Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series

This year, the talents of actor Ray Sehorne were recognized by the TV Academy.

She won her first Best Actress Emmy Award for starring in the Apple TV series Pluribus.

Sehorne offers us her inspiration before a live audience.

And the treat she gave was a treat for all of us here at KCRW.

Yeah, because she was nominated every year and she won every year for the past five years.

My very last thing that I was going to share from the Emmys was that Ray Sehorne from Pluribus won for Lead Actress in a Drama.

And...

She is the woman who was in Better Call Saul and is now in Pluribus, the main actress.

then the public milestones.

She wins the Emmy for How to Get Away with Murder and becomes the first black woman to win Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, and her speech quoting Harriet Tubman becomes iconic.

But she writes that even standing in that moment, she felt the weight of her past pressing down.

She was still the little girl from Central Falls who'd been told she wasn't good enough.

Davis's performance made television history.

In 2015, she became the first black woman to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

Her portrayal of Annalise was fearless, vulnerable, messy, and commanding, expanding what leading black women could look like on television.

The show also strengthened Shondaland's groundbreaking run of diverse female-led programming on network TV.

Again, Noel Wiley's gonna make it two for two for The Pitt.

Uh, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, we've got Carrie Coon for The Gilded Age, Chase Infinity for The Testaments, Keri Russell for The Diplomat, Rhea Seehorn for Pluribus, and Zendaya for Euphoria.

This one's actually a little tricky because out of all the characters, if I was picking my favorite, I'd probably pick Keri Russell for The Diplomat because this was a very interesting season of The Diplomat.

Uh, I think Rhea Seehorn has got the, at least a little bit of a story that she's got where she didn't win anything for Better Call Saul, so this could be a good redemption piece.

...

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

And the ball-knowers out there, I think we all...

We, we knew she deserved the o- the, this award for her supporting work on Better Call Saul.

Uh, Cato Flynn, Stephen Root, Matthew Rice, all of them, uh, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.

Pluribus, Rhea Seehorn, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

Like, Apple TV won a bunch.

And I thought one of the funniest reactions was the HBO head, uh, actually has a quote.

Widows' Day also rightly won a directing Emmy for Hero Mirai and a writing one for Katie the Fold, but the reasons for me to celebrate went way beyond that.

The Emmys also honored a new and odd hit and offered some true vindication for Rhea Sehorne, who won Best Actress in a Drama Series after being so egregiously snubbed year after year for Better Call Saul.

This is also well-known because Pluribus, along with being one of my favorite Saul of 2025, was often a one-woman show she mastered in playing, as the tagline rightly says, the most miserable person on earth who must save the world from happiness.

The only bad news for Pluribus is that creator Vince Gilligan is writing season two, but we won't get until late 2027 or early 2028.