Happy Thursday to everyone, but especially to the 529 people invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Though my pleas to create a branch for pundits continue to go unnoticed, I remain happy for everyone on the list revealed yesterday, which, as always, includes a wide range of creatives invited to join 19 different branches. Just remember, next time you are complaining about the Academy as if it is a monolith that collectively decided to snub your fave, this is a group that now includes Teyana Taylor, both Safdie brothers, Disney chief Josh D’Amaro and KPop Demon Hunters songwriter EJAE, among many, many others.
On next week’s Prestige Junkie podcast, my colleague Christopher Rosen and I will indulge in a lot more Oscar talk with our mid-year awards season check-in, taking the temperature on the awards chances for Project Hail Mary, Toy Story 5, Obsession and many more. We’ve also got a special Prestige Junkie After Party live show planned for this Friday — watch us on YouTube at 7 a.m. PT (and Substack, too!), where we’ll be joined by two very special returning guests, Elaine Low and Joyce Eng, to talk about the sport that explains everything. That’s right, it’s tennis talk! I promise it will make sense when you hear it.
For today, with Emmy nomination voting now closed, I’m taking a moment to celebrate the campaigns that are so bold I can’t help but admire them. From the indie projects trying to take on the big streamers to the contenders so confident they’re willing to compete against themselves, there are some Emmy hopefuls taking bigger risks than others — and who knows, it might just pay off!
The Self Submitters
First, there was the flood of headlines about Brittany Allen, the actress who played dying mother Roxie on The Pitt, submitting herself in the guest drama actress category after HBO declined to submit her on the show’s behalf. Then, I got an email about Cathryn Dylan Ortiz, who played another mother in crisis on The Pitt — she was the one whose son was found in a hot car — and also self-submitted, in her case partly to bring attention to her work with the Epilepsy Foundation of Los Angeles. And then my friend Joe Reid at Vulture dug into the Emmy ballots and found that many other The Pitt actors most likely submitted themselves, too, though it’s hard to get firm numbers on exactly how many people made it to the ballot on their own dime (for an individual, it costs $225).
Submitting yourself for Emmy consideration is nothing new — Allen did it at the Daytime Emmys in 2011 and won for All My Children! — and probably inevitable for an ensemble as large as The Pitt, where it’s logical for the network to choose only a few contenders in each category and reduce the risk of them cannibalizing each other. I still expect a lot of The Pitt actors to make it through, and when it comes to the ever-unpredictable guest categories, it’s truly anyone’s game.
The Indie Campaigns
It’s never been easier to distribute a TV show on your own terms, but getting Emmy consideration can be another question entirely. When even the biggest YouTubers in the world struggle to break in alongside the more traditional streamers and networks, what chance is there for the true underdogs?
Then again, Netflix was once the new kid on the block, too, and every year we’re surprised by Emmy breakthroughs. So I’m keeping an eye out for two indie entries in this year’s race that are making a real go of it. The Gray House, produced independently and streaming on Prime Video, has big names behind the camera, including executive producers Morgan Freeman and Kevin Costner, plus Mary-Louise Parker starring in the Civil War-era drama. Meanwhile, The Artist, from upstart streamer The Network, bills itself as one of the most star-studded shows in the Emmy hunt, with luminaries like Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin in its ranks.
The Ballot Stuffers
There’s no avoiding potential vote splits in the acting categories, where the stars of the most popular shows almost inevitably wind up competing against each other, sometimes with the result that none of them win in the end. (Just ask the four supporting actors nominated for supporting actor for The White Lotus in 2022, all of whom lost to Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen.) For writing and directing, though, most shows will pick one or two of their strongest contenders and leave out the rest, at the very least eliminating the competition from themselves.
Vince Gilligan’s shows, however, are not like most, and with Pluribus in the mix this year, he’s continuing a tradition he started on Breaking Bad and then on Better Call Saul, submitting a long list of episodes in the writing category. Pluribus has seven episodes on the writing ballot and six for directing, ensuring that a wide range of the show’s contributors get the chance to be considered. They may well wind up competing against each other and then losing to The Pitt, but at least they all get to be there together.
It’s still not as impressive, though, as the vote-splitting David Attenborough will be doing in the narrator category, eligible for three different projects in the same year he turned 100. Since the category was established in 2014, Attenborough has won three times — a record he shares with, of all people, Barack Obama. I’m sure even the former president would agree that we ought to hand it to Attenborough this year, so long as voters can decide which of his three projects to actually nominate.
The Canceled But Fighting
It can’t feel great to campaign for an Emmy when you already know that your show has been canceled, but the good news is that you can sometimes get a nomination, or even a win, for your troubles. That’s the best-case scenario this year for The Boroughs, Ponies and Palm Royale, all of which have been canceled by their respective networks but have still submitted themselves for a slew of Emmy nominations, with reason to believe they can make it through. Kristen Wiig, after all, earned an Actor Award nomination for Palm Royale earlier this year, while both The Boroughs and Ponies boast impressive production design and effects work in addition to their starry casts.
The one canceled show that’s practically guaranteed a win, though, is The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which won the outstanding talk series Emmy last year just a few weeks after its cancellation was announced — and is now eligible to win again for its actual final season. Sure, it now has to compete with Jimmy Kimmel Live! and its own brief cancellation, but in a head-to-head battle between talk shows pulled off the air for dubious political reasons, I still think Colbert has the edge.
The Late Breakers
Just as Oscar contenders largely have given up on the strategy of opening as late as possible to stay fresh in viewers’ minds, most Emmy hopefuls try to wrap up their seasons well before the May 31 eligibility deadline. But depending on how Widow’s Bay performs this year, that strategy may be about to shift. The Apple comedy-horror series, as I’ve written before, is one of the true breakout hits of the season — and the show hit its stride just in time for the Emmy nomination voting period, even though several of its episodes aired too late to even be eligible this year. I would be shocked if a comedy series nomination and a lead actor nomination for Matthew Rhys aren’t coming, and if we start seeing nominations for supporting players like Kate O’Flynn and Stephen Root, there may very well be a rash of late May contenders next year.
A little less buzzy but still very much in the mix, The Four Seasons returned for round two on Netflix on May 28, and will try to build on last year’s lone Emmy nomination for supporting actor Colman Domingo (also terrific, both behind the camera and in front of it, in this season!). Prime Video’s ambitious superhero saga, Spider-Noir, launched on May 27, prompting a fresh new round of wild Nicolas Cage stories as well as Emmy ambitions. Having your cast out and about promoting the new season of your show right as Emmy ballots are going out is a great way to maximize your efforts and could be a good element of surprise. Just when Emmy voters thought they’d seen everything on their must-watch lists, here comes one more thing to delight them.
