Drumroll... My Year’s Top 10 Emmy Nominations!
I end my three-part series by counting down to my No. 1 with love for Ayo Edebiri, Stephen Colbert & my beloved ‘Andor’
I know you’re not used to hearing from me on Fridays, but — surprise! Emmy voting is in full swing, which means there’s plenty to write about, and hopefully you’ve all been waiting on tenterhooks for the conclusion of my 30 Best Emmy Nominations list (catch up on part one and part two at the links). We’ll get right there in a moment.
But first, so many programming notes to get into! Here at Team Ankler, we’re deep into our just-announced plans for our Toronto International Film Festival video and portrait studio, and if you’re hoping to get your client in for an interview or on the guest list, e-mail tiffevents@theankler.com to make your case. I’m also getting an early look at a handful of contenders, and starting to think that even beyond the Cannes holdovers that are sure things for awards attention (including Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident and runner-up Sentimental Value), there will be a lot of international titles that get people talking this season. More on that in my TIFF curtain raiser the week after next.
Meanwhile, over at Prestige Junkie After Party, subscribers got exclusive access to the video of my onstage conversation with Traitors all-stars like Bob the Drag Queen and Cirie Fields, as well as video versions of my podcast conversations with Walton Goggins and Alan Cumming. We’ll be busy over there this weekend, sharing the exclusive video of my conversation with Emmy nominee and Emmys host Nate Bargatze. As a reminder, the main, audio-only Prestige Junkie podcast remains free to all, but if you want the video — and isn’t everyone pivoting to video these days? — a mere $5 a month will get you there.
Next Tuesday will bring my final Emmy season interview, and it’s a good one. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the childhood friends and tireless producers of some of the best TV and film out there, joined me to talk about the labor of love that is The Studio, and why it’s both darkly funny and surprisingly optimistic. Tune in for that conversation next Tuesday, and keep an eye out for The Studio to pop up again in a moment, as I get into the top 10 of my Emmy nominations ranking.
#10: Casting for a Comedy Series: Only Murders in the Building
Every single nominee in this category scored some serious casting coups, from the parade of stars playing themselves on The Studio to everyone thrown into the kitchen chaos on The Bear. But each season of Only Murders in the Building has gotten both starrier and funnier in such a specific way, so it only seems right to tip the hat to casting directors Bernard Telsey, Tiffany Little Canfield and Destiny Lilly. Not only did they figure out the puzzle of casting big names to play fictionalized versions of the show’s leads — Zach Galifianakis as Martin Short was particularly inspired — but they brought in even more of the New York theater icons who have given the show so much character, like Jason Kravits and Griffin Dunne. This is the fourth consecutive casting nomination for Only Murders, with zero wins in the category thus far. The expectation is that the winless streak will continue — The Studio has probably got this one locked up. But Season 5, premiering in September, already has everyone from Dianne Wiest to Renée Zellweger in the cast. Maybe Only Murders can pull it off next year.
#9: Lead Actress in a Drama Series: Kathy Bates, Matlock
Oscar and multiple Emmy winner Kathy Bates has been open about the fact that she was seriously considering retirement before the script for Matlock came her way. What a loss it would have been for all of us, not just for more years of seeing Bates on our screens, but for the funny, wry, sometimes sneaky performance she gives as Matty Matlock, the countrified secret persona of a wealthy woman seeking revenge on a law firm that allowed a pharmaceutical company to peddle dangerous drugs. Sure, the plot’s a bit convoluted and soapy, but Bates sells the hell out of it, and builds an excellent rapport with the supporting cast that really should have gotten more attention this Emmy season. With Matlock a bona fide broadcast hit, and Bates no longer eyeing retirement, there’s hopefully time in the future to make that right.
#8: Drama Series: Paradise
Hiding the entire premise of your TV show from the audience until the very end of the first episode is an audacious gambit that really shouldn’t work even once — and yet somehow Dan Fogelman has pulled it off twice, first with the family saga This Is Us and now with the twisty drama Paradise. What looked at first like a political thriller that reunited Fogelman with This Is Us Emmy winner Sterling K. Brown was revealed as a post-apocalyptic tale of regret, revenge and a tech billionaire (played incredibly by Julianne Nicholson) who was pulling all the strings behind a president (James Marsden) with a significant role to play despite dying in the first episode. For all the credit The Pitt has gotten for combining network-style twists with the gloss of prestige TV, Paradise did it just as well, and with an addictive mystery box drama that promises to get even bigger and bolder in its second season.
#7 Supporting Actress in a Drama Series: Katherine LaNasa, The Pitt
It was always going to be hard for Emmy voters to pick a supporting actress from among the vast ensemble cast of The Pitt, and I’ll be rooting hard for the likes of Taylor Dearden and Isis Briones to pick up well-deserved nominations next year. But if Television Academy members had to choose just one actress for this category, Katherine LaNasa was surely the right call. A veteran actress who was open with me about how difficult it has been to maintain a career post-pandemic, LaNasa is the heart and soul of The Pitt as Nurse Dana, the charge nurse who has seen it all and keeps a remarkable calm even when all hell is breaking loose around her. Because of the physical setup of the hospital set, LaNasa is in the background of many scenes, making her the kind of comforting, familiar presence you’d want in your own workplace. Her performance — natural, lived-in, clever and full of depth — sums up what made The Pitt so addictive and special.
#6: Supporting Actor in a Drama Series: Tramell Tillman, Severance
If you think of Severance as a dystopic spin on a workplace comedy like The Office or 30 Rock, Tramell Tillman’s Milchick is the Dwight Schrute or Pete Hornberger — a middle manager trying to keep chaos at bay and constantly showing up to ruin the fun. If you think of Severance as a deep psychological examination of selfhood, Milchick is a man torn between two worlds, beholden to the strict rules of language of the Lumon corporation but constantly revealing — through tiny glances or even the twitch of an eye — that he can’t quite get with the program. The fact that Severance is both of these shows, and one that somehow finds a way to let Milchick dance in a threatening way with a marching band, has made Tillman a breakout star: He won raves for his brief appearance in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning and, this week, was added to the cast of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. (Tillman would make an inspired Norman Osborn, just saying.) Getting his first Emmy nomination for Severance’s second season is evidence of how much the show has broken out — but it’s also impossible to imagine that breakout happening without Tillman’s performance.
#5: Directing for a Comedy Series: Ayo Edebiri, The Bear
For all the debate about last summer’s third season of The Bear — both whether it was a comedy at all and if the show had lost a step — there always seemed to be one thing people could agree on: the Tina episode (“Napkins”) was the best one. It was the first thing ever directed by Ayo Edebiri, who has already won an Emmy for playing Sydney on the show and is now nominated as a director, the sole directing nod for the show this year. Telling the backstory between Liza Colón-Zayas’ Tina and the late Mikey (Jon Bernthal), it’s a vignette of an episode with all the visual flair (and perfect needle drops like Kool & The Gang and Beastie Boys) that The Bear had already become famous for. More than anything, this nomination is so exciting because it’s a recognition of Edebiri as someone who, both in front of the camera and behind it, seems to have no limit to her talent.
#4: Original Music and Lyrics: Nicholas Britell and Tony Gilroy, “We Are The Ghor,” Andor
I have spent a lot of time in this newsletter proclaiming my love of Andor, which deserved at least five more Emmy nominations than the very strong 14 it earned. And even though creator Tony Gilroy is also included in the show’s best drama series nomination, to me, there’s something perfect about him sharing this nomination with season 1 composer Nicholas Britell for the protest song “We Are The Ghor,” heard hauntingly in the show’s standout episode “Who Are You?” Sung in an alien language by some very French Resistance-coded residents of the planet Ghorman, the song is the backdrop to a violently quashed insurrection, with lyrics both lyrical (“Raise your eyes to homeland skies”) and forceful (“Voices loud and standing proud”). The song was referenced in protest signs at the No Kings rallies earlier this summer, a perfect encapsulation of how resonant Andor is outside of the established Star Wars fans. For Andor to never win an Emmy would be oddly apt for its title character, a rebel leader (played by Diego Luna) who operated primarily behind the scenes. But if it can finally manage a win this year, I would really love for it to be this one.
#3: Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series: Jeff Hiller, Somebody Somewhere
TV history is littered with shows that were too good to be properly appreciated by the Emmys — it’s a sad fact that awards fanatics have largely come to accept. But it makes it even more thrilling when something small and beautiful actually manages to break through, which is exactly what finally happened for the third and final season of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere. Well, sort of — star Bridget Everett has still gone unrecognized for her lead performance, and there surely was a spot for the show in best comedy series somewhere. But in addition to finally being nominated for outstanding writing (Everett shares that one with series creators Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen), co-star Jeff Hiller scored a nomination in supporting actor that even he admits nobody saw coming. The comedian and journeyman character actor, who says he’s usually playing the maître d’ or bitchy flight attendant, got to dig into the sad but optimistic character of Joel across Somebody Somewhere’s quiet but perfect three seasons. In the world of Somebody Somewhere, Joel would have had to settle for never getting that Emmy nomination but learning to be happy anyway. What a gift that in the real world, it actually happened.
#2: Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour): Adam Newport-Berra, The Studio
With all due respect to the beautifully filmed comedies that are also nominated in this category, The Studio is going to wipe the floor with them. Along with Adolescence, the Hollywood-set comedy is the epitome of this year’s trend toward spectacular single-takes, with creators and directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg recreating the frenzy and terror of working in Hollywood through stressful situations that the audience is stuck in right along with them. To pull it off, they recruited cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, who told me he welcomed the technical challenge, calling it “the ultimate filmmaking experience.” The real key to The Studio, though, is how beautiful it all is, even when Sarah Polley (playing herself) is screaming at Rogen in the nominated episode, “The Oner.” As Newport-Berra also told me, “I think Seth and Evan have a very romantic view of Hollywood. I think that they really love movies and they love Hollywood, and they want to honor that and also push it forward.”
#1: Talk Series: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
The talk show is in trouble. Not just in the world of Hacks, where Deborah Vance blew up her fictional show at the end of the last season, and not just at CBS, where the entire Late Show franchise will go away next spring. It’s clear from the meager three nominees in this category — The Late Show is up against Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Daily Show — that the format of a person sitting behind a desk and interviewing people is a dying art. With only 13 shows submitted for consideration, and John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight moved over to the scripted variety category to compete with SNL, there simply aren’t enough talk shows to allow this category to get a full slate of five nominees.
And yet… with the flood of attention around Stephen Colbert as he spends the final months of his show pushing back against the Trump administration and his own corporate owners, this seemingly inevitable victory could feel the most triumphant of all the Emmy wins. Colbert himself has won a slew of Emmys for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and his Late Show won for its 2020 election night special, but Colbert’s nightly Late Show has never taken home the top Emmy award. Now is clearly the time to do it — even competitor Jimmy Kimmel, in his For Your Consideration ads, has proclaimed that he’s “voting for Stephen.” Colbert has been excellent in the hosting chair for over a decade now, but if he wins, he’ll surely give one hell of a speech.
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