2025 Emmy Awards: Every Viral Moment of the Night

The 2025 Emmys were hosted by Nate Bargatze, airing live from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, honoring the best of television from the past year. To be eligible this year for an Emmy, the shows had to have premiered between June 1, 2024, and May 31, 2025.

Heading into Sunday night's ceremony, Severance, The Studio, and The Penguin lead the pack with the most nominations in the Drama, Comedy, and Limited Series categories, respectively -- but those weren't necessarily the shows that came out of the night with the most wins!

You can check out all the winners at the link below, and keep reading for everything social media can't get over -- including the strangest charity drive at an awards show ever!

The stand-up comedian -- often dubbed the "nicest man in comedy" -- definitely leaned into what helped him break out to mainstream success for television viewers, with a television twist on his insta-classic "Washington's Dream" sketches for Saturday Night Live. He even welcomed SNL mainstays Mikey Day, Bowen Yang, and James Austin Johnson for the skit, where they protrayed scientists helping him developing this new thing called a television.

Like his Washington sketches for the United States, Bargatze's Philo T. Farnsworth waxed philosophical about all of the great things that will come with the invention of television, while also managing to poke fun at some of the current nominees.

He joked about having a channel for everything, including a Food Network for food, a Travel Channel for travel and a History Channel for -- "History?" Day asked. "No. Aliens."

"There won't be any history on The History Channel?" Day asked, to which he replied, "No, Just as there will be no learning on the learning channel." Bargatze even borrowed his "Nobody knows" catchphrase for when he was asked just what it is that a producer does.

He talked about the different types of awards that the Emmys would have, such as "gripping dramas like The Pitt, a heartbreaking look at the emotional toll of trauma. And laugh-out-loud comedies like The Bear, a heartbreaking look at the emotional toll of trauma."

"That sounds like a drama," he was told, with the short response," And yet it is not."

It was certainly a different way to kick off television's biggest night of the year, but a note of solidarity across rival networks to invite what was essentially a bonus SNL skit to the Emmys. Another interesting twist was that Bargatze didn't do a traditional monologue at all, with the announcer picking right up from this skit and throwing to the night's first award.

He did come back for a more traditional monologue after the first award of the night, where he took credit for a random camera cut -- "it counts as a laugh" -- and then talked about his edict to try and keep the show moving.

"To start the show, I am going to donate $100,000 to the Boys and Girls Club of America," Bargatze said. "This part is hard to say. If you stay 45 seconds, it stays at $100,000. Every second you go over, we will deduct $1,000 away from the Boys and Girls Club. I know, I know. That's tough. It's hard."

"I can't change it. This is the game I made up and these are the rules," he added, before adding that if anyone comes in under 45 seconds, he'll add $1000, per second. Then, when he found out the first winner went under and he was up money, he said, "Don't go crazy, though, I'm paying for this."

Later, he brought out Boys & Girls alum JB SMoove -- along with an adorable boy and girl -- to further shame the celebrities about going long for their speeches costing them money. Fans had a mixed reaction to the game -- especially as some of the night's other time-filling skits and presenter speeches carried on.

They weren't the only ones who weren't all in on the game that carried on throughout the night with live tally updates The Big Bang Theory. Even as the show was still airing, he took to X and slammed it, writing, "The Boys and Girls Club bit on the #Emmys is just awful and uncomfortable and they should bail on it @TheEmmys."

Good news for the kids and bad news for Bargatze, Seth Rogen and The Studio seemed determined to jack those numbers up with every win ... and boy did they!

Spoiler alert: By the end of the night, the tally was disastrously in the red, so Bargatze announced that CBS was putting in $100,000 and he was tossing in $250,000, so the Boys & Girls Club gets $350,000 and the whole thing was ... a colossal waste of the very time he was being so precious about?

The first presenter of the night needed an assist from legendary actor Harrison Ford as he kicked off the Lead Actor nominations with a standing ovation and then by asking if anyone knows where he and his staff could find a job. The Late Show host, who won his first-ever Emmy earlier this month.

"I also brought my resume, but I haven't had the chance to update my headshot," he added, showing off a picture that has to be from his first days at The Daily Show, if not earlier. Ultimately, after asking if anyone wanted it, he singled out Ford and asked if the venerable actor could see that Steven Spielberg gets it.

The Emmys decided to pay tribute to the iconic 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls, but the way they went about it certainly left everyone a little underwhelmed. The network sprung for a recreation of their famous kitchen -- though we needed a cheesecake on that table -- but all we got was a very shaky take on its classic theme song.

Reba McEntire was joined by fellow country music legends Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Schlapman, but this was off-key and certainly underwhelming for social media fans. They could have had some modern hilarious women of a certain age create a new Golden Girls skit -- including Reba -- but no. We got a song and then nothing?

If this is the kind of content winners were being short-changed (out of guilt) on their talk time, we'd rather hear them ramble on and thank everyone from their gardener to the person who sold them the shoes they're wearing.

After shocking the Emmys red carpet with news that Hacks would end with its fifth season, Hannah Einbender found herself even more shocked when she won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her work on the show.

Clearly overwhelmed and stammering, she became aware that she was going well over Bargatze's established 45-second rule for acceptance speeches -- so she declared that she would pay the difference. It's an understandable sentiment as it's not often one gets a platform like this to speak on, and Einbender clearly had a message she wanted to send.

After making her way through her thanks, Einbender earned the night's first bleep for her closing remarks, with a nod to the Philadelphia Eagles and a pretty direct political statement when she said, "Go Birds, F--k ICE, and free Palestine." As expected, the polarizing comments got a polarizing response online.

Backstage, Einbender explained her viral shout-out, saying, "It is my obligation as a Jewish person to distinguish Jews from the state of Israel. Our religion and our culture is such an important and long-standing institution that is really separate to this sort of ethnonationalist state."

Beating out the likes of Harrison Ford is a daunting task for anybody, but it was clearly not something that Somebody Somewhere star Jeff Hiller was expecting at all. In fact, he made it clear that his whole acting career and all the successes he's had have come as a complete surprise in his sweet and sincere acceptance speech.

While Hiller was shocked to hear his name called, his fellow nominees could not have been more excited for him!

"I feel like I’m gonna cry because for the past 25 years, I’ve been like, 'World, I want to be an actor,' and the world’s like, 'Maybe computers,'" he said after winning Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. He went on to thank HBO for shining a spotlight on the "sweaty" middle-aged stars on his show on the same network as the sexy younger stars of Euphoria.

He also thanked the network for supporting a show "about connecting and love in a time when compassion is seen as a weakness," before going on to thank his husband "for never laughing at me." He also shared special thanks to his co-star Bridget Everett, telling her, "You've told told so many people to believe in themselves and they do. Thank you."

It was an exciting night for Owen Cooper, who seemed completely flabbergasted as he became the youngest-ever male Emmy winner at just 15 years old. The Adolescence star wowed audiences with his first-ever acting role, sharing on the Emmys stage that he'd just started acting classes a few years prior.

"Tonight proves that if you listen and you focus and you step out of your comfort zone, you can achieve anything in life," he said. "I was nothing about three years ago, I'm here now."

Cooper went on to thank his parents and everyone involved with the show in a speech of grace and humility that left people as touched as his performance on Adolescence left them blown away.

Is there really a feud between Gilmore Girls and ER? Of course not -- well, we don't think there is. But after Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel took the stage for a Gilmore reunion, there may be one in the works. The co-stars lamented how their show had absolutely no money, with them getting leftover cake from The Drew Carey Show.

Then, Graham dipped into her bitterness to talk about how their show saved up the whole year to have a snow episode, only for ER to decide they wanted to wet down the whole set. "They had George Clooney!" she lamented, as Bledel told her she just needs to let it go. It was a cute enough bit, with fans just excited to see them together again.

"I won this award for the first time 50 years ago in 1975," said Lorne Michaels when he won Oustanding Variety Special for SNL50. "I was younger and I had a lot of dreams about what would happen in my life and not one of those dreams was that I would still be doing the same show for the next 50 years."

After missing out on a win for Scripted Variety Series to perennial winner Last Week Tonight, it was touching to see Michaels take home a win for the half-century celebration of his groundbreaking late-night staple ... though some thought he could have hustled a bit, especially after saying he was going to keep it short for the kids.

He's one of the most influential and important people in the history of television, so fans were loving it ... except maybe for Beyonce fans. Bargatze did warn that the Beyhive might be unforgiving (if not totally serious in their ire) should he beat her Beyonce Bowl.

While the message of Television Academy Chairman Cris Abrego about Congress' decision to defund this year's Governors Award winner, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and was an important one that was well-received by social media users, they found themselves a little perplexed that he was sharing it in a room full of millionaires.

In particular, Abrego lamented the impact Congress' decision will have on public broadcasting, PBS and its programming, and the local television stations that depend on that funding for their survival.

"That's a reminder of just how much our work here matters, especially right now. In a time when division dominates the headlines, storytelling still has the power to unite us," Abrego said. "Television and the artists who make it do more than just reflect society, they shape our culture. And in times of culture regression, they remind us what's at stake and what can still be achieved."

"In moments like this, neutrality is not enough. We must be voices for connection, inclusion, empathy because we know that culture doesn't come from the top down, it rises from the bottom up," he argued.

But what doesn't rise from the bottom up, social media users pointed out, was money. That exists at the top and many of the people in that room have a lot of it. In other words, it was a message that didn't quite hit at home as well as it might have in the room for everyone online -- or as well as Abrego might have wished.

From the moment Bryan Cranston announced his show as a nominee for Outstanding Talk Series, the crowd erupted into a sustained applause and standing ovation that probably lasted long enough to wipe out whatever funds were left for the Boys & Girls Club of America. And then came the chants of "Stephen! Stephen! Stephen!"

Colbert kept it classy in his acceptance speech, starting off by thanking CBS "for giving us the privilege to be part of the late-night tradition, which I hope continues long after we're no longer doing this show." He went on to thank everyone involved with the show before talking about his genesis on Late Show 10 years ago.

He said he was asked by Spike Jonze what kind of show he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to try and do a show about love. "At a certain point, and you can guess what that point was, I realized that in some ways we were doing a late-night comedy show about loss."

"And that's related to love," he continued, getting notably emotional, "because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense you might be losing it. 10 years later in September 2025 I have never loved my country more desperately. God bless Americas, stay strong, be brave, and the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and punch a higher floor."

"What a dream this has been," Noah Wyle said upon taking the stage and holding his very own Emmy for the first time ever in his storied career. He wowed audiences for years -- and scored many Emmy nominations -- with his work on ER, but it was his return as a doctor for The Pitt that pushed him into the winners' category, with fans loving the long-awaited win.

And then The Pitt followed suit by picking up Outstanding Drama Series immediately after Wyle's win, proving that this show is this generation of medical dramas, just as ER was in its time.