Sandra Oh won her first Emmy, but she wasn't there to accept it
Published on April 20, 2026 EDT

Celebrities can't be everywhere at once, so sometimes they end up honored in absentia. That's what happened this weekend to Sandra Oh, who wasn't able to accept her first Emmy in person because she was busy at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting her next project. But even from Toronto, Oh still celebrated Quiz Lady winning in the Best TV Movie category at this year's Creative Arts Emmys.

"OMG Quiz Lady just won an Emmy for Best TV Movie!" Oh wrote on Instagram. "I love you, whole QL team!" She finished the post with several heart emojis and tagged her Quiz Lady costar Awkwafina and producer Jen D'Angelo.

Oh has been quite busy at TIFF this year. She has been serving as Honorary Chair of the TIFF Tribute Awards, which this year have honored Amy Adams, Angelina Jolie, Cate Blanchett, David Cronenberg, Jharrel Jerome, and Mike Leigh, among others. Oh was also present for the festival's premiere of the new sci-fi film Can I Get a Witness? in which she costars, as well as a special festival screening of her 1994 film Double Happiness, which features one of her early breakthrough performances.

Oh is far from alone in missing a big award — earlier this year, Wes Anderson finally won his first Oscar (for his Netflix short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) but wasn't there to accept it, either.

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Michael Buckner/Getty

Oh has been nominated for several Emmys before, both for her starring role as the title character of Killing Eve and her supporting role as Dr. Cristina Yang on Grey's Anatomy, as well as that time she cohosted the Golden Globes in 2019. But her credit as a producer on Quiz Lady marks her first win from the Television Academy.

Quiz Lady stars Oh and Awkwafina as sisters (the former eccentric and wacky, the latter serious and knowledgeable) who embark on a cross-country road trip in the hopes of acing a TV game show and earning enough money to pay off their mother's debts.

“I would say that the majority of the work that I do is a space that blends drama and comedy," Oh told Variety in a recent interview. "I really like that space, but after Killing Eve, which was so dark in places, I really wanted to do something funny. We all want to be sophisticated filmgoers, and many of us are, but I think that a lot of times, at the end of the day, sometimes you just wanna laugh.”

Quiz Lady is still streaming on Hulu for anyone who still needs to catch up — its release straight to the streaming platform is what qualified it as a "TV movie" for the Emmys.

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