Former President Barack Obama received the 2025 Creative Arts Emmy Award for outstanding narrator Sunday evening at the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live, winning in a field that also included actor Tom Hanks.
Obama was nominated for the Indian Ocean episode of the Netflix documentary series “Our Oceans,” and Hanks for the Andes episode of the NBC documentary series “The Americas.”
Obama’s win was his third in the category, tying the record first set by Keith David in 2016 and matched by David Attenborough in 2020. Two of David’s victories came for outstanding voice-over performance. That category was separated into outstanding narrator and outstanding character voice-over performance in 2014.
Obama had also won each of the previous two times he was nominated in the category, winning for the 2021-22 season for the Netflix documentary series “Our Great National Parks” and for the 2022-23 season for “Working: What We Do All Day,” the four-part Netflix documentary series exploring the ways people find meaning in their work.
Hanks was a first-time nominee in the category. He is a seven-time Emmy winner, with six wins as a producer and one as a director.
Attenborough was also among Sunday’s nominees, nominated for “The Frozen North” episode of the BBC America nature documentary series “Planet Earth: Asia.”
Had he won, the British broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and writer would have been the oldest Primetime Emmy winner at 99, breaking the record of 96 set by Norman Lear in 2019 for a producing victory for outstanding variety special for “Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s All in the Family and The Jeffersons.”
The other nominees were Idris Elba for the D-Day episode of the National Geographic documentary series “Erased: WW2’s Heroes of Color” and Phoebe Waller-Bridge for the first part of the two-part Prime Video documentary on the life cycle of the Giant Pacific octopus “Octopus!” Both were first-time nominees in the category.
“Jeopardy!” won for the sixth consecutive season for outstanding game show, increasing its record total to 22 in the category since the show was revived in 1984. The category was part of the Daytime Emmy Awards from its inaugural 1974 ceremony, then shifted to the Primetime Emmys in 2023.
The other nominees were “Celebrity Family Feud,” “The Price is Right,” “Wheel of Fortune” and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”
Jimmy Kimmel of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” won for outstanding game show host for the second time. He also shared the award in 1999 with Ben Stein as the co-host of “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”
The other nominees were Steve Harvey (“Celebrity Family Feud”), the winner in 2014, 2017 and 2022; three-time nominee Ken Jennings (“Jeopardy!”) and two first-time nominees in the category — Elizabeth Banks (“Press Your Luck”) and Colin Jost (“Pop Culture Jeopardy!”).
Alan Cumming won for outstanding host for a reality or competition program for the second consecutive year for his work on the Peacock reality competition series “The Traitors.” Cumming ended Ru Paul’s streak of eight consecutive victories in the category last year.
The list of nominees was identical to last year with the exception of Daniel Lubetzky, has joined Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, Kevin O’Leary, Barbara Corcoran, Robert Herjavec and Daymond John as hosts of ABC’s “Shark Tank.”
The other nominees were Ru Paul, a 10-time nominee for hosting MTV’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race”; “Survivor” host Jeff Probst, who won each year from 2008 to 2011, the first four times it was presented but hasn’t won since; and two-time nominee Kristen Kish of Bravo’s “Top Chef.”
Awards in 46 categories of documentary, emerging media, nonfiction, reality, short-form, variety and programs and game shows were presented Sunday.
The ceremony also included presentation of the Governors Award to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Awards for scripted programming in 51 categories were presented Saturday.
An edited version of both nights of the Creative Arts Emmys will air Saturday at 8 p.m. on FXX and stream on Hulu through Oct. 7.
Awards in the top 26 categories in comedy, drama, competition, limited, variety and talk series and the Governors Award will be presented at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards next Sunday, also at the Peacock Theater. Programming had to initially be broadcast or streamed between June 1, 2024 and May 31, 2025 to be eligible.