First time was a charm tonight for Cristin Milioti who won her first Emmy for Best Actress Limited Series for HBO and DC Studio’s The Penguin.
“Thank you so much. I’m so profoundly grateful,” Miloti said up top. “Sorry, I wrote this [speech] on the back of notes that I took in therapy the other day, so don’t look at the back.”
Milioti then spoke about how much she loved making the show and inhabiting the character of Sofia Falcone. “It’s very hard to make sense of being alive right now in this world, and so I’m deeply grateful for the bright spots,” she said, “and making this show with our incredible cast and incredible crew, and getting to inhabit this woman, was a bright spot for me. Despite it being very grizzly, playing her felt like flying.”
Miloti went on to thank her “incredible family,” who joined her at the Emmys tonight. “Thank you for supporting your strange kid and showing me movies that were very inappropriate for my age,” she said. “I want to thank my friends. I have the best friends in the world. You’re the reason that I’m standing; you’re the whole reason that I’ve gotten through life.”
Subsequently, Milioti thanked The Penguin showrunner Lauren LeFranc, “whose brain I want to freebase,” and who she said is “the reason our show is so special.” This led her to tributes to co-star Colin Farrell, HBO, her team of reps, and more.
Miloti’s win for The Penguin has been the show’s only one so far tonight. The recipient of 24 nominations, the show did however win eight awards at the earlier Creative Arts ceremonies, earning recognition for its hairstyling, special visual effects, prosthetic makeup, contemporary makeup (non-prosthetic), music composition, contemporary costumes, sound mixing, and sound editing.
Coming into the LeFranc-created series, many were already aware of Colin Farrell’s sublime transformation as the titular character from his turn in the Matt Reeves’ 2022 $722M-global grossing The Batman. But Milioti went toe-to-toe with Farrell as a fierce mafia princess who takes control of her late father Carmine Falcone’s Gotham criminal empire with the brute force. For an actress who broke through to mainstream TV viewers as a romantic comedy actress in CBS’ How I Met Your Mother, Milioti’s venomous turn a Sofia Falcone raised plenty of eyebrows.
Prior to tonight, Milioti won Best Actress Limited Series at the Critics Choice for Penguin. She was also nominated in the category at the Golden Globe and SAG Awards.
In the Limited Series Actress category, Milioti beat out Cate Blanchett for Apple TV+’s Disclaimer, Meghann Fahy for Netflix’s Sirens, Rashida Jones for Netflix’s Black Mirror and Michelle Williams for FX on Hulu’s Dying for Sex.
Up next for Milioti is the Casper Kelly directed movie, Buddy, opposite Topher Grace.
