Josh O’Connor has won the coveted Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series award at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards for his role in The Crown.
The category was a particularly stellar one with the nominees being, Sterling K. Brown for This Is Us, Jonathan Majors for Lovecraft Country, Josh O’Connor for The Crown, Regé-Jean Page for Bridgerton, Billy Porter for Pose and Matthew Rhys for Perry Mason.
Bridgerton, The Crown, Lovecraft Country, Pose and This Is Us were each nominated in the Outstanding Drama category too.
In Bridgerton, Page played Simon Bassett, with the show being adapted from the first novel in Julia Quinn’s hugely popular book series.
Season one followed Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor), the eldest daughter of the powerful Bridgerton family, as she enters Regency London’s competitive marriage market and develops a stream relationship with Bassett. Meanwhile, a Gossip Girl-esque character named Lady Whistledown keeps tabs on their activities and reports on them accordingly.
Page will not be returning for the subsequent instalments of the series.
Sterling K. Brown plays Randall Pearson in This Is Us, with the show exploring themes of depression, pregnancy, grief, addiction, self-love, family and while shuttling between timelines.
In Pose, which examines the ballroom scene in 1980s and 90’s New York through the lens of the AIDS crisis, Porter plays Pray Tell — an HIV positive ballroom emcee who struggles with abandonment and alcoholism. Porter previously took home the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Pose in 2019, becoming the first openly gay black man to be nominated and win in any lead acting category at the Primetime Emmys.
In Lovecraft Country, Majors plays Atticus Freeman who meets up with his friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) and his uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his missing father (the late, Michael K. Williams, who is nominated in the supporting actor category.)
Winner O’Connor plays young Prince Charles in The Crown, which follows Queen Elizabeth II from the time she officially becomes Queen as a 25-year-old, through her relationship with Prince Phillip, the birth of their children and the various ups and downs of her time at the throne.
The most recent season spans 1979 to the early 1990s and includes Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as prime minister and Prince Charles’s marriage to Lady Diana Spencer.
Matthew Rhys stars as the title character in Perry Mason, which explores the lawyer created by Erle Stanley Gardner as he is hired for a sensational child kidnapping trial in 1932 Los Angeles. Rhys won the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2018 for his role in The Americans.
Read more stories from The Latch and subscribe to our email newsletter.