
Emmys 2025: Sharon Horgan, Colin Farrell, Ruth Negga earn nominations for top TV award
Sharon Horgan
,
Colin Farrell
and
Ruth Negga
and have been nominated for a Primetime
Emmy Award
, the top award for television performances.
Ms Horgan earned her nomination in the outstanding lead actress in a drama series category for her work in Bad Sisters. The black comedy set in Dublin, which she also executive produced, is now in its second season.
She was also nominated in this category last year, for her portrayal of Eva Garvey in the same show.
Among the nominees in Horgan's category are Uzo Aduba for The Residence, Ayo Edeberi for The Bear and Jean Smart for Hacks.
[
Sharon Horgan: 'I'm even more hyper now. That could be the hormones. I'm on a lot of testosterone'
Opens in new window
]
Mr Farrell earned a nomination in the outstanding lead actor in a limited or anthology series or movie category for his titular role in The Penguin. Airing last year, the eight episode miniseries depicted the rise of the villain in Batman's Gotham City.
The Penguin earned 24 nominations in total, such as outstanding limited or anthology series.
Mr Farrell is up against Stephen Graham from the Netflix psychological crime drama
Adolescence
and Jake Gyllenhaal in the thriller Presumed Innocent, among others.
Ruth Negga
earned her nomination in the outstanding supporting actress in a limited or anthology series or movie category for her work on the Apple TV series Presumed Innocent. In the series, she portrayed Barbara Sabich, Gyllenhaal's wife, who has to deal with the accusations of murder against him.
This is Ms Negga's second Emmy nomination, having earned a nod at the Daytime Emmy Awards in 2019 for the animated programme Angela's Christmas.
American psychological thriller Severance lead the nominations tally with 27 in total. It was nominated for the top prize of best drama alongside Andor, The Pitt, The White Lotus and others. Comedy nominees included The Bear, Hacks and Abbott Elementary.
Winners of all categories will be announced at a red-carpet ceremony broadcast live on US television on September 14th. Comedian Nate Bargatze will host.
The honorees will be chosen by the roughly 26,000 performers, directors, producers and other members of the Television Academy.
The following is a list of nominees in key categories.
BEST DRAMA SERIES
Severance
The Pitt
The White Lotus
The Diplomat
The Last of Us
Paradise
Andor
Slow Horses
BEST COMEDY SERIES
The Studio
The Bear
Hacks
Nobody Wants This
Abbott Elementary
Only Murders in the Building
Shrinking
What We Do in the Shadows
BEST LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES
Adolescence
Black Mirror
Dying for Sex
Monsters: The Lyle and Eric Menendez Story
The Penguin
BEST COMEDY ACTOR
Adam Brody, Nobody Wants This
Seth Rogen, The Studio
Jason Segel, Shrinking
Martin Short, Only Murders in the Building
Jeremy Allen White, The Bear
BEST COMEDY ACTRESS
Uzo Aduba, The Residence
Kristen Bell, Nobody Wants This
Quinta Brunson, Abbott Elementary
Ayo Edeberi, The Bear
Jean Smart, Hacks
BEST DRAMA ACTOR
Noah Wyle, The Pitt
Adam Scott, Severance
Sterling K. Brown, Paradise
Gary Oldman, Slow Horses
Pedro Pascal, The Last of Us
BEST DRAMA ACTRESS
Kathy Bates, Matlock
Bella Ramsey, The Last of Us
Sharon Horgan, Bad Sisters
Britt Lower, Severance
Keri Russell, The Diplomat
BEST ACTOR, LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE
Colin Farrell, The Penguin
Stephen Graham, Adolesence
Jake Gyllenhaal, Presumed Innocent
Brian Tyree Henry, Dope Thief
Cooper Koch, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
BEST ACTRESS, LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE
Cate Blanchett, Disclaimer
Rashida Jones, Black Mirror
Meghann Fahy, Sirens
Cristin Milioti, The Penguin
Michelle Williams, Dying for Sex
- Additional reporting Reuters
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025
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The show holds many things simultaneously: chaotically fun cabaret; aerial artistry; breathtaking pole-dancing; club anthems; dance; poetry; Irish traditional music – all combining to become a moving funeral rite and a great night out. In WAKE, Olusanya is a central character – part ringmaster, part preacher, part spirit, part healer, an anchor tethering the audience to the spiritual essence of the show. In rehearsals, Olusanya says that before developing the character, the thisispopbaby team 'really developed my talent and stretched it a bit'. Olusanya relishes a challenge. 'If you've ever grown up in a choir and a Nigerian auntie has been your choir master, girl, you take challenges real well! Nothing can faze you.' [ Thisispopbaby's magic sauce: 'Take Irish traditional culture, add some mirror balls, throw some glitter on it' Opens in new window ] Olusanya recalls telling Jennifer Jennings, WAKE's co-director and co-creator, that the character felt like an offering for the audience. Amid the neon and glitter, WAKE is also about expressing and diffusing grief. 'Grief is so traumatic, and if you're going to address it, you need to bring balm. I feel like that was what I was tasked with,' Olusanya says. At one performance in the West End, they recall 'coming off the stage and I wasn't even thinking about the words, I was being the words ... I vacuum cleaned the grief in the room. There's something so difficult about that, feeling the intensity of people's grief. Take it off their hands, and then offering balm. Oftentimes I'll get offstage and my body is wracked. Hyperventilating. I can't breathe.' An audience in the midst of releasing their emotion – joy or pain – doesn't often consider where that energy goes when those on stage are opening up those channels. 'Energy cannot be destroyed or created,' Olusanya says. 'It can only be passed from one to the next. So if you're releasing and you feel great, I'm determined to swallow it all up. I'll bring it before my chi and my god and release it that way.' They pause to consider that process and experience. 'I felt powerful enough to be able to do that. I've been thinking about power a lot. Once you're aware of your magnitude or power, for me, awareness of my power meant service. You can't be powerful and useless – come on! The more aware of my power I am, the more I submit to the service of other people via my art. That's what I'm here for.' 'For all the weight and darker elements of the work ... Feli also brings a real lightness, humour, and an irony,' says Octopus Children director Oonagh Murphy of Felicia Olusanya. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill After the second run of WAKE in Dublin, Olusanya says thisispopbaby asked, 'What do you want to create? What do you have in mind?' Olusanya answered: Octopus Children. 'I made them a little PowerPoint with all the ideas and thoughts, the sounds, the music I had already created. They were like, 'What in the hell? Here's a director. Go sort that out.' They were interested, they were curious. I really appreciated that they wanted to see my perspective on life.' That director is Oonagh Murphy. Murphy says Olusanya is 'a counter voice to what we're familiar with in the Irish cultural imagination. But also the craft of their work is incredible. When you think about how prolific their output is, there is a real discipline ... And there's a deep playfulness there too. For all the weight and darker elements of the work – which need to be given space – Feli also brings a real lightness, humour, and an irony.' [ Sabotage review: Joyously chaotic festival opener has all the fun of the circus Opens in new window ] Working on Octopus Children, Murphy says, 'has felt quite spiritual, magical'. Early on in our conversation, Olusanya refers to 'being the rebel in your family unit'. What does that rebellion look like? Their upbringing, community and family in Longford runs deep. As a youngster, Olusanya was 'a good girl, because I liked the things that I was supposed to like'. They loved school, 'which, if you know anything about immigrant families, this is the one thing '. They loved church, 'because I was very aware of my spiritual nature from when I was very young, and I didn't have any other outlet for it'. They loved going to choir, and being part of a youth group. 'The rebellion started when I hit 15 or 16. I started wrestling with my gender identity without knowing what it was. I didn't even know what those terms were until I hit maybe 21, 22 ... I wore the wrong clothing. I 'girled' differently to how I should have. So my mum was quite worried about that. I also wanted to explore kissing boys and girls, but it was like: that's not something you do. And I was very aware of that.' Around the age of 17, Olusanya recalls taking their younger brothers to the barber shop. 'I came home with a haircut too. My mother said, 'What is the matter?' She was so concerned because I cut my hair.' The rebellion 'ramped up' in college in Maynooth, where they were studying English and sociology, 'because I decided to leave Christianity'. Then, there was coming out as queer. 'I came out by accident. I didn't know I was coming out, I was just talking about being queer on Instagram.' I want black Irish girls, or non-binary people, or gays, to be like, 'Ahh! That's a bit of me!' — Felicia Olusanya on Octopus Children Olusanya had attended Dublin Pride, alone, 'so excited, just taking it in, like wow ... I came back from my first Pride parade, and I made a whole Instagram post – as you do when you're 23 and stupid. I was so excited, saying all my thoughts, and I forgot church people followed me. My mum followed me, obviously. She commented, 'Mum's got your back always.' It was really beautiful in that moment. However, some tricky conversations in the community in Longford followed. 'You know in the movies where they want to pray the gay away? They're really serious about that, you know… I was like: I like my gay. I'm not giving up my gay… That in itself was a rebellion.' On the hurt this induced, Olusanya says they 'would rather that pain, than the pain of hiding'. Tears pooling in Olusanya's eyes, they express empathy and understanding for the context. 'That in itself is complicated and confusing, and requires all the emotional intelligence in the world to navigate. But yeah,' they say, brushing the tears away, 'that's also in Octopus Children.' Olusanya flips the atmosphere into a moment of unexpected lightness, 'Do you know what? The Laya Healthcare ad helped!' Laughter fills the empty theatre. 'Do you know how cool it is when you're on billboards? They get over the gay stuff quick!' In late 2021, Olusanya appeared in a campaign for the health insurance company, bringing their image and words on to television screens and billboards across Ireland. I suggest that this feels like a quintessentially Irish experience, but perhaps one more associated with another time. Olusanya nods, connecting the social attitudes of older generation white Irish people to first generation Nigerian-Irish. 'I don't like saying this, but that's how far away we are in terms of where we should be. I'm not saying white Irish Ireland has it all figured out, but in terms of the queer thing? It just feels like the story is a 1980s Irish experience. It feels like a time-travelling experience. [ Taylor Tomlinson at 3Arena review: more personal, more vulnerable but few surprises Opens in new window ] 'When immigrant black people come here and they make black Irish children, they're not expecting the assimilation that we experience. My parents and their peers came purely out of survival – 'at least you're going to have a fighting chance'. When people come from a survival mentality and you're trying to operate from a thriving mentality, they're terrified. Because even though they do want you to thrive, they don't know what that looks like. And so there is this push and pull between: 'I want you to be better and that's why I brought you here,' versus, 'What better looks like is really confusing and alienating for me as the mother or father or family that brought you here.'' This can cause, Olusanya believes, a 'disconnect' between some black youth in Ireland, and their parents and older relatives. 'It's either thrive and evolve, or we just end up replicating our parents. So that 1980s connection is so interesting. There's half of us who are like, 'F**k it, I'm going to take this opportunity to thrive beyond the economic.' Because, no word of a lie, black Irish people my age? Disgustingly equipped and educated. They have masters degrees for no reason, bruv! What, to work in a Centra? Relax!' The Centra line is obviously a joke. 'They're taking over Google! What's going on?! Educated to s**t. Lawyers, medical doctors. We're not playing it small, because we're not allowed to. We're not allowed to play it small, because survival involves going all the way up here,' Olusanya raises their hand. 'But that's economic survival.' The social and spiritual aspect, they say, is another thing. Felicia Olusanya describes Octopus Children as a 'choreopoem', in which multiple artistic disciplines combine. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill I wonder whether the reaction Olusanya experienced to them being queer was also about a fear of another layer of oppression to contend with in a racist society. The conversations Olusanya had with family and others, they say, were 'not about hate, it's about fear. They were terrified, because they've built these communities and structures that incubate them safely. When you pop out of it for work, to socialise, you can still come back home. Even if I get racist experiences at work, there's a whole community that have my back I can come back to, so that is a temporary experience. That's how I think the older generation view it. Whereas if you're then gay, it's not the thing that's going to break you out 'there' in the white Irish world, but it will,' - or may - 'in the home that we've all built that's supposed to support you no matter what.' 'I want us to be able to have our communities, grow our communities, and not be caged by our communities, because that's also what's happening when people come from a space of survival, psychologically. I can't wait for a couple of generations where our people feel completely safe, that there isn't a demarcation. Sociologically and psychologically we all do this: you're drawn to people who are more like you, that's normal, so you'll always have those type of communities anyway. I'm not saying we need to dismantle our safety in our community in order to integrate. That's not what I'm asking for. But what I am saying, is to free ourselves from the limitations that the survival of our communities has brought. And one of those limitations,' Olusanya says, is a feeling 'that you can't be queer. Especially not out loud.' They have just returned from two years in Brussels, a place Olusanya went to out of a sense of adventure and 'safety, because it felt like the country held me well - I visited several parts of of Belgium before settling in Brussels - and I didn't want to go to London especially, very Dublin 2.0 vibes.' Living there, they were exposed to 'a type of freedom and blackness that I had never seen before or experienced', as well as new forms of dance and jazz. Now, Olusanya is ready for the next phase. They hope what Octopus Children does is make people 'one, feel visible in multiple ways, per tentacle. But two, that it frees us from the limitation of our own community – seeing a 'me'. I've come to accept – and no ego s**t – you just end up being a pioneer. You don't want to be a public figure, you don't want to be the person people look up to. But if you're going to do something different, you're going to end up being that ... With this show, I want to show my community – black Irish people – and the white Irish community, that this weird layered person-being can be visible, and it's completely okay. Visible and celebrated. I want black Irish girls, or non-binary people, or gays, to be like, 'Ahh! That's a bit of me!' and not feel like there's no representation. I hate the word representation, but it's so f***ing important. But I don't want to be the only one. I want to be able to make Octopus Children so octopus children can find it, so there can be a community of us, so we're very visible, very loud.'