Prepare for These Narratives to Dominate the Emmys Race
We’re five months away from Emmys night, and the last handful of eligible shows are lining up to premiere before the May 31 deadline. Contenders have emerged across all categories, but the campaign narratives we’ll be following from now until September are just beginning to come together. At this time last year, recall that The Bear looked like an unstoppable juggernaut in Comedy, only to spend the next few months getting flack for its low-on-laughs third season. We can’t know how much the “is The Bear even a comedy?” talk hurt its chances, but something certainly happened to allow Hacks to Kool-Aid Man its way into an Outstanding Comedy Series win at the last minute. From there, the tide turned: Hacks followed up its surprise victory with wins at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Writers Guild, and GLAAD Media Awards. It’s like all of a sudden, everybody in Hollywood realized they don’t merely like this show, they love it. Check out the ovation Hacks got when it won the Emmy last year. That’s not what anti–The Bear Schadenfreude looks like; that’s genuine Hack-thusiasm. Right now, we’ve got Hacks as the clear favorite in Outstanding Comedy Series (not to mention Lead Actress and Writing, the other two awards it won last year). Perhaps it can pick up Supporting too?
With so much time between now and July 15 (nomination day), not to mention September 14 (Emmys night), we’ll have plenty of opportunities to read the tea leaves and make carefully calibrated predictions. This week, however, we’re in the mood to take some big swings. These are the narratives set to shape Emmys season.
It’s Finally Hannah Einbinder’s Year
As much as Hacks has stepped to the front of the line among the comedy series, including three wins for Jean Smart in Lead Actress, Hannah Einbinder has yet to eke out a win in Supporting Actress. Every year, I assume she’ll have a leg up on the competition because she’s a co-lead stuck in Supporting. This year’s Oscars proved yet again that lead actors masquerading as supporting is just good business. And yet, in order, Einbinder has lost out to Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham, Abbott Elementary’s Sheryl Lee Ralph, and, last year, The Bear’s Liza Colón-Zayas. Ralph and Colón-Zayas are back in the mix again this year (with the latter earning a compelling spotlight episode about how Tina got her job at the sandwich shop), and you can expect strong campaigns from Jessica Williams (Shrinking), Emmy fave Catherine O’Hara (The Studio), some wishful thinking for Patti LuPone in Agatha All Along, and perhaps even some in-Hacks competition from Meg Stalter. Still, this season should be Einbinder’s best shot at a win. Onscreen, Ava facing off against Deborah in a battle of wills is giving the actress plenty of clip-worthy moments. Off-screen, the overall awards momentum for Hacks can only enhance Einbinder’s chances.
The Studio Is the One Comedy That Can Crack the Big Four
The past two years have solidified four shows as constants in the comedy categories: Hacks, The Bear, Abbott Elementary, and Only Murders in the Building. They’ve essentially taken turns winning all the major precursor awards over that span, and last year, all four were nominated for the top award at the Emmys, Golden Globes, PGAs, and SAGs. There’s every reason to assume they’ll be locked in for Outstanding Comedy Series nominations this time — with shows like Shrinking, Nobody Wants This, The Four Seasons, and the final year of What We Do in the Shadows scrambling to take up the other slots — and will be the favorites to win in the acting, writing, and directing fields.
The one show that feels not only guaranteed to land a Comedy Series nomination but stands a real shot at pulling out some wins is The Studio, Apple TV+’s Hollywood satire from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It hasn’t earned the kind of critical raves that greeted The Bear or Hacks upon their premieres, but its overall positive reception combined with the show’s lovingly despairing take on Hollywood’s existential crisis gives it incredibly fertile ground upon which to campaign. Last week, we noted how The Pitt could work the “made in L.A.” angle to its campaign advantage; that goes double for The Studio, since it’s a show about fighting for the survival of the entertainment industry both in front of and behind the camera.
Two categories in particular where The Studio’s Emmy hopes are strongest are Directing (the second episode, “The Oner,” is a feat of single-take comedy) and Supporting Actress. I know I just made a rock-solid case for Hannah Einbinder, but her biggest competition could come from Catherine O’Hara, a former Emmy winner who is a scream as a fired studio head clawing her way back to relevance. Rogen is also evolving into an unlikely but fascinating avatar of industry virtue in challenging times. His recent remarks at the Breakthrough Awards slamming the Trump administration and a complicit Silicon Valley made headlines when they were edited out of the ceremony’s YouTube broadcast. Emmy voters tend to get stuck in their ways; they need a reason to switch up their vote from last year. Rogen transforming from stoner-comedy poster boy to Speaks Truth to Power guy is the kind of perception shift that could get Emmy voters seeing him in a new, award-worthy light.
Severance Will Take Advantage of HBO’s Scrum in Drama Series
Apple has yet to take an Outstanding Drama Series win — perhaps putting all of its campaign energy into those Ted Lasso trophies in Comedy — but this year looks to be its best chance. Severance’s long-awaited second season once again had critics and audiences buzzing about Innies and Outies, and while its first season was bested by Succession at the 2022 Emmys, it’s now facing a three-headed dragon from the HBO/Max conglomerate that might not be as strong.
The White Lotus has been a major Emmy player in its first two seasons but is experiencing a bit of backlash for its Thailand-set third go-round, including off-camera controversies and a season finale that left many cold. The Last of Us presents an open-ended question at the moment, since a lot of its Emmy appeal will likely depend on how well its second-season goes over with the viewing public. We spoke at length about The Pitt’s chances last week — there’s a world in which this ends up being HBO/Max’s hottest contender.
But the longer the perception sinks in that HBO doesn’t have one singular Emmy front-runner, the more Severance starts to seem like the show the others are chasing. It’s Zeitgeist-y and speaks to the current sociopolitical moment, technofascism and all, more effectively than the muddled rich-folk rubbernecking on The White Lotus or The Last of Us’s more internal explorations of grief and revenge. And, with apologies to Slow Horses, it’s Apple’s clear top priority in this category.
Netflix Could Be in for Another Quiet Year
While Netflix’s triumph with Baby Reindeer in Limited Series last year shouldn’t be discounted, the fact that the streamer was an afterthought in both drama and comedy was cause for concern. Cut to this year, and we could be in for more of the same. Netflix has contenders, sure, but how well do they stack up to the competition from HBO, Apple, and FX? In Drama, there’s the second season of Squid Game, which returned with a whisper as compared to the blaring horns of its breakthrough first season. The Diplomat season two and Black Doves are in contention to fill out some of the eight designated Outstanding Drama Series slots, but Emmy experts don’t see them winning anything.
In comedy, Nobody Wants This made a decent showing at precursors like the Golden Globes and Critics Choice, but Netflix will have to revive that show’s buzz now that it’s faded. And it will have to do so while Hacks and The Bear are airing new episodes. Other comedies like The Four Seasons and The Residence will require strong campaigns to squeeze into what’s looking like at most three available Comedy Series slots.
Limited Series remains an oasis for Netflix, with its four-part British series Adolescence and the Ryan Murphy–produced Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story currently well positioned to contend. While both shows deal with the aftermath of a horrific crime, they could not be farther apart in tone or esteem. Adolescence is as thoughtful, disciplined, and devastating as Monsters is flashy and lurid. Yet both could scratch the itches of Emmy voters who have historically appreciated both kinds of shows in Limited Series (reminder that the first season of Monsters was a nominee two years ago).
Kathy Bates Is Your Drama Actress Front-runner
I’m trying not to be Charlie Brown running up to kick the football here, as I predicted Bates would win the Golden Globe only for her to fall to Anna Sawai. But Shōgun’s awards run is over until season two, and now Bates is facing a field of competitors who could have a hard time stacking up. Bates is, of course, an Oscar-winning actress, as well as a two-time Emmy winner (and 14-time nominee) who helped resuscitate an outdated lawyer show into a hit for CBS, becoming in the process a kind of brand ambassador for network TV. A vote for Kathy Bates is a vote for the kind of thriving TV industry we had back when Andy Griffith was alive! Or so the subliminal appeal of her campaign goes.
Lining up to unseat Lady Matlock is a series of contenders who all have plausible narratives but notable drawbacks. Bella Ramsey is sure to get no shortage of spotlight scenes in the second season of The Last of Us, but they still might suffer from Emmy voters’ historical avoidance of awarding younger performers. Zendaya’s two wins in 2020 and 2022 were outliers in that sense, but Zendaya was (a) two years older than Ramsey currently is when she won her first trophy for Euphoria, and (b) was already a major star of Marvel movies by then.
Britt Lower would benefit from a Severance avalanche, though as a lead performer she gets far less of her show’s attention than her competitors. Keri Russell, by contrast, is the titular diplomat in The Diplomat (and maybe voters feel like they owe her one for The Americans). Then there’s Elisabeth Moss, returning for one last run with The Handmaid’s Tale, a show that flourished as an avatar of the resistance in Donald Trump’s first term. The vibes are a bit different here in Trump 2.0; there’s less of a sense that we can beat back the tide of a malevolent administration by uplifting the right art. Emmy voters have been die-hard Handmaid fans for a long time, but it’s Madeline Matlock’s world now.
Genre Shows Will Struggle to Contend
Five years ago, the most awarded and nominated series on all of television was HBO’s Watchmen, a daring and ambitious adaptation of the seminal graphic novel about a world in which superheroes changed everything, for better and for worse. The next year, Disney+’s The Mandalorian (an extension of the Star Wars universe) and WandaVision (an extension of the Marvel Cinematic Universe) combined for 47 Emmy nominations and ten wins. Following the decade of dominance enjoyed by the fantasy epic series Game of Thrones, it was clear the awards once ruled by cop/doctor/lawyer dramas were now open to the nerdiest of genre properties.
That was the crest of the wave, though. Subsequent Star Wars series like Obi Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka presented ever more diminishing returns, Emmy-wise, the bottom basically fell out of the MCU’s television plan. In the realm of tried-and-true fantasy, the worlds of George R.R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien haven’t fared much better: Unless things turn out very differently than most awards watchers are predicting, House of the Dragon isn’t stepping into Game of Thrones’s shoes, awards-wise, and Amazon’s Rings of Power series has been a nonstarter for the Academy despite huge hype and expense.
Disney is likely holding out hope for Andor (its critically acclaimed Star Wars series) and Agatha All Along (the only MCU series to move the needle this year). Both of them are good enough to deserve Emmy recognition, but the prevailing cultural winds aren’t blowing in the direction of IP brand extensions anymore. The easy counterpoint to all of this, of course, is Max’s The Penguin, which was a major player in the 2024 year-end awards and is positioned to be a contender in the Limited Series field. In the case of Andor and The Penguin, the appeal seems to be that both shows take pains to exist on their own — political-resistance drama and crime drama, both heavily noir influenced — and remind you as little as possible of the IP trees from which they fell. Are they the exceptions that prove the rule? Or a sign that Emmy voters are keen to usher genre shows into a more grounded realm?
The White Lotus Will Get a Fraction of the Acting Nominations It’s Used To
Competing as a Limited Series, the first season of The White Lotus took in eight acting nominations. The second season grabbed nine. Even while campaigning every cast member as Supporting and risking split votes every which way, Mike White’s series has dominated these categories — including three wins, two for Jennifer Coolidge and one for Murray Bartlett. But while season three was every bit the Sunday-night watercooler show HBO expected it to be this year, the series also experienced a level of critical pushback and popular dissatisfaction it hadn’t in its first two seasons. That combined with the fact that The Last of Us, Severance, and The Pitt (among other dramas) come loaded with supporting casts angling for nominations, and it’s looking near-certain that The White Lotus won’t be able to run roughshod over the supporting categories like it used to.
What does that mean for the season-three cast? Your best bets are, as always, the buzziest. Parker Posey — much-debated Durham accent and all — seems poised to step into the Jennifer Coolidge slot. Jason Isaacs was among the season’s most-praised elements. Walton Goggins is an Emmy fave, previously nominated for Justified and last year’s Fallout. Aimee Lou Wood was social media’s favorite (and could use some good news after taking her Saturday Night Live impersonation so hard). Natasha Rothwell was nominated for season one. And Carrie Coon’s season-finale monologue was likely more than enough to place her in major contention.
Beyond those five, though? You could make a case for Patrick Schwarzenegger, whose character undergoes the biggest transformation. But Leslie Bibb’s and Michelle Monaghan’s campaigns suffer for how threadbare their story lines were. The same could be said for Tayme Thapthimthong as the ever-fretful Gaitok. Sam Nivola and Sarah Catherine Hook won’t have the dynamic clips their competitors from other shows will. The less said about what Blackpink’s Lisa had to work with, the better.
The good news? Sam Rockwell is a slam-dunk for a Guest Actor nomination.