Alum Producers Win Emmys for ‘Late Show’

Emerson alums Opus Moreschi ’00 and Ballard C. Boyd ’04 took home Emmy Awards on Sunday, September 14, as producers of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, this year’s winner of Outstanding Talk Series.

The win was especially poignant as CBS announced earlier this year that it would cancel the show in May 2026. Moreschi, executive producer of The Late Show, has been nominated 21 times for his work on the series, with two wins. (Moreschi has been working with Colbert for years. He was nominated seven times as a writer for The Colbert Report, with three wins.) Boyd, a producer on The Late Show, was nominated six times over the past decade and won twice.

Read: Emerson Alums Net Primetime Emmy Nominations

Emerson alums also grabbed several awards at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, held Saturday, September 6, and Sunday, September 7.

Phil Rosenberg ’14, a producer on Conan O’Brien: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, won his first Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded).

Zach Rothfeld ’12, won for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series as executive producer of 100 Foot Wave. He was nominated as a writer on the series in 2023, but this was his first win.

Marcus Brown ’11, a writer on Jeopardy! took home his second Emmy in a row for Outstanding Game Show.

Tyler Kinney ’10, assistant costume designer on The Studio, won his first Emmy Award for Outstanding Contemporary Costumers for a Series.

Lighting director Matt Benson ’18 won Outstanding Lighting Design/Direction for a Special for his work on the 67^th Annual Grammy Awards. Benson won his first Emmy in 2023.

Editor Steve Welch ’92 won for Outstanding Picture Editing for an Unstructured Reality Program for Welcome to Wrexham. It was his third Emmy win.

Film unit editor Christopher Salerno ’17 took home his first Emmy for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming (Segment) for work on the “Physical Comedy” segment of SNL50: The Anniversary Special.

Christopher Battaglia ’14 won Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour) for his work as supervising sound effects editor on The Last of Us. It was Battaglia’s second Emmy win.

Christopher Costello ’08, music monitor mixer on SNL50: The Anniversary Special, won his first Emmy, for Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Variety Series or Special.

During the September 14 Emmy ceremony, Emerson’s own Jennifer Coolidge, LHD ’25, two-time Emmy Award winner for her role on The White Lotus, presented the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. In a bit that was classic Coolidge, she told the nominees that “[winning] is not all it’s cracked up to be. I had thought that I got really close to the other nominees… but I’m pretty sure they removed me from the group chat.”