Happy Emmy nominations day to all who celebrate, and welcome to a special edition of Prestige Junkie.
The Pitt and Hacks led the pack as expected, but there was a wide range of surprises in store from today’s Emmy nominations announcement, from a Widow’s Bay surge bigger than anyone expected to the sole Saturday Night Live guest host nomination going to an actor who was virtually unknown a year ago — Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie.
Christopher Rosen and I watched the nominations live and broke down in real-time what it all means — don’t worry if you missed it; you can catch the replay of our livestream from this morning right here. See if you can spot the moment where I searched the list of nominations, realized just how many there were for Widow’s Bay (19!) and practically jumped out of my seat.
Below I’m also sharing my five biggest takeaways from today’s nominations, and I will have much more context — plus insight from the nominees themselves — in tomorrow’s newsletter.
1. HBO Max Is the Frontrunner
With 25 nominations for The Pitt (the most of any drama series this year) and 24 for Hacks (breaking the previous record for nominations for a single season of a comedy series, 23, set by The Bear in 2024 and The Studio in 2025), it’s clear the HBO Max series are exactly as strong with voters as we thought. (Overall, HBO Max landed 122 nominations, the most for any network or streamer.) You can see it in the way the shows dominate specific categories — like the whopping five guest actresses nominated for Hacks or The Pitt getting two nominations apiece in the editing and writing categories. Still, both have strong competition from Apple in two freshman shows with nearly identical nomination totals — 19 for comedy Widow’s Bay (more on this one in a bit) and 18 for drama Pluribus — and it will be fun to speculate about which series might gain momentum in the weeks ahead. But today, The Pitt and Hacks look extremely strong as potential winners.
2. YouTube Finally Broke Through
Yes, the variety series category left out Hot Ones yet again in favor of the more traditional late-night shows like The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Saturday Night Live. But in the short-form categories — where a recent rule change practically guaranteed that more original programs would make it through — there are two true YouTube natives in the mix for the first time. Randy Rainbow, whose topical musical parodies have been nominated four times before, is nominated alongside Kareem Rahma, whose Subway Takes was a major part of YouTube’s big FYC push this season. When I spoke to voters at the platform’s FYC event in early June, they told me how much they’d learned about the work that goes into making those interview shows and how much DNA they share with regular television. Today, that message may have finally gotten through.
3. Widow’s Bay & the Last-Minute Surge
Last-minute surges really are possible. The huge nomination tally for Widow’s Bay, which hadn’t even finished airing its first season before Emmy eligibility ended, tells you that the show’s explosive popularity wasn’t just an online phenomenon. But I’m also impressed by the 11 crafts nominations for Spider-Noir, the Prime Video series that didn’t premiere until May 27 but had a robust awards campaign that started months earlier — as well as yet another supporting actor nomination for Colman Domingo for The Four Seasons (the comedy’s only nomination for the second year in a row), which launched on Netflix on May 28. Add those in with shows like The Bear and The Gilded Age, which aired their eligible seasons last summer, and the Emmys are including a remarkably even spread of the entire calendar year. Take note, Oscar voters!
4. Jeremy Allen White & the Shocking Snubs
In some cases, it’s about who got left out while others were included — like past Emmy winners Jeremy Allen White and Ebon Moss-Bachrach getting blanked for The Bear while fellow former winner Ayo Edebiri still made it in. (Overall, The Bear had just eight nominations, including best comedy series, its fewest total ever.) I have no idea how to explain Your Friends and Neighbors getting a best drama series nomination while its star, Emmy winner and 19-time nominee Jon Hamm, was left out of the best drama actor lineup entirely (Hamm is still a nominee this year as an executive producer of the Apple drama). Nor how voters chose to nominate Janelle James for Abbott Elementary but not Sheryl Lee Ralph — a previous winner! The answer for a lot of these, of course, is that there’s just not enough room. The Pitt managed to get four actresses in for best supporting actress, but somehow not Isa Briones. Beef, which received a strong 16 total nominations to lead all limited series, landed Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung in the supporting actresses category but not Cailee Spaeny (Chris was especially outraged about that one). For the most part, these aren’t voters deliberately snubbing people but simply running out of space on their ballots. Still shocking, though!
5. Connor Storrie & the Great Surprises
Feel free to scroll through the full list of nominees to find your own personal faves. Though I thought Connor Storrie stood a good chance at a nomination for his stint hosting Saturday Night Live, I never thought he’d be the only host nominated – possibly a tribute to just how badly voters wish Heated Rivalry had been eligible after all. I loved seeing A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms break into drama series, even if its actors deserved to be in the mix as well. I’m hoping the six nominations for Seth Rogen’s revamp of The Muppet Show mean we’ll get more episodes of that delightful show ASAP. And I’ll now start getting overly invested in the best narrator category, where David Attenborough — at age 100 — might just split his own vote and make room for Octavia Spencer to get her E on the way to EGOT.
What are you most excited about, or what would you like to hear more about in tomorrow’s newsletter? Let me know what’s on your mind — email me at katey@theankler.com — and we’ll have much more to discuss tomorrow!
