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!”).
Awards in 46 categories of documentary, emerging media, nonfiction, reality, short-form, variety and programs and game shows were to be presented Sunday.
The ceremony also included presentation of the Governors Award to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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.
Julie Andrews and Bryan Cranston were among the winners Saturday when awards for scripted programming were presented in 51 categories.
Andrews won for outstanding character voice-over performance for being the voice of the anonymous newsletter columnist Lady Whistledown on “Bridgerton.” Andrews has been nominated in the category all four times that Netflix’s steamy alternate history period drama has been eligible, but had never previously won.
The Emmy was the third for Andrews, who will turn 90 on Oct. 1. She also received Emmys in 1973 as the star of “The Julie Andrews Hour,” which won for outstanding variety musical series, and in 2005 for hosting “Broadway: The American Musical,” which won for outstanding nonfiction series.
The field also included two four-time winners.
Maya Rudolph had won four of the past five years for supplying the voice of Connie the Hormone Monstress on “Big Mouth.” The only interruption to the streak came in 2022 when she lost to Chadwick Boseman, who won for reprising the live-action role of T’Challa for the Disney+ Marvel Studios animated series “What If…?” that re-imagines famous events from Marvel Cinematic Universe films.
Boseman played the role in four films, including “Black Panther.” He won the award five days after the second anniversary of his death from colon cancer on Aug. 28, 2020, at the age of 43.
Hank Azaria has also won four times for supplying the voice of various characters from Fox’s long-running animated comedy “The Simpsons.” His most recent win came in 2015.
The other nominees were first-time nominees. Alan Tudyk was nominated for supplying the voice of the droid K-2SO in the Disney+ “Star Wars” series “Andor.” Jeffrey Wright was nominated for supplying the voice of The Watcher, the narrator in “What If…?” Steven Yuen was nominated for supplying the voice of the main character in the Prime Video adult animated superhero series “Invincible.”
Cranston won for outstanding guest actor in a comedy series for his recurring role of studio CEO Griffin Mill in “The Studio.” The Emmy was the seventh for Cranston, who had won four times for outstanding lead actor in a drama series for his portrayal of high school chemistry teacher turned methamphetamine manufacturer and seller Walter White on “Breaking Bad,” and two as a producer of the 2008-13 AMC neo-Western crime drama.
Five of the six nominees in the category came from “The Studio,” the Apple TV+ series starring Seth Rogen as the conflicted new head of a studio, with four portraying themselves — directors Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese, and actors Dave Franco and Anthony Mackie.
The other nominee was Jon Bernthal, who was seeking a second consecutive win for his portrayal of Michael Berzatto, who struggled with drug addiction before committing suicide four months before the events of the FX on Hulu psychological comedy-drama “The Bear.”
Julianne Nicholson won for outstanding guest actress in a comedy for her recurring role as the quirky influencer known only as Dance Mom on HBO Max’s “Hacks,” beating a field that also included Jamie Lee Curtis, who was seeking a second consecutive win in the category for her appearances on “The Bear” as the troubled mother of the Berzatto siblings (Bernthal, Jeremy Allen White and Abby Elliott).
The nominees also included another actress with a recurring role on “The Bear,” Olivia Coleman, who portrays the executive chef of a Chicago fine-dining restaurant, and an actress who portrayed herself on “The Studio,” Zoe Kravitz.
The category also included Robby Hoffman, who plays an industry outsider who becomes an assistant on `Hacks,” and Cynthia Erivo, who played quadruplets who were child stars, along with a secret quintuplet and two other roles in an episode of the Peacock crime comedy-drama “Poker Face.”
“The Studio” was the most-honored program with nine Emmys, followed by the HBO Max crime drama miniseries “The Penguin” with eight and the Apple TV+ science fiction psychological thriller “Severance” with six.
Most of Saturday’s awards were in various technical categories, including hairstyling, makeup, costuming, production design, picture editing, sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects.