The Holdovers, American Fiction and Succession were among the winners at the 2024 Writers Guild Awards, which were handed out Sunday night in simultaneous ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles.

Best adapted screenplay was presented to American Fiction, the winner for the Oscar, while The Holdovers won the award for best original screenplay.

My Oscar Book:

The winner of the best original screenplay Oscar, Anatomy of a Fall, was deemed ineligible,

Accepting his award in L.A., Holdovers writer David Hemingson thanked “a brilliant cast and a brilliant director” for bringing the story to life and accepted “in memory of my mother who raised me, my uncle who saved me, and my father, who gave me my love of the written word and taught me the value of integrity.”

In the TV categories, The Bear won best comedy series, while Succession was named best drama series. The Last of Us won the award for best writing for a new series, and Beef won best limited series writing.

The L.A. ceremony was hosted by Niecy Nash-Betts, while the N.Y. edition was hosted by Josh Gondelman.

In an unusual move this year, the WGA Awards ceremonies were held more than a month after the 2024 Oscars, with the ceremony coming after 2023’s strike. The union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers reached a new three-year deal in September, with protections against the use of AI, data transparency and residuals tied to streaming success and guarantees for the minimum size of writers rooms.

At the New York ceremony, host Gondelman joked about the awards’ late slot on this year’s calendar: “This year we’re the final event of awards season. The Golden Globes, ancient history. The Oscars were our opening act. The Writers Guild Awards are the headliner of all of the awards shows. It has been a little while since some of the nominated work was released. The Succession finale was so long ago that since it aired Tom Wambsgans has already run the Waystar-Royco company fully into the ground.”

Gondelman also joked about challenges in the industry since the end of the strike, poking fun at both himself and Daily Show Monday host Jon Stewart.

“Since the writers strike ended, as a show of solidarity, I have remained unemployed,” the former Desus & Mero and Last Week Tonight writer said before joking about Stewart. “The strikes ended back in the fall, but some people are still getting back on their feet. Just to make ends meet, Jon Stewart was forced to take a part-time job working Monday nights.”

In the New York ceremony, it was revealed that the 2024 recipients of the WGA East’s Richard B. Jablow Award were the members and leadership of IATSE, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, SAG-AFTRA and American Federation of Musicians, for “demonstrating unwavering support and sacrifice during the WGA’s 148-day strike.” Jablow, for whom the award is named, helped found the WGAE, wrote its constitution and served as its first counsel.

WGAE president Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, who received the Jablow Award in 2020, presented this year’s award, saying: “To me, the most pivotal moments of the WGA strike of 2023 were each and every time we were joined by our sister unions. Each and every time Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians showed up to play honky tonk on the sidewalks of New York City. Each and every time a Teamster truck driver refused to cross our line. Each and every time an IATSE crew member sacrificed their day’s pay for our cause. Each and every time a SAG-AFTRA actor grabbed a megaphone out of our hands and chanted chants that did not rhyme. Thank you for your solidarity. We are one union, and we stand by your side, forever.”

During the L.A. ceremony, Drew Carey was shown on screens inside the venue eating seemingly in a diner and then he walked out into the crowd. The video was a reference to Carey’s generosity in paying for meals. Onstage, he said the last time he did this, “I think before it was like $67,000 … but some of you decided, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to get a shake and dessert’ as it was way more this time. … When the bills started piling up my accounted called and was like, ‘Is there any way we can dial this back?’” He said no since he had already committed to it, and it was the right thing to do. “I talked to my agent and he said, ‘You’re going to lose your house over this,’ and I said, ‘Fine, I’ll lose my house,’” noting that he became a millionaire because of writers, so it was only fair to pay it back.

In addition, Nash-Betts addressed the strikes in her monologue to start the L.A. ceremony. “Last year, 312 union strikes happened in America,” she said. “Hollywood made it through two, for a record-breaking 148 days. We fought for equal pay, equal say and our right to make it to the end of a 10-episode season. And thank goodness, because how else was The Crown going to tell us what happened to Diana and her kids?”

In New York, Gondelman called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages. “No one’s freedom and safety on this earth should come at the expense of anyone else’s,” Gondelman said.

In addition to the competitive awards, the WGA presented a number of honorary awards: In New York, Andor creator and the writer of the Bourne films and Michael Clayton among other titles, Tony Gilroy, received the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Career Achievement (presented by Beau Willimon), and Fellow Travelers creator and Philadelphia writer Ron Nyswaner received the Walter Bernstein Award (presented by Dan Minahan).

“If you want a preview of what might happen to our country in November, watch Fellow Travelers,” Nyswaner said, alluding to Cohn’s connection to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. “Watch Roy Cohn. Watch him destroy people’s lives and remember that he was a mentor to one of our presidential candidates.”

The Lavender Scare effort to purge alleged “sexual deviants” from the federal government, Nyswaner said, resulted in “5-10,000 careers destroyed and lives ruined. The FBI raided people’s homes. They searched people’s underwear drawers. The interrogator who conducted these investigations claimed that they were averaging one suicide a week among those people being investigated, yet before I started researching my show I never heard of it. Those innocent people are lost to history. We can’t mourn them because they were forced to live hidden lives.”

Fellow Travelers takes viewers into the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, but Nyswaner noted that despite abundant pop-culture representation of LGBTQ stories now, not all has been resolved.

Nyswaner recalled how a straight friend had watched Fellow Travelers but admitted he doesn’t “usually watch gay shows.”

“Now you know how I lived my entire life,” Nyswaner told him. “Imagine if I just didn’t consume straight culture. I would’ve missed everything: Succession, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, I Love Lucy. … Imagine the straight people, you’re in a room full of executives, you just pitched your heart out and they tell you, ‘Oh my God, we love your pitch, it’s an amazing story, we just have one question, what are you trying to accomplish by making the main character straight?’ Or, ‘We love your pitch but we’re already developing a straight show.’ I’ve heard the gay versions of those things in my career.”

And Nyswaner, who knew Bernstein, says he was inspired by the award’s namesake to keep fighting the good fight: “Some friends and I have talked quietly about the state of our business, the contracting, maybe it’s going to get more conservative. And I’ve wondered maybe this isn’t the time for me to sell another queer show. But this award … gives me courage,” he said. “So I resolve tonight that I will continue to write shows and movies with queer main characters and queer storylines. That will not change. What has to change is you stop thinking of them as queer shows.”

In a reflective speech in which he spoke about his family, including his wife, Susan, and his father, Frank Gilroy, to whom he previously presented this same award in 2011, the younger Gilroy said he felt “lucky.”

“I am not the legendary optimist so you gave me a lot to think about this week preparing for this. I’m going to go with luck,” Gilroy said. “I want you to know that I know how lucky I’ve been, how fortunate I’ve been. And I want to mark this moment and whenever I look at this thing I want to remember that.”

And he said he and the other writers at Sunday night’s ceremony share “some luck.”

“You’ve got to really think how lucky you are right now,” he said. “We live in a moment of civilization and a place on the planet where there is an organization that is muscular and effective that is there to protect and nuture the lives of storytellers. … I’m really happy [I’m being honored] this year. This was such a badass year for the guild and such a badass year for labor in Hollywood. I am really, really proud.”

In Los Angeles, the 2024 Oscars adapted screenplay winner Cord Jefferson (American Fiction) received the Paul Selvin Award, writer-director-producer Walter Hill (The Getaway, The Warriors, 48 Hrs.) received the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement, writer-director-producer Linda Bloodworth Thomason (Designing Women, Evening Shade) received the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement (presented by Jean Smart), and 2023 WGA negotiating committee co-chairs Chris Keyser and David A. Goodman received the Morgan Cox Award for their leadership during last year’s labor negotiations and strike.

disputes), Brett Gelman, Patton Oswalt, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Erika Alexander and Stephen Merchant.

Presenters in New York included Michael Cyril Creighton, Bridget Everett, Neil Gaiman, Ilana Glazer, Chris Hayes, Sandra Oh, Busy Phillips, Reid Scott, J. Smith-Cameron, Julio Torres and Bowen Yang.