Octavia Spencer wins first Emmy, edging out David Attenborough, as Creative Arts Awards wrap in Los Angeles

The Television Academy wrapped its two-night Creative Arts Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday and Sunday, handing out the bulk of this year's Emmy statuettes a week ahead of the televised Primetime ceremony. Across more than 100 categories, "The Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show Starring Bad Bunny" led all programs with seven wins, "The Traitors" took six, and the final season of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" collected five, according to a Television Academy press release confirming the results.

The evening's most closely watched outcome, however, involved a category most viewers rarely notice. Octavia Spencer won Outstanding Narrator for Investigation Discovery's true-crime series "Lost Women of Alaska," beating out Sir David Attenborough, who at 100 years old had been nominated twice in the category for "A Gorilla Story" and "Ocean with David Attenborough." A win for Attenborough would have made him the oldest competitive Emmy recipient in the award's history, surpassing the record held by Norman Lear, who won at 98 in 2020, according to Gold Derby's tracking of this year's age records. Spencer's win was her first competitive Emmy.

The numbers

The Apple Music Super Bowl LX halftime show's seven trophies included Outstanding Variety Special (Live), Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special and technical honors for sound mixing and camerawork. "The Traitors" collected six, among them a third consecutive Outstanding Host win for Alan Cumming. Colbert's farewell season took five statuettes, including Outstanding Directing for a Variety Series for Yvonne De Mare and a win for its digital companion series "Colbert Before Air" in the short-form category. "The Muppet Show" added four wins, "Love on the Spectrum" three, and "My Mom Jayne: A Film by Mariska Hargitay" two — Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special and Outstanding Directing for a Documentary or Nonfiction Program, both for Hargitay. Ahead of the ceremonies, HBO Max's medical drama "The Pitt" led all series with 25 nominations, while "Hacks" drew 24 nominations for its fifth and final season, a single-year record for a comedy, the Television Academy said in its official nominations announcement in July.

How the Creative Arts Emmys work

The Creative Arts Emmys are the Television Academy's mechanism for honoring the roughly 100 below-the-line and unscripted categories — casting, editing, hosting, variety specials, documentary work and technical crafts — that do not fit into the three-hour Primetime broadcast. The two nights of trophies are taped and edited into a single broadcast airing September 12 on FXX and streaming on Hulu, ahead of the Primetime Emmy Awards on September 14, which will air live on NBC and Peacock. This year's split ceremony carries an unusual wrinkle: Hargitay, who won twice for directing and producing her HBO documentary about her mother, the actor Jayne Mansfield, is also set to host the Primetime broadcast nine days later, meaning a nominee who became one of the weekend's biggest winners will return to the same stage as its master of ceremonies.

Who the results affect

For Stephen Colbert's production team, the wins closed out a farewell season with recognition rather than a quiet exit; CBS ended "The Late Show" earlier this year, and the Creative Arts prizes for directing and short-form programming mark some of the final honors the show will collect. For Spencer, the win adds to a career that already includes a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for "The Help," and leaves her needing a Grammy and a Tony to complete an EGOT. Attenborough, who turned 100 in May, keeps his standing as the oldest nominee in Primetime Emmy history even without the win, while Alan Cumming's repeat victory cements "The Traitors" as reality television's dominant showcase heading into a fourth season. Bad Bunny's Super Bowl LX halftime show — the first in the game's history built around a predominantly Spanish-language set, watched live by roughly 128 million viewers in February — swept the variety-special categories, underscoring the special's reach beyond the NFL audience that first saw it.

"The most important thing that we can do for each other is to know each other through stories," Hargitay said in her acceptance speech, quoting her friend Gloria Steinem's advice to "please tell your own story." "I got to know my mother through telling the story, and it is a gift that is indescribable."

Reaction

Hargitay's remarks, delivered after "My Mom Jayne" took the documentary and directing prizes, framed the film — built around interviews about Jayne Mansfield's life and death — as a personal project rather than an industry showcase, a tone echoed in trade coverage of the ceremony that described the room's response as emotional. Spencer, discussing why she took on "Lost Women of Alaska" in remarks reported after her win, said of the series' subject matter, "I still feel rage because these women were still being targeted," adding that "amplifying these stories is our duty. These women had lives, they have loved ones, and they are human." Coverage of Hargitay's night, including her full remarks about the documentary, noted she thanked her family before either win was announced, having not expected to sweep both categories tied to the film.

What happens next

The taped Creative Arts ceremony airs as a single broadcast September 12 on FXX, with the full winners list also archived on the Television Academy's site. Attention then turns to September 14, when the Primetime Emmy Awards air live on NBC and Peacock from the same Peacock Theater, with "The Pitt" and "Hacks" entering as the nomination leaders in drama and comedy, respectively, and Hargitay presiding as host just over a week after her own double win. The Television Academy has not indicated any changes to next year's Creative Arts format, meaning the two-tier structure — craft awards on consecutive early-September nights, marquee categories on a separate primetime broadcast — is expected to continue for the 79th ceremony.