insult to injury, Ozark had won several other promising categories including directing, and seemed poised to take home the statuette; likewise, HBO's Succession stood by as a dark horse and fan-favorite.

But no, Thrones won yet again, putting it in a small group of the winningest drama series, at four, along with Mad Men, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and The West Wing. But while I have my own major reservations about Thrones' final season, the show's dramatic send-off by the Emmys makes sense — it could be a generation before we see another show with the same massive popularity. Plus, I will defend every Creative Arts Emmy it won last week.

HBO's Chernobyl limited series was one of the sneakiest mega-hits of 2019, earning rave reviews and the highest ever TV score on IMDb. But in one of the stranger turns of the 2019 Emmys, Chernobyl — both the show and the 1986 nuclear disaster on which it's based — became one of the most common punchlines of the night. Comedian and quasi-host Thomas Lennon even quipped that Chernobyl was "the little nuclear disaster that could" and that it was "exploding at these Emmys." Uhhh?

While not exactly a case of "too soon," using a tragedy like Chernobyl as a punch line is at the very least in poor taste (you wouldn't likely hear the same if it was HBO's Hiroshima or Fukushima Daiichi). Particularly since the show emphasizes the moral, criminal, and governmental failure to take the Chernobyl disaster seriously, it seems like the Emmys could have at the very least shown a little respect.

Well, that might have been true any year but 2019. The 71st Emmys had several jaw-dropping upsets, most notably with Phoebe Waller-Bridge winning Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy over Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who had won an Emmy for her performance in Veep all six years the show was previously eligible. Rather than make history on Sunday night, Louis-Dreyfus remained tied with Cloris Leachman for the most Emmys by a performer.

Game of Thrones not winning literally everything might be considered another upset, particularly in categories like Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, where four of the show's actors were up to bat (Gwendoline Christie; Lena Headey; Maisie Williams; Sophie Turner) with the award ultimately going to Julia Garner for Ozark. (Fun fact, Peter Dinklage remains the only person to ever win an acting Emmy for work in Game of Thrones). Likewise, it was Ozark's "Reparations" that won Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, beating Game of Thrones' famously complicated and difficult to shoot Battle of Winterfell in "The Long Night"; "The Last of the Starks," which followed the aftermath of that battle; and "The Iron Throne," the series finale.

It was a big weekend for Britain, and not just because the Downton Abbey movie had blockbuster box office earnings. Of the 27 awards handed out at the Primetime Emmys, half the statuettes went to Brits or British-produced shows, Deadline reports. Fleabag was of course the biggest winner with its three surprise awards, but 10 additional Emmys went to shows like Chernobyl, Last Week with John Oliver, Killing Eve, and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.

We are truly living in the era of the streamers, with on-demand services nearly sweeping the 71st Emmy Awards. HBO won nine Emmys on Sunday, Amazon Prime won seven, Netflix won four, and Hulu won one. Counting the Creative Arts Emmys that were handed out last week, HBO kept its edge on Netflix with a total of 34 Emmys to 27; 15 total went to Amazon, and there were only "single digits thereafter," according to CNN media critic Brian Lowry's tally.

And what, then, does that say about the way we watch TV now? The big elephant in the room at the 2019 Emmys, after all, was that this will be, in a sense, the last year of its kind. By the 2020 Emmys, a whole new batch of elite streaming services will have arrived on the scene: Disney+ and Apple TV+, as well as HBO Max. TV is rapidly changing and the Emmys can sense it; while Television Academy CEO Frank Scherma might have insisted that the medium "continues to provide us with ... common ground," the fact is that the era of watching something together as it airs has come to a close.

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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