As Martin Short ripped up his acceptance speech, Matthew Rhys took the Emmy stage for the second time tonight. Rhys won the award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as Mayor Tom Loftis in the first season of Widow’s Bay. He beat Short, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Steve Carell, and Jason Segel to claim the award.
Earlier in the night, Rhys won another award for Best Lead Actor in a Limited Series for his performance in The Beast In Me. With the two awards, he became the first man to win two acting awards in lead categories in the same night. (He’s also, per Deadline, the first actor with wins across all three lead acting categories.) If that sounds like a particularly specific achievement, it’s because it is. There have been several people to win two acting Emmys in the same night; Maya Rudolph won awards for voice acting and as a guest star in both 2020 and 2021, while Glenda Jackson pulled off two leading performance wins in 1972. The only other man to win two acting awards in the same night was James Earl Jones in 1991, who won an award for Supporting Actor in a Miniseries for Heat Wave and Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Gabriel’s Fire. He’s certainly in rarefied air after tonight.
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