The superficial edginess of the Emmys and The Studio

When I previewed the 2025 Emmys in July, I wrote “it must feel pretty good to be Seth Rogen today.” His Hollywood satire, The Studio, had been nominated for a mighty 23 Emmy awards, and Rogen himself was up for acting, writing and directing. Well, today it must feel even better to be Seth Rogen. The show trampled over its competition to win a hugely impressive 13 awards – the most ever won by a comedy in a single season, let alone a debuting one – and Rogen himself won Best Actor, Best Director (for the self-consciously tricksy one-shot episode “The Oner”) and shared the Best Writing award with Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez. Obviously, The Studio won Best Comedy Series, and equally unsurprisingly, Emmys favorite Bryan Cranston had already won Best Guest Actor in a Comedy.

An unusually humble Rogen accepted his award by saying “it’s getting embarrassing” as he made repeated appearances to the podium, but in truth Rogen has now cemented himself as a Hollywood fixture and The Studio – which I found entertaining but considerably less caustic than, say, Ricky Gervais’s Extras – will be renewed by a grateful Apple TV for as many seasons as Rogen and Goldberg want to create. Yet in truth, the Emmys for The Studio and the Netflix cultural phenomenon Adolescence, which won plaudits for its stars Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and 15-year-old Owen Cooper as well as the award for Best Limited Series, could have been predicted a mile off. The most noteworthy parts of the evening are always, in no particular order, the shocks, the host and the controversy, and the Emmys delivered on all three counts.

Another Apple TV show, Severance, came into the running with a staggering 27 nominations, but walked away with eight, of which the two most significant were Britt Lower’s Lead Actress and Tramell Tillman’s Best Supporting Actor. Instead, it was Noah Wyle’s The Pitt that won both Best Drama and Best Actor for Wyle, even as the controversy as to whether the medical drama is an ER spin-off in disguise (the Michael Crichton estate says so, and has commenced legal action) threatens to overshadow its success. Colin Farrell, thought to be a shoo-in for Best Actor for The Penguin, went home empty-handed and the third series of The White Lotus, generally seen as its weakest and most unfocused to date, received no wins from its 23 nominations. The excellent Andor and Slow Horses, meanwhile, had to be content with one major award each, namely Outstanding Writing (for the mighty “Welcome to the Rebellion” episode) and Outstanding Directing (for “Hello Goodbye”).

Host Nate Bargatze, currently America’s most popular comedian – perhaps because of his determination to major in clean, cuss-free content – was hamstrung by a gimmick that probably sounded cleverer and funnier than it ended up being. He vowed that the Boys and Girls Clubs of America would receive a $100,000 donation from him and the Emmy producers, but that the amount would be docked $1,000 by every second a winner went over time in their acceptance speeches. By the end of the show, the donation was $60,000 in the red. A nastier comedian, like a Gervais, would have made a joke out of billing the charity for the amount, but the amicable but bland Bargatze has a soft touch and so the Boys and Girls Clubs will receive $350,000 anyway, turning his big schtick into a meaningless distraction. He might have been better off coming up with some more memorable jokes instead. The stint will do his career no harm, but it’s unlikely to bring in new admirers.

And, of course, there were some winners who wanted to get themselves noticed. Ten-time Emmy winner Stephen Colbert might have been forgiven if he had attacked CBS for canceling The Late Show, but he was magnanimous instead, even as he joked “While I have your attention, is anyone hiring?” He was more good-natured than Hacks star Hannah Einbinder, who ended her speech for Best Supporting Actress by saying “Go Birds, fuck ICE and free Palestine!” This was the most political that anyone got on stage (although Javier Bardem made similar comments on the red carpet) and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most hot-button political issue of them all – the assassination of Charlie Kirk – was not mentioned by anyone.

In a sense, then, The Studio was the perfect reflection of Hollywood and the Emmys in 2025: superficially edgy, perfectly entertaining, but with absolutely nothing to say about the bigger, more serious issues that are consuming the world (and the entertainment industry) right now. Some might see this as diplomacy, others as cowardice, but that has always been showbiz, folks.