“The Gothams are the New York cool kid of awards shows,” Kerry Washington told Vogue—with a gleaming statuette in the crook of her arm. It’s true: more intimate than its L.A. counterparts, the Gotham Television Awards are something of a new-in-town industry favorite. Monday night’s ceremony marked just the third-ever edition of the television-focused sister event to the winter’s Gotham Film Awards. In attendance for the occasion was a parade of famous faces, from Michelle Pfeiffer to Sarah Pidgeon to Odessa A’zion. (In fact, it’d be faster to name who wasn’t in the room.)

Guests filtered through the granite portico at Cipriani Wall Street, gleefully reuniting with co-stars, industry pals, and fellow nominees once inside. Over Francis Coppola wine (an apt choice for such a film-y fete), attendees traded outfit compliments and winner predictions, everyone craning their necks to get a glimpse at the red carpet fashion unfolding on the east side of the venue. Chase Infiniti’s custom Louis Vuitton gown—a bubblegum pink slip enveloped in a feathery wrap—was one such scene-stealer.

The ceremony spotlighted breakthrough series, standout performances, and luminaries of the screen that continue to push the medium forward. Few moments generated more excitement than the Legend Tribute, which fittingly belonged to Michelle Pfeiffer. Introduced with clips from an oeuvre spanning Scarface, Dangerous Minds, Batman Returns, and Being John Malkovich, the actress received a well-deserved standing ovation. “You are the white gold,” her Margo's Got Money Troubles co-star Greg Kinnear deadpanned, referencing a lyric in Pharrell’s hit Uptown Funk, while handing her the shining pillar.

“Gotham City, the Gothams—it just feels like home,” Pfeiffer said. She praised the organization for recognizing the full creative landscape of film and television. Her advice to the room was both simple and deeply personal: “To my actors, my writers, and my filmmakers: my wish for you is the same wish I keep making for myself, and that is that the next part or the next collaborator surprises you, and that you keep finding people and projects that scare the sh*t out of you.”

That very sentiment of a shared raison d'être loomed large: behind all the glitz and glamour of an awards night, the magic of making art together is what actors return to time and time again.

“[What] an endeavor it is to do what we love. We actors are dependent on so many other factors. A script, a director, an audience,” said Claire Danes, while accepting the inaugural Performer Tribute award. “But that is also where the greatest joy and risk lies. In those relationships, in the inherently synergistic nature of the practice—in what you find together in far-flung places, wearing funny costumes at ungodly hours, playing make-believe like your life depends on it. It is still all that I want to do.”

The evening’s celebration of creative ambition continued with the Duffer Brothers, who received the Visionary Tribute for Stranger Things. Reflecting on how unlikely the award-winning series once seemed—a show about kids that wasn’t really for kids, and one that few initially wanted to make—they argued that “young people are telling us very loudly that they’re hungry for original stories—unfiltered personal visions that haven’t been mangled by a thousand paper cuts. So I say this to anyone in the room with any level of power: let’s choose risk over fear. Let’s do everything we can to help new voices make personal stories, and then let’s stay out of their way,” Matt Duffer urged the room.