Outstanding doesn’t even begin to describe the winner of outstanding actress in a limited series or movie at the 76th annual Emmy Awards!
Jodie Foster won her first-ever Emmy Award on Sunday, Sept. 16, taking home the prize for her role in True Detective: Night Country.
It was an award that came after four previous nominations. “This is an incredibly emotional moment for me,” she said.
The actress won the coveted prize over fellow nominees Brie Larson (Lessons in Chemistry), Juno Temple (Fargo), Naomi Watts (Feud: Capote vs. The Swans) and Sofía Vergara (Griselda).
Apple TV+
Larson, 34, stars as Elizabeth Zott in the Apple TV+ series based on Bonnie Garmus’s bestselling novel. After multiple setbacks in her chemistry career, Elizabeth takes a job as a cooking show host — and aims to incorporate science into her lessons.
“It was so nice for me to be able to do something that’s loving and sweet, and not always talking about the darkest things that are happening in the world,” Larson told The Hollywood Reporter of Lessons in Chemistry, which also earned a nomination for outstanding limited or anthology series. “I think it’s a very sweet depiction of how to work with someone you love and the fact that their minds and their uniqueness and specificity and their love of science is what brings them together, I think, is very sweet.”
Michelle Faye/FX
Temple, 35, traveled to the Midwest in season 5 of FX’s Fargo, in which she plays fierce housewife Dorothy “Dot” Lyon, formerly known as Nadine Bump.
“I’m not sure characters like Dot Lyon come along very often,” Temple told Vogue. “She’s such an extraordinary little creature.”
A teenage Nadine endured physical and sexual abuse from her husband Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm), who she married at age 17. Nadine eventually left Roy and fled to Minnesota, where she adopts the new moniker of Dot Lyon. Dot spends much of season 5 making sure she continues to avoid Roy with help from her firearms skills and proficiency in booby-trapping a house.
“I’ve had people talk to me about Dot’s ability to booby-trap a home and that there should be a Dot Lyon home security setup,” Temple told The Hollywood Reporter. “People talk to me about how powerful they found her to be and how it’s cool to see a woman who’s also a mom and a baker and a wife, living very simply and loving it at home, and then also having this ability to survive.”
Michele K. Short/HBO
In the latest season of True Detective, Foster’s character Liz Danvers tries to solve the mystery of eight men who disappeared at a research station in Alaska. Foster, 61, described Liz as “kind of awful” and “damaged” to Today.
“She’s grieving and doesn’t want to face demons that will involve suffering,” Foster said. “Like all of us, I think we don’t want to suffer. In her case, I guess that’s what the tough veneer is hiding; she just doesn’t want to fall apart.”
Night Country marks the most-watched True Detective season, and in February, HBO picked up True Detective for a fifth season.
Pari Dukovic/FX
Watts, 55, portrays New York City socialite Babe Paley in Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans, which tells the story of Truman Capote’s falling out with Babe and her friends — who he called “swans” — after he published a chapter of his book Answered Prayers that aired out the women’s secrets. The story, titled “La Côte Basque, 1965,” most notably alleged that Babe’s husband Bill, the co-founder of CBS, cheated on her.
“It became such an undoing for Babe,” Watts, who also executive produced the FX series, told PEOPLE. “She confided in him and felt that there was a trust [with Capote]. She felt seen and more connected to this human being than she’d ever connected to anyone, so it was something she couldn’t recover from.”
Babe and Truman had once been the best of friends, but their relationship never bounced back after what she perceived as a betrayal. “It’s easy for us to sit outside of it now and say, ‘Well, yes, if she’d just found a way to forgive, they could have carried on and had a much nicer time,’” Watts said. “I just don’t know what it would be truly like to live in that space. I feel like I would’ve wanted the friendship and miss the friendship too much that I would’ve been able to recover.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Like Watts, Vergara, 52, took on playing a real person in Netflix’s Griselda. Vergara channeled Godmother of Cocaine Griselda Blanco in the limited series that follows how Blanco built and ran a drug cartel in Miami in the 1970s and 1980s before being killed in her native Colombia in 2012.
Vergara told PEOPLE she spent three hours a day in hair and makeup to transform into Blanco — and the commitment paid off.
“The people that have watched it now have been so responsive and they’ve been telling me how much they love it,” she said. “It’s really exciting to see how the people are reacting to it. I’m very proud of it.”
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See PEOPLE’s full coverage of the 76th annual Primetime Emmy Awards as they’re broadcasting live on Fox from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
