David Harbour took home the Emmy Award on Sunday night for his turn in HBO’s DTF St. Louis.
In the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie category, he faced fellow DTF St. Louis stars Jason Bateman and Richard Jenkins as well as Half Man‘s Richard Gadd.
“I’m really moved, I cannot believe you have embraced our show so much,” Harbour said on stage while accepting the award. “In terms of my of my fellow nominees, it was not a fair fight.”
He then added, “I want to thank HBO for all your tons of notes. They honestly helped the show so much,” getting a big laugh from the audience.
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Backstage, he added: “It always feels somewhat unreal, you feel a little bit out of your body,” when you win. “I think you’re just kind of shocked when it happens. I was up against some very good friends like Jason Bateman and Richard Jenkins. It was bittersweet.”
This was an odd year, given that the Supporting Actor and Actress awards in the limited category were presented during Emmys Night 2 (formerly known as the second night of the Creative Arts Emmys) rather than the main, primetime telecast September 14.
This is Harbour’s fourth Emmy nomination and first win. He has a chance to double his haul during the main Emmy telecast next Monday if DTF St. Louis wins the award for Outstanding Limited Series as he executive produced it through his company Bravo Axolotl.
Harbour was previously nominated twice for his role as Jim Hopper in Stranger Things.
“I’ve been acting professionally for 20 years before Stranger Things, so I sort of knew what life was as a working actor, and then I had this huge success, and it sort of catapulted into this different world,” he said backstage Sunday. “But I always knew that if nothing came after, I could still work in the way that I know how to work. DTF St. Louis was something that Steve Conrad and I developed together four years ago, so I was well aware of that big brunch coming at the end, and I wanted to hedge my bets with trying to find material and people to work with that I admired over the years, and people I thought were really brilliant and would push me in the ways that I wanted to be pushed.”
DTF St. Louis revolves around a love triangle between three adults experiencing middle-age malaise that leads to one of them ending up dead.
The dark comedy serieshas 13 nominations at the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards, including Bateman and Jenkins in Supporting Actor with Harbour alongside Linda Cardellini and Joy Sunday in Supporting Actress. It won a total of six Emmys this weekend, with Conrad scoring for both writing and directing in the limited series races along with cinematography and picture editing.
