At the 78th Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, stars turned the red carpet into a showcase for haute horology, deliberately flashing some of the most opulent watches on the market. From Zendaya’s diamond-encrusted Rolex Lady-Datejust to Patrick Ball’s Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar, each timepiece underscored status, craftsmanship, and the growing role of luxury watches in awards-season storytelling.
Actors have gotten noticeably more deliberate about the watch on their wrist over the past few award seasons, ensuring their timepieces are angled to catch the camera and not tucked under a cuff. The Emmys themselves date back further than most people assume: the first ceremony was held in January 1949 at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles, honouring just six categories in a fledgling medium still confined mostly to Southern California, and the statuette itself, designed by television engineer Louis McManus in 1948, takes its name from "Immy," a nickname for the image orthicon camera tube.
This is the 78th edition of that award, and that same instinct toward the deliberate and the considered was on full display at the ceremony in Los Angeles on 14 September, hosted by Mariska Hargitay, where the watches told nearly as clear a story as the wins did. Here are five that stood out.
Zendaya, presenting at this year's ceremony, arrived in a fully paved diamond edition of the Rolex Lady-Datejust, a piece that held its own even against her dress. The 28mm case runs on Rolex's in-house calibre 2236, a self-winding movement fitted with a silicon Syloxi hairspring for added resistance to magnetic fields, and the reference she wore sits at the collection's gem-set extreme, its case, bezel, dial, and bracelet set with over a thousand diamonds.
Price: Rs. 7.5 lakh (approx. USD 7,800) for the entry steel model, rising to Rs. 96 lakh (approx. USD 100,000) or more for a fully paved gold execution.
Patrick Ball walked the carpet fresh off his first-ever Emmy nomination, for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for playing Dr. Frank Langdon on The Pitt—a role that draws on his own history with addiction, by his own account. He paired the moment with an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar, which fits day, date, month, leap year, and moon phase into a 41mm case just 9.5mm thick, the entire calendar correcting itself automatically until the year 2100, powered by AP's in-house calibre 7138 or its crown-adjustable successor, the 7139.
Price: Rs. 1.28 crore (approx. CHF 109,000) in steel, climbing past Rs. 5.87 crore (approx. CHF 500,000) for rarer ceramic and precious-metal versions.
Noah Wyle, nominated again this year for The Pitt, wore Cartier's Tank à Guichets, an 18-karat gold piece the maison only returned to production last year after decades away. Where a standard Tank tells the time through a dial, the à Guichets hides its numerals entirely behind a solid gold case, revealing hours and minutes through two small apertures instead, run by a manual-wind jumping-hour movement, Cartier's calibre 9755 MC, ticking at 3Hz with a 40-hour power reserve.
Price: Rs. 48 lakh (approx. EUR 43,000) in gold, rising to Rs. 61.5 lakh (approx. EUR 55,000) for the limited platinum "oblique" edition.
Colman Domingo, rarely anything less than the best-dressed man in any room he enters, paired a Dr. No-inspired Nehru jacket with the Omega Speedmaster 38mm, a smaller-cased, more refined take on the Moonwatch that's become a recurring presence on his wrist this award season. The case runs on Omega's automatic calibre 3330, a column-wheel chronograph movement with a co-axial escapement and a 52-hour power reserve, COSC-certified though not carrying the brand's higher Master Chronometer rating.
Price: Rs. 6.2 lakh (approx. USD 6,500) for a steel reference, climbing past Rs. 11.5 lakh (approx. USD 12,000) for gold or diamond-set versions.
Paul Anthony Kelly, who plays John F. Kennedy Jr. in Ryan Murphy's Love Story and presented at this year's ceremony, wore a Vacheron Constantin Patrimony Moon Phase Retrograde Date alongside a Louis Vuitton look. The 42.5mm case, just 9.7mm thick, runs on Vacheron's in-house calibre 2460 R31L, certified with the Hallmark of Geneva, pairing a retrograde date arc with a moon phase display accurate enough to need correcting only once every 122 years.
Price: Rs. 52.8 lakh (approx. CHF 45,000) in gold, with rarer platinum editions climbing past Rs. 78.3 lakh (approx. EUR 70,000).