Emmys: 'Severance' DP Jessica Lee Gagné Becomes First Woman to Win One-Hour Series Cinematography

A first for Emmys cinematography — and a bold statement

For the first time in the Emmys' history, a woman has won outstanding cinematography for a series (one hour). That barrier fell at the Creative Arts Awards, where Jessica Lee Gagné took home the trophy for her striking work on 'Severance.' The win lands like a clean cut through decades of inertia in a craft that has long sidelined women at the highest levels of television.

Her victory would be notable on its own. But it comes in a year when she also made history by being nominated in both cinematography and directing for the same drama series. Dual recognition like that doesn’t happen often for anyone, and it signals how central her voice has been in shaping the show—both how it looks and how it moves.

Gagné has said she was once told she couldn’t become a cinematographer. Plenty of women behind the camera have heard some version of that line. The industry kept repeating it in subtler ways too—through hiring patterns and shortlists. Saturday night answered back.

This isn’t just an awards footnote. No woman has ever won the Academy Award for cinematography. Rachel Morrison broke the Oscars’ glass door with a nomination for 'Mudbound' in 2018, Ari Wegner followed for 'The Power of the Dog' in 2022, and Mandy Walker earned a nod for 'Elvis' in 2023. Still, the statuette has never changed hands. The Emmys win doesn’t fix that, but it pressures the wider system to catch up.

The pipeline numbers remain stubborn. The Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film found that women accounted for roughly 7% of cinematographers on the top 250 domestic films in 2023. Television has made some strides, but drama-hour slots—big-budget, prestige, high-risk—have been among the hardest to crack. That’s part of what makes this award feel like a turning point rather than a one-off.

The look that made 'Severance' impossible to shake

'Severance' is a psychological thriller built on a simple, unnerving idea: your work self and your outside self never meet. Gagné’s images make that split feel physical. She leans into precise geometry—endless hallways that curl like a maze, desks aligned with surgical neatness, and frames that trap characters inside boxes of light and shadow. The office world is colder, flatter, and almost airless; the outside carries more texture and irregularity. You don’t need dialogue to feel who’s in control.

Her camera choices reinforce that control. Shots linger longer than we expect. Movement is deliberate. A slow push-in here, a static wide there, a refusal to cut just when a character wants to escape—these decisions are storytelling, not decoration. Lighting stays honest to the space: overhead fluorescents that bleach faces in the office, softer natural light outside. The contrast cues emotion without telegraphing it.

There’s also a confident nod to analog-era corporate design—think grays and greens that whisper 1970s, machine hum, and a thick silence you can almost hear. Lenses and composition emphasize awkward distance. Faces appear isolated in wide frames, then squeezed by symmetry, then suddenly too close. That push-pull makes the viewer complicit, stuck in the same system as the characters.

What separates great TV cinematography from the rest isn’t a single hero shot, it’s cohesion: a visual language that holds up over hours, across directors, sets, and schedules. Gagné built that grammar and kept it consistent. It’s a bigger job than most people realize. If a showrunner defines the story’s spine, the DP defines its heartbeat—how it breathes from scene to scene.

That’s why her dual nominations matter. When the same artist is recognized for how an episode is directed and how a series is photographed, it confirms that the line between those roles isn’t a wall. On productions like 'Severance,' the DP and director are in lockstep on blocking, rhythm, and how to use space. The Emmy nods put that collaboration in the spotlight.

Zoom out and the significance widens. If hiring remains risk-averse at the top of the call sheet, wins like this shift the perceived risk. Suddenly there’s a recent, high-profile example when someone asks, “Can a woman DP carry a one-hour drama?” The answer is on the mantel. That can ripple into who gets the next short list, who gets the shadowing slot, and who gets the phone call when a pilot is racing to camera.

There’s also the apprentice effect. Cinematography is a craft you learn by doing—lighting rooms, making mistakes, solving problems under time pressure. When women lead teams more often, more women learn inside those teams. That’s how you change credits two and three seasons from now, not just for awards shows but for the day-to-day reality of hiring gaffers, operators, and colorists.

The Creative Arts Emmys, where many craft categories live, rarely spill into mainstream headlines. They should. This is where TV’s look and feel gets built. And it’s where you can actually track progress—or the lack of it—year over year. Gagné’s victory is a measurable shift, and it carries weight precisely because cinematographers vote on cinematography. Peers recognized the work, and the door moved.

It also helps that the work itself is undeniably memorable. The visual world of 'Severance' arrived fully formed in season one and deepened as the series expanded. The camera became a character: observant, withholding, a little too steady for comfort. That personality is hard to fake; it comes from a DP with conviction about what the story should feel like minute to minute.

The message to studios and networks is clear: if you want singular TV, empower singular voices early—in prep, not just on set. Hire DPs who build visual language, not just coverage. And broaden those candidate pools. The ASC Vision Committee and other mentorship programs have been planting seeds for years. This is what it looks like when some of those seeds push through the surface.

Awards don’t solve the representation problem, but they do change the conversation. They set new baselines. After Saturday night, the question isn’t whether a woman can win one-hour series cinematography at the Emmys. It’s who’s next, and how fast the industry will adjust to make sure she doesn’t wait another lifetime to get there.