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Jean Smart has won her fifth Primetime Emmy Award for portraying a tenacious stand-up comic on Hacks, and Matthew Rhys became the first person to win two lead acting honours at the same ceremony, as Hollywood stars toasted the best of television.
Smart's accolade made her the first performer to win the Emmy for best comedy actress for every season of a show's run.
She played Deborah Vance, a septuagenarian comedian fighting to stay relevant. Hacks aired its final season on HBO Max this year.
"What a ride this has been!" Smart said on stage after thanking the show's creators in Los Angeles on Monday.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who won best comedy actress for six of the seven seasons of Veep, is the only woman to come close to Smart's milestone.
Rhys claimed awards for best comedy actor for Apple TV horror comedy Widow's Bay and for best actor in a limited series for the Netflix psychological thriller The Beast in Me.
Emergency room drama The Pitt extended its reign with a second consecutive best drama trophy, while Widow's Bay overcame the final season of previous winner Hacks to earn the comedy prize.
The Emmys offered a rare night of celebration as Hollywood grapples with production cutbacks, anxiety over artificial intelligence and the proposed Paramount Skydance purchase of HBO owner Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that has divided the industry and faces legal challenges.
The Pitt star Noah Wyle said it felt "overwhelming" to land his second straight Emmy for playing Dr "Robby" Robinavitch on the medical drama set in a Pittsburgh trauma centre. The show was the frontrunner for the night's top award of best drama.
Describing himself as a "Hollywood kid," Wyle told the Emmy audience, "This is the only club I've ever wanted to join. Thank you for accepting me."
In other awards, Widow's Bay star Stephen Root upset favourite Harrison Ford of Shrinking for best supporting actor in a comedy.
Best drama actress went to Rhea Seehorn, who plays a misanthropic woman at war with an alien hive mind on the new Apple TV series Pluribus. It was her first Emmy win.
Seehorn addressed her fellow nominees, including The Diplomat star Keri Russell and Zendaya of Euphoria, with a quote from the feminist activist Gloria Steinem, who died this month aged 92.
"We are linked, not ranked. I feel that way about all you women," Seehorn said.
Mariska Hargitay, star of NBC's drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, hosted the ceremony in Los Angeles, breaking with a tradition of having a comedian serve as emcee. It was broadcast live on NBC and streamed on Peacock.
"It's a lot of pressure, but it is so reassuring to see so many familiar faces out there, and I'm not just talking about how many of you I've arrested on SVU," Hargitay told the crowd.
In one pre-recorded sketch, Hargitay's SVU character, Olivia Benson, tried to piece together clues to determine if singer Taylor Swift, an Emmy nominee this year for a concert film, would attend the ceremony.
Swift made a surprise cameo in the bit as a rookie detective who pointed out that the singer's categories had been considered in a separate ceremony a week earlier. Benson correctly deduced that Swift would be in Kansas City watching her husband, Travis Kelce, play on Monday Night Football.
Emmy winners are chosen by the more than 27,000 writers, directors, performers, producers and craftspeople in the Television Academy.
MICHAEL J FOX HONOURED
Michael J Fox, the Canadian-American actor who turned his Parkinson's disease diagnosis into one of entertainment's most influential advocacy campaigns, received the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.
Fox, 65, returned from retirement to appear in Apple TV+'s Shrinking, earning his 19th Emmy nomination this year while continuing the Parkinson's disease advocacy and research efforts that prompted the Television Academy to honour him.
Before Fox took to the stage, the ceremony introduced him through a video montage that captured his on-screen career and his real-life advocacy for a Parkinson's cure.
Fox was pushed in a wheelchair to accept his award, which he kissed and handed back before he spoke. He was greeted with a standing ovation.
The star of Family Ties and the Back to the Future movies reflected on initially keeping his diagnosis a secret, afraid of losing meaningful relationships but said he eventually realised that accepting it didn't mean surrendering to it.
Fox first developed early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease while working on the 1991 romantic comedy film Doc Hollywood at the age of 29. He publicly disclosed his diagnosis in 1998.
He announced his departure from the ABC sitcom Spin City in 2000. That year he became an advocate for finding a cure for Parkinson's disease and founded the Michael J Fox Foundation to help fund research.
He retired from acting in 2020, saying that the progression of the disease had made it increasingly difficult for him to speak and memorise lines.