Hyperspecific Observations From the 2024 Emmy Nominations
This year’s contenders offer a story of EGOTs and age gaps, zombie nominees and resurgent ingenues, Planet Earth III and The Idol.
With well over 100 categories spread out between the main telecast and the Creative Arts ceremony, the Emmys can be a massive thing to wrap your head around. Which is probably why most people just keep it to the top layer of categories — the dramas, the comedies, the actors, maybe a writing category here and there. The major takeaway from Wednesday’s nominations: FX had a great day; HBO had a bad day; Netflix managed to lead all individual networks and platforms with 107 nominations, but with all their heavyweights either ending or diminished, the streaming giant’s future seems quite dire. But a deeper dive into the odd corners of the 2024 nominations yields some fascinating findings, from industry trends to good old-fashioned trivia. This year’s Emmy contenders offer a story of EGOTs and age gaps, zombie nominees (welcome back, The Other Two) and resurgent ingenues. Maya Rudolph and Donald Glover. Planet Earth III and The Idol. Taking stock of the big picture has its moment, but now is when I get to be a real awards nerd and burrow into some hyperspecific takeaways from the ballot.
One Pasek and One Paul Could EGOT
The big EGOT story this year is that songwriting tandem Benj Pasek and Justin Paul — they of La La Land and Dear Evan Hansen fame — can EGOT with a win in the Outstanding Music and Lyrics category. They’re up for “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” from Only Murders in the Building, co-written with Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman. (Shaiman’s lone missing EGOT element is actually the Oscar; he won his Emmy way back in 1992 as part of the writing team for the 64th Academy Awards.)
It’s already a fascinating category with competition from Maya Rudolph’s house-ball-inspired sung monologue on Saturday Night Live; a True Detective: Night Country song written by Detective Prior actor John Hawkes; Sara Bareilles finally getting a nomination for songwriting on Girls5Eva; and from Peacock’s historical miniseries The Tattooist of Auschwitz, a ballad with music by Hans Zimmer, performed by none other than Barbra Streisand herself. Pound for pound, it’s a stronger Original Song lineup than the Oscars have produced in a very long time.
Kind of a Lot of Real-Life Couples Are Nominated
When Naomi Watts got word of her Outstanding Actress in a Limited Series nomination for playing Babe Paley on Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, her immediate first thought went to husband Billy Crudup and whether he got nominated in his category as well. (He did, for the third time, for playing media CEO Cory Ellison on The Morning Show.) Matching Emmy nominations for couples seems to be the thing for the 2024 Emmys. See also: Carrie Coon (Best Actress in a Drama for The Gilded Age) and husband Tracy Letts (Guest Actor in a Drama for Winning Time); Sarah Paulson (Guest Actress in a Drama for Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and Holland Taylor (Supporting Actress in a Drama for The Morning Show). Paul W. Downs got that long-awaited Supporting Actor in a Comedy nomination for Hacks, alongside his wife and Outstanding Director in a Comedy nominee Lucia Aniello (they’re also nominated together for writing along with Jen Statsky).
Even the unofficial couples get to celebrate together, as in the case of are-they-or-aren’t-they Meryl Streep and Martin Short, nominated for Supporting Actress and Lead Actor in a Comedy, respectively, from Only Murders in the Building. And while they’re not romantically linked, it’s good to know that press-tour besties Andrew Scott (Lead Actor in a Limited Series for Ripley), Matt Bomer (Lead Actor in a Limited Series for Fellow Travelers), and Jonathan Bailey (Supporting Actor in a Limited Series for Fellow Travelers) can hit the after-parties together yet again. It’s even déjà vu for exes Gary Oldman (Best Actor in a Drama, Slow Horses) and Lesley Manville (Best Supporting Actress in a Drama, The Crown), nominated at the same awards show yet again after that Oscars where he won for Darkest Hour and she should have won for Phantom Thread.
Lead Actor in a Comedy Gets Generational
One of the most pleasant surprises of nomination morning was seeing young D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai get a nomination for his performance on Reservation Dogs. (It helped take some of the sting out of Devery Jacobs’s snub in acting, writing, and directing.) He’s up against some formidable competition in Lead Actor in a Comedy: Jeremy Allen White for The Bear, Larry David for Curb Your Enthusiasm, Matt Berry for What We Do in the Shadows, and the headlining pair of Only Murders in the Building, Steve Martin and Martin Short. At age 78, Steve Martin is the oldest in the category, while Woon-a-Tai is the youngest at 22. The 56 years between them is the largest gap between nominees’ ages in this category ever, and the largest in any acting category since 2016, when Maggie Smith, at age 81, was nominated for Downton Abbey against Game of Thrones’s Maisie Williams, then 19.
Good Episodes Happen Mid-Season Too
It’s an understandable Emmys tendency, when nominating individual episodes for writing or directing, to gravitate toward series premieres and series finales. As TV professionals themselves, voters know how hard it is to successfully get a show off the ground or end it satisfyingly. Which is why almost every year there is a pilot episode or a series finale — often both — nominated for writing and directing. This year, the series premieres of Shōgun and Mr. & Mrs. Smith got writing nominations; The Gentlemen and Mr. & Mrs. Smith were recognized for the direction of their pilots; and The Crown was nominated in directing for its series finale. But in Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, for the first time since 2017, none of the nominees were either.
Part of this is because the comedy categories are contending with a strong crop of veteran shows like The Bear, Hacks, and Abbott Elementary. But even the surprising (and welcome!) nomination for The Other Two side-stepped that show’s series finale for the funnier “Brooke Hosts a Night of Undeniable Good.” If this third season of Girls5Eva ends up being its last, its farewell nomination will not be for its finale but for “Orlando,” the episode where they have to perform at a nostalgia-themed birthday party.
Speaking of The Other Two, that writing nomination was a wonderful shock, because if you weren’t paying very close attention, you might’ve justifiably assumed the show ended last season. That’s because it did: Last year was the final year that either the show or its main cast members could have been nominated (none were, rudely). But because the final season aired weekly, its last four episodes aired after the May 31, 2023, cutoff for the TV season, which meant that any episode-specific awards (including writing, directing, and guest acting) would be in play this year for the episodes that aired in June. This scenario happened recently with The Handmaid’s Tale, which had a few years where guest actors were the sole nominees from the show despite the series not being eligible that year. But Handmaid’s Tale was a perennial Emmy favorite, while The Other Two was an underappreciated gem, which made this final nomination even more of a delightful shock.
The Voters Love Glover
With his nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Donald Glover has now received 13 career Emmy nominations across an incredible eight different categories, all since his first nods for Atlanta in 2017. He’s previously been nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series (as producer for Atlanta), Lead Actor in a Comedy, Writing for a Comedy, Directing for a Comedy (all for Atlanta), Guest Actor in a Comedy (Saturday Night Live), and Writing for a Limited Series (Swarm).
Don’t Worry! The Idol Is an Emmy Nominee!
HBO had a rough go of it on nomination morning. Part of that had to do with the fact that its heaviest hitters when it comes to Emmy hauls — The White Lotus, The Last of Us — were between seasons. But the other part was that so many of its big prestige offerings this season flopped and flopped hard. A year ago, Emmy watchers likely looked ahead to shows like The Regime (Kate Winslet back on HBO!), The Idol (Euphoria but about a pop star!), and The Sympathizer (Pulitzer Prize–winning source material!) as the shows that would lead the Emmy charge into 2024.
Yeah, not so much.
These shows didn’t even get the dignity of being shut out entirely — like Steven Soderbergh’s superior Full Circle — and thus get to claim that Emmy voters just didn’t watch it. Instead, The Regime, The Idol, and The Sympathizer each got one nomination apiece. One! The Regime was recognized in Outstanding Contemporary Costumes for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie; The Idol for Outstanding Choreography for a Scripted Program. At least The Sympathizer got a nomination that will be part of the main Emmys telecast with Robert Downey Jr. a nominee (and very possibly a winner) in Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series. Still, all these solitary nominations really do is hang a lantern on the fact that none of these shows dominated the discourse the way HBO is used to. No wonder Warner Bros. Discovery is thinking about yet another corporate restructure.
When One Nom Is Worse Than None
Other shows that have to endure the backhanded slap of a single Emmy nomination:
➼ Apple TV+’s Sugar, which was predicted by some (hi) to get a handful of nominations, or at the very least a nod for Colin Farrell. Instead, it got recognition for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series.
➼ The New Look was another Apple TV+ show that campaigned for bigger things (series leads Ben Mendelsohn and Juliette Binoche were both snubbed). At least it got a nomination for its costumes, the very least the Emmys could do for a show about Christian Dior and Coco Chanel.
➼ Starz’s sexy, scandalous Mary & George was all over the campaign trail this season, but stars Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galzatine were passed over, leaving the show with only an Outstanding Period Costumes for a Limited Series nomination.
➼ The Witcher: Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup
➼ American Horror Story: Delicate: Outstanding Contemporary Costumes for a Limited Series
➼ Echo: Outstanding Fantasy/Sci-Fi Costumes
➼ X-Men ’97: Outstanding Animated Program (shoulda campaigned as a drama!)
Best Talker Remains Best
With his Outstanding Narrator nomination for BBC America’s Planet Earth III, Sir David Attenborough extends his record for most-ever nominations in that category to eight. His previous nominations (including three wins) were for documentaries like Blue Planet, Our Planet, and A Perfect Planet. Meanwhile, Angela Bassett, with a nomination for narrating Nat Geo’s Queens, moves into a tie for second-most nominations in this category (four) with sports-documentary narration legend Liev Schrieber.
Maya Is Maya-ing
For the second time, Maya Rudolph has been nominated for performances on three separate shows in the same year. She last did this in 2020 with nominations for her guest turn on The Good Place, hosting Saturday Night Live, and providing the voice of Connie the Hormone Monstress on Big Mouth. This year, she was once again nominated for hosting SNL and voicing Connie on Big Mouth in addition to landing her first-ever Lead Actress in a Comedy Series nom for Loot. She’s also nominated in Music and Lyrics for co-writing her SNL monologue song, so that’s just a casual quadruple-nominee year for Maya.
It’s the Aughts All Over Again
This year saw a ton of actors and actresses get their first-ever Emmy nominations — everyone from Jodie Foster to Matt Berry to Hiroyuki Sanada. You’d think Gary Oldman’s nomination would be his first considering he’s primarily a movie star, but then you’d be forgetting his Emmy-nominated guest performance on Friends, wouldn’t you? Two actresses in particular, though, not only got their first Emmy nominations but their first major award nominations of any kind in over two decades. This is Ripley Supporting Actress nominee Dakota Fanning’s first major nom since a Supporting Actress SAG nomination for I Am Sam in 2002 (she was 8 and still holds the record for youngest-ever individual SAG nominee). Meanwhile, Mena Suvari’s nomination for Outstanding Performer in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series for RZR is her first individual acting nomination of any kind since she was a 2000 BAFTA nominee for her breakout role in American Beauty.
Nothing Can Stop The Amazing Race
It’s worth repeating that The Amazing Race, with its 21st nomination for Outstanding Reality Competition, has never not been nominated for this category in a year when it was eligible. COVID remains the only thing that has stopped The Amazing Race’s streak, and that only temporarily slowed down the show.
The Creative Arts Got It So Right
A Creative Arts nomination that was hugely deserved: Squid Game: The Challenge for Outstanding Production Design for a Reality or Variety Series. For the human-size Battleship boards and re-creation of the original series’ giant mechanical doll alone, it deserves to win.
The Creative Arts Got It So Wrong
A Creative Arts Emmy nomination that was hugely deserved and then didn’t happen: How in the world do Emmy voters pass over Claim to Fame in the Outstanding Casting for a Reality Show category two years in a row? Are they not watching Summer’s Best TV Show(™Joe Reid)??? Justified hyperbole aside, Claim to Fame has done a phenomenal job seeking out not only celebrity relatives but interesting celebrity relatives who are eager and able to play a social strategy game. For Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson’s niece and her single-episode tantrum tour de force alone, this should have been a nominee.
Actually, the Creative Arts Are Stuck in 1997
Take a look at the nominees for Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Series (Half-Hour). It’s like peering into the window of an alternate universe where the Emmys are still dominated by network television:
➼ Bob Hearts Abishola
➼ Frasier
➼ How I Met Your Father
➼ Night Court
➼ The Conners
➼ The Upshaws
Even the three streaming series represented here are either continuations of network shows (Frasier), spinoffs of network shows (How I Met Your Father), or throwbacks to network shows (The Upshaws). In this mirror universe, perhaps Melissa Rauch is the Jean Smart and Hillary Duff is the Ayo Edebiri as they face off in Lead Actress. Maybe Billy Gardell is the Jon Hamm, hopping from one highly successful show to another. Maybe Wanda Sykes and the rest of The Upshaws are The Bear for this multi-cam TV world. Maybe Kelsey Grammer is their problematic president.
Everyone Is Gay!
How about a nod toward the truly inspirational number of out queer performers nominated this year. Ayo Edebiri, Bowen Yang, Hannah Einbinder, Holland Taylor, Sarah Paulson, Jonathan Bailey, Matt Bomer, Lily Gladstone, Jessica Gunning, Nava Mau, Kali Reis, Michaela Coel — in an entertainment landscape where major awards bodies still stumble over themselves when it comes to spotlighting a diverse array of talent, it’s worth taking a moment to pause and recognize this many queer people whose talent and work was this undeniable.
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