David Harbour won his first Emmy on Night 2 of the 2026 Creative Arts Emmys for playing Floyd Smernitch in DTF St. Louis. The win also added another acting prize to a show that entered the year with 13 Emmy nominations and left with six wins.
Harbour took best supporting actor in a limited or anthology series or movie after two earlier nominations in 2017 and 2018 for Stranger Things. This time, the category sat inside the Creative Arts Emmys rather than the main telecast, after the Television Academy moved it in July.
HBO notes and Harbour
Harbour said, “I can’t believe that you’ve embraced our show so much, this beautiful, vulnerable, weird show that I love so much” and then added, “I want to thank everybody at HBO for your tons of notes.” He said those notes “honestly helped the show so much,” which is the kind of line that tells you the creative process was not a one-way street.
He also made the case for the role itself: “I got to play Floyd Smernitch, who is an incredibly written character by a genius named Steve Conrad, who, in a world of a copy of a copy of a copy, is a true original.” Four years ago, Harbour and Steve developed DTF together, a long runway that now ends with Emmy hardware instead of development chatter.
DTF St. Louis and the field
Harbour was competing against Richard Jenkins and Jason Bateman in the same category for DTF St. Louis, plus Richard Gadd for Half Man, Charles Melton for Beef, and Nick Offerman for Death by Lightning. “In terms of my fellow nominees, it was not a fair fight,” he said, a blunt acknowledgment that the trophy came from beating teammates as well as outside contenders.
Linda Cardellini also won for best supporting actress in a limited series against Joy Sunday, giving DTF St. Louis another acting win to add to the six it already collected from 13 nominations. For a series built on ensemble performances, the Emmy math matters: the show converted nearly half its nods into wins, a strong return even before the acting categories were added into the Creative Arts Emmys mix.
From $50 a week to Emmy
Backstage, Harbour said, “I started Stranger Things when I was 40,” and added that his first job came at 19, when he was paid $50 a week at a theater in Maine. He said he had been acting professionally for 20 years before Stranger Things, which explains why this win reads less like a sudden breakout and more like a late reset on a long career.
That history also sharpens the stakes around DTF St. Louis. Harbour had already been through the awards cycle twice without winning, and this time he leaves with a first Emmy, a category victory for the show, and a cleaner measure of where he stands inside the field.
