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Happy Monday, everyone. I hope you had a restful Fourth of July and that, if you went, Taylor Swift‘s wedding was a blast! (Don’t think I didn’t notice Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor on the guest list; Swift’s Oscar campaign is on on.) Here at Prestige Junkie, I’m gearing up for a busy week as this year’s Emmy nominations are finally upon us. All will be revealed on Wednesday, streamed live on the Emmys’ website and presented by the true dream team of past Emmy winners Liza Colón-Zayas and Jeff Hiller. I’ll comment on the nominees live with Christopher Rosen, so catch us at The Ankler’s YouTube page to follow all the drama as it happens. Between now and then, you can check in with our Ankler Pundits to see who will probably be celebrating on Wednesday — yes, a whole lot of people from The Pitt and Hacks, but with plenty of room for surprises, too!
Today, Chris and I are going all in on our final Emmy nomination predictions with this special early edition of the Prestige Junkie podcast. We run through all our predictions on the Prestige Junkie Pundits page and highlight some of the most interesting showdowns that will unfold if the nominations shake out as we expect. You can listen to the episode or watch it now above. But before you do, read on: Below, I’ve shared some of my big takeaways from the Emmys season — including the top storylines to watch over the next two days, plus some predictions about the drama that will unfold during the actual awards on Sept. 14.
The Widow’s Bay Surge
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| PEOPLE’S CHOICE Matthew Rhys stars on Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay. Apple TV |
This is probably the biggest variable for the comedy categories and the most impossible to actually figure out. It became very clear in early June that Widow’s Bay was a breakout online phenomenon and had achieved enough in the numbers to prompt Apple to quickly renew it for a second season. But it’s always difficult to know how much online buzz translates into actual Emmy voters, who are mostly working members of the industry with far less time than most to peruse fan theories on Reddit. There are enough industry insiders on the record about how much they love the show to safely predict a nomination in best comedy series and a lead actor nomination for Matthew Rhys. But if the show is even more popular with voters than we realize, we could be looking at writing and directing nominations and room for supporting players like Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root, Dale Dickey and, no stranger to Emmy morning surprises, Jeff Hiller. And if there is a real Widow’s Bay surge on nominations morning, expect some speculation that it could swoop past Hacks for its final season — but we’ll cross that bridge if we get to it.
The Pitt Ceiling
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| ON CALL Taylor Dearden, left, and Patrick Ball on The Pitt. Warrick Page/HBO Max |
After scoring just three acting nominations for its first season — and winning all three, for Noah Wyle, Katherine LaNasa and Shawn Hatosy — The Pitt is widely predicted to dramatically improve those numbers this year. But just how many members of its sprawling ensemble cast can actually make it in? The Pitt faces a bigger challenge than it might have a few years ago, when the Emmys used an unlimited-ballot format that allowed voters to select as many actors as they wanted, which might explain why the first season of The White Lotus snagged seven acting nominations. Now voters can choose only the number of available nominees in the category; in the supporting categories, that number is still a generous seven. Chris and I are both predicting four Pitt nominees in supporting actress (LaNasa, Sepideh Moafi, Taylor Dearden and Isa Briones) and another three in supporting actor (Hatosy, Patrick Ball and Gerran Howell). In the guest acting categories, things could get really interesting, with multiple guest players self-submitting and last year’s reigning champ Hatosy now moving over to the supporting actor field. Can they beat Succession’s record for 14 acting nominations in a single year? We should at least be prepared for the possibility!
The Paul W. Downs Comeback
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| RIDE ALONG Paul W. Downs stars in the final season of Hacks. Kenny Laubbacher/HBO Max |
For the second year in a row, the best comedy supporting actor category might have the most potential for chaos. Last year, Hiller’s surprise nomination seemed to come at the expense of Paul W. Downs. The Hacks co-creator and Emmy winner who plays beleaguered manager Jimmy was such a sure thing heading into the nominations that some thought he could even win the entire category before he was snubbed. Now, with Hacks looking very dominant in its final season, I expect Downs to make it back into the mix — but again, we’ve learned that anything is possible! When it comes to a win, though, the outlook is even murkier. Harrison Ford continues to do some of the best work of his career on Shrinking, while his co-star Michael Urie steals every other scene. Margo’s Got Money Troubles was a strong showcase for Nick Offerman, while Widow’s Bay could get veteran character actor Stephen Root the Emmy he somehow never won for Barry. Again, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but I’m personally rooting for another year of pure, delightful chaos in this category.
The Late Legends
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| AS YOU WISH Rob Reiner guest stars on season four of The Bear. FX |
With all due respect to Connor Storrie, who I do still hope will be nominated for hosting Saturday Night Live, the real showdown for guest comedy actor is likely to come down to two Hollywood icons we lost in the past year. First, there’s Rob Reiner, whose guest appearance on season four of The Bear is likely to earn the late actor his first acting nomination since 1978 — can you imagine anyone coming across his name on their ballot and not voting for Reiner? And though his death at the age of 85 in mid-June was far less shocking and graphic, legendary TV director James Burrows feels like he could be a nominee for his turn playing himself on the latest season of The Comeback. It feels ghoulish to try to predict which of these departed greats has the edge — the category is also expected to include Michael J. Fox for Shrinking, the first time Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease, has had a major role on TV in six years. So for now, I’ll just take a moment to pity Storrie, Ryan Gosling, Bad Bunny, Jack Black and all the other SNL guest hosts who simply don’t stand a chance this year. Your time will come!
The Double DippersAs I wrote about when looking at some of the boldest Emmy campaign gambits of the season, most shows will pick a single episode to submit in the writing and directing categories, with the solid logic that you may as well not create competition for yourself. When shows are popular enough, though, that often doesn’t matter — The Pitt had two nominations last year in both the writing and directing categories, though notably it didn’t win either. Six episodes of The Pitt have been submitted in directing (including those directed by Noah Wyle and Shawn Hatosy), with another two submitted in writing. Comedy frontrunner Hacks, as it has done each year, stuck to submitting only one episode in both categories (this year, it’s, perhaps fittingly, the series finale). The real question mark for me is Pluribus, which submitted seven episodes in the writing and directing categories — could it manage to get two in each? Historically, it’s harder to win if you’re competing against yourself, so it might be a mixed bag for Pluribus fans if it actually happens.
The Wild Cards
Talking about Emmy nominations can very quickly devolve into a detailed discussion of rules and bylaws, so bear with me: This year, all late-night shows will be competing against each other in a newly merged category, outstanding talk series, replacing what were previously two separate categories for outstanding talk series and outstanding scripted variety series. The merge happened thanks to a reduced number of submissions in scripted variety in particular, which is how Last Week Tonight with John Oliver won the category for the last two years in a row against just one other nominee, Saturday Night Live. If you’re wondering how on earth to judge those two shows against each other, well, welcome to the wild world of late-night television at the Emmys. With 18 shows submitted across the newly merged category, there will be five nominees in the end. That could very well just be the five traditional shows that were nominated last year, with John Oliver and SNL up against Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and The Daily Show. Or the crop of YouTubers trying to break into this category could make it very interesting. Is this finally the breakthrough year for Sean Evans and Hot Ones or Brittany Broski and her Royal Court? Or could a true outlier, like the OpenAI-backed tech talk show TBPN, make a run for it? It might not be likely, but there’s still potential for surprise in this ever-shifting category.
A potential for surprise is what makes the Emmy nominations the Emmy nominations, so let’s all collectively hope for something as bold and unlikely as Hiller’s Somebody Somewhere nomination from last year. “My husband keeps texting me, being like, ‘Girl, can you believe this happened?’” Hiller told me shortly after his shocking recognition. “I know that that sounds like being fake or trying to do false modesty or something. It’s not. Nobody expected this.” In Emmy season, “nobody expected this” is what we live for. |
