The 71st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, TV’s highest honors, saw some of the Television Academy’s old favorites pitted against newer critical darlings and legacy prestige networks battle it out against streaming services. The widely acclaimed Fleabag managed to break Veep’s comedy winning streak with four awards, while Game of Thrones maintained its dominance as Best Drama, beating out freshmen series like Pose and Succession.
That win, and others for the series, helped HBO regain its title of the most wins—a prize it shared with Netflix last year—with nine for the night and 34 across the creative arts and primetime. One of the biggest questions of the night was how many trophies Game of Thrones would bring home. Heading into the ceremony the HBO show had 32 nominations for long-running drama. The show earned 10 Emmys during the Creative Emmy Awards ceremony earlier in the month and tacked on another two during the broadcast.
Peter Dinklage won for best supporting actor for his portrayal of Tyrion Lannister and the show won the outstanding drama prize. In the category for limited series and TV movies, Chernobyl, A Very English Scandal, When They See Us and The Act took home awards. Notably, Jharrel Jerome won the Emmy for lead actor for his performance in Netflix’s When They See Us, a limited series about the Central Park Five.
When accepting the award Jerome said, “This is for the men that we know as the Exonerated Five.” Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam, the five men who were convicted and later exonerated for the 1989 assault and rape of a female jogger in Central Park, were in the crowd when Jerome won.
Like the Academy Awards ceremony earlier this year, the Emmys did not have a host. Instead, Fox invited pop star Halsey, known for her songs Now or Never and Bad at Love, to perform the tribute for the ‘In Memoriam segment’.