Jon Hamm Finally (Finally!) Wins His Long-Awaited Emmy for 'Mad Men'

A great Hollywood injustice has finally been set right: Jon Hamm is now an Emmy winner.

After a total of seven nominations (and zero wins) for playing brooding adman Don Draper on AMC’s Mad Men, Hamm finally took home the trophy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series tonight for the show’s final season — and it felt like the weight of those past losses lifted right off of his shoulders once his name was announced.

Related: The Complete List of 2015 Emmy Winners

As the crowd gave him a well-deserved standing ovation, Hamm bypassed the stairs and heaved his body directly onto the stage, seemingly exhausted from all the media hype surrounding his final chance to win an Emmy for Men. (Can you blame him?)

(And how fitting was it that he was handed the Emmy by Tina Fey, who introduced us to Hamm’s prodigious comic talents on 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt?)

Hamm, who was winless in 15 previous career Emmy nominations, was humble and softspoken in his acceptance speech, saying “it’s impossible” to consider himself an acting equal with his fellow nominees, including Oscar winner Kevin Spacey (House of Cards) and former Emmy winners Kyle Chandler (Bloodline) and Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom).

And Hamm’s path to an Emmy wasn’t easy. HBO dominated the night’s awards, led by Game of Thrones’s record-breaking 12 wins. In fact, Hamm’s win was the only one for Mad Men the whole evening. But for fans who’ve waited patiently since Mad Men’s first season to see Hamm acknowledged for his work, this win went down like a sweet sip of Coca-Cola.