Matthew Rhys Makes Emmy History With Two Lead Acting Wins in One Night

The ‘Widow’s Bay’ and ‘The Beast in Me’ star became the first performer ever to win two lead acting Emmys in a single ceremony, and the first man to complete the lead acting trifecta across drama, comedy and limited series.

Matthew Rhys did something no actor had managed in 78 years of the Emmy Awards.

Rhys won two lead acting Emmys on the same night at Monday’s ceremony at the Peacock Theater. Earlier in the evening he took Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for Netflix’s The Beast in Me, a genuine upset. Later, he won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay.

He is now the first person ever to claim two lead acting prizes in a single ceremony. Combined with his 2018 drama win for The Americans, the pair also makes him the first man to win in all three lead acting categories.

What Makes This Genuinely Unprecedented

Performers have won two acting Emmys in one night before. James Earl Jones took lead drama actor for Gabriel’s Fireand supporting actor in a limited series for Heat Wave in 1991, the only man to do it. Eight women have managed it, including Cloris Leachman, Glenda Jackson, Colleen Dewhurst, Shirley Knight, Stockard Channing, Allison Janney and Alex Borstein. Maya Rudolph did it in consecutive years, 2020 and 2021, in the same two categories both times.

What separates Rhys is that all of those doubles involved at least one supporting or guest category. Nobody had ever won at the top of two different ballots on the same night.

The rarity runs deeper still. Since the miniseries and TV movie awards merged into shared acting categories in 1979, a handful of performers have received two lead nominations in a single year, including Mary-Louise Parker in 2007, Ted Danson and Daniel J. Travanti in 1984, and Mariette Hartley in 1983. None of them won either one. Rhys is not only the first to win both. He is the first to leave the building with even one.

The Trifecta Nobody Had Completed

The second record may be the more durable one. With drama, comedy and limited now all in hand, Rhys has assembled a complete set of lead acting Emmys that no male performer had ever put together.

Three men had come close. Robert Young and Carroll O’Connor each won drama and comedy leads. Andre Braugher took drama and limited. The only performer of any gender to complete the set before Rhys was Barbara Stanwyck, who won all three lead actress categories between 1961 and 1983, though the earliest predates the split between the comedy and drama races.

Among those still one short is Claire Danes, Rhys’s Beast in Me co-star.

Before Monday, Rhys and Jason Bateman were the only two men to have even been nominated across all three lead categories in their careers. This year’s two nominations brought Rhys to eight overall, including a guest turn on Girls and a nomination for Perry Mason.

Two Roles That Could Not Be More Different

The range on display is part of the story. In Widow’s Bay, Rhys plays Tom Loftis, a devoted single father and the mayor of a cursed New England island town, gamely trying to boost tourism against considerable supernatural resistance. In The Beast in Me, he plays Nile Jarvis, a menacing real estate scion suspected of murdering his first wife, opposite Danes as a grieving novelist who decides to make him her next subject.

In the limited race he pulled the bigger surprise, edging presumptive favorite Oscar Isaac for Beef, along with Riz Ahmed for Bait, Jason Bateman for Black Rabbit and Charlie Hunnam for Monster: The Ed Gein Story. On the comedy side, where he was the clear frontrunner, he topped Yahya Abdul-Mateen II for Wonder Man, Steve Carell for Rooster, Jason Segel for Shrinking and Martin Short for Only Murders in the Building.

“My Apologies to the Women Who’ve Had to Stand Again”

Taking the stage a second time to a standing ovation, Rhys shook his head, visibly embarrassed, as cameras cut to partner Keri Russell cheering him on.

“My apologies to the women who’ve had to stand again,” he opened, before crediting the creator of Widow’s Bay. “Stephen Root is right: this is purely because of the depraved and twisted mind of Katie Dippold, and her genius really does live in the recesses of her disturbed brain.”

Dippold won Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the same show later in the night.

Accepting his earlier award, Rhys credited the writing team behind The Beast in Me. “We had a beautiful holy trinity of scribes in the glorious form of Daniel Pearle, Gabe Rotter, and the inimitable Howard Gordon, who really brought up the beast in all of us.”

A Record Night for Widow’s Bay Overall

Rhys also holds executive producer nominations on both series. Widow’s Bay won Outstanding Comedy Series and finished the cycle with 14 total trophies across Creative Arts and Monday’s ceremony, an all-time record for a comedy. The freshman horror-comedy also delivered wins for Kate O’Flynn and Stephen Root in the supporting categories, plus Hiro Murai, who became the first Asian director to win the Emmy for comedy directing.

The Pitt led this year’s nominations with 25, followed by Hacks with 24, Widow’s Bay with 19 and Beef with 16.

Joanthan P. Moustakas

Jonathan P. Moustakas founded The Cinema Group in 2020 during the challenges of the pandemic, after losing the vital ability to find community in theaters and escape through the captivating magic of cinema. Feeling profoundly cut off from the vibrant film community he cherished, he sought to create a welcoming home for dedicated cinema fans while providing engaging, daily curated content that resonates with their passions. Years later, The Cinema Group has blossomed from a small collective of loyal fans into a thriving brand that reaches millions of audiences every month across a diverse array of platforms and mediums.

See Full Bio