‘Adolescence’ Star Erin Doherty Thanks Girlfriend In Victory Speech at 2025 Emmy Awards

The winner of the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie Emmy has been announced!

Erin Doherty took home the trophy during the 2025 Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 14 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

“Wow. So it’s looking like I’m just gonna be banging on about Adolescence and Owen Cooper for the rest of my life which, you know, there’s worse things,” Doherty, 33, said, referencing her costar.

“I would love to mention every single person that was involved in making his show because it was the definition of a team effort, but I can’t get up here without taking about Stephen Graham and Hannah Walters. You are generosity personified, even though Stephen called me a ‘tea cozy’ today,” she quipped.

“This is dedicated to my big sister Grace,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here without you. I love you with all my heart.”

Doherty also thanked her girlfriend Sinead Donnelly. “And Sinead, thank you for making me the happiest person in the world. I love you with everything I’ve got,” she ended her speech.

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Doherty, a first-time Emmy nominee, plays clinical psychologist Briony Ariston.

“I never want to let go of Briony,” she has said of the role. “I’m so grateful that I got to walk in her shoes for a couple of months and work this beast out with her.”

Other nominees in the category included Chloë Sevigny for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Christine Tremarco for Adolescence, Deirdre O’Connell for The Penguin, Jenny Slate for Dying for Sex and Ruth Negga for Presumed Innocent.

Sevigny is a first-time Emmy nominee and earned the recognition for her work in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Monsters anthology series. The second installment of the Netflix series follows the Menendez brothers, who shot their parents in their Beverly Hills home in 1989.

Sevigny, 50, appears in the series as the brothers’ slain mother, Kitty Menendez — a role that allowed her to go to places she’d “never gone before,” she told Gold Derby.

“Ryan wanted Kitty to be more glamorous than real-life pictures,” she said. “He felt it better reflected the wealth of the family and what the boys were aspiring to. We drew inspiration from Princess Diana’s silhouettes to project power and strength. The costume, hair, and makeup teams were amazing and made the process feel soothing and creative.”

Tremarco, 48, was recognized in the category for her work in Adolescence, Netflix’s psychological crime drama that premiered back in March. The series follows a 13-year-old boy, Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), who is accused of murdering a girl at his school. Tremarco plays Manda Miller.

Tremarco later told Awards Focus that she “never thought” she’d be nominated for an Emmy, adding that she was “completely shocked, and then overwhelmed.”

“This is a mother whose heart is shattered, but who is still trying to keep the family together,” she said of the character. “In Episode 4, when she says, ‘We’ve got to survive this,’ she is holding everyone together even while she is breaking inside.”

Negga, 44, was recognized for the role of Barbara Sabich in Apple TV+ thriller Presumed Innocent.

The series, based on the 1987 Scott Turow novel of the same name, follows Jake Gyllenhaal’s Rusty Sabich as he fights to “keep his family together” when a “horrific murder upends the Chicago Prosecuting Attorney’s Office” as “one of its own is suspected of the crime,” per a synopsis.

At the premiere of the show in June 2024, Kingston Rumi Southwick revealed that Negga was “definitely the trickster” on set and would help the cast decompress during the “intense” shoot.

“She would [make] paper airplanes and write notes to people and would make everybody laugh, especially O-T [Fagbenle]. It just was nice to have those intense moments and have that real dramatic feelings and then feel good and then to laugh,” he said.

The series itself has been nominated for four Emmys.

O’Connell was also up for the award thanks to her work in The Penguin, the DC series that took home eight awards before the main show even kicked off on Sunday.

The crime saga from the universe of The Batman, and starring Colin Farrell, features 73-year-old O’Connell as Francis Cobb — the mother of the titular character.

“It feels fantastic,” she told Gold Derby of the recognition. “I loved doing this so much that, honestly, that was its own reward. I told myself, ‘I’m never going to watch it, I’m never going to care what anybody thinks.’ But then to have all of this happen on top of it — it really is icing on a very delicious cake.”

Slate, 43, was nominated for her role as Nikki in Dying For Sex, a comedy-drama that follows a woman who receives a diagnosis of Stage IV metastatic breast cancer and “decides to leave her husband” and “explore the full breadth and complexity of her sexual desires for the first time in her life.” It also features performances from Michelle Williams and Rob Delaney.

“Most projects I’ve been in, in one way or another, revolved around a romantic connection,” she told W Magazine of the series. “This relationship was so bonded, so deeply intimate, and a relationship of true love. But it was in such a different context, and that was exciting to me.”

Slate also told Deadline that the role allowed her to learn more about her acting abilities. “What I started to understand about myself is that I want to do performances or create work in writing or standup that includes all of the different variations of the human experience that I have been a part of,” she explained.

“But then, when it comes to a role like Nikki in Dying for Sex, what helped me was my appetite for acceptance of variation for dissonance; for unlikely combinations as part of a worthy and functional whole,” Slate continued. “I’m really drawn toward intensity, as long as it feels real and true. It doesn’t matter if it’s sort of switching between comedy or drama or whatever, that place is in between. I felt like I knew enough about myself to let it all go and just connect with the incredible actors I had the honor of working with, as well as this beautiful story and exceptional script that Liz [Meriwether] and Kim [Rosenstock] wrote.”

The award marks Slate’s first-ever Emmy nomination.

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See PEOPLE’s full coverage of the 77th annual Primetime Emmy Awards as they’re broadcasting live on CBS and Paramount+ from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.