Emmy Noms: 5 Big Trends to Watch

The (near) shoe-ins, dark horses, overhyped and forgotten will reveal the tension between media hype and voters as FX, Netflix and HBO wage a fierce battle

Jul 15, 2024

(From left: FX; Netflix; Hulu; photo illustration by The Ankler)

On Wednesday, all our questions will be answered. Well, about the Emmys at least. After months of speculation about the actual amount of comedy in The Bear, the staying power of Lessons in Chemistry, or the true story behind Baby Reindeer, the 2024 Emmy nominations will tell us which shows the Television Academy really likes.

The nominations will be announced live on Wednesday morning beginning at 11:30 ET, in a broadcast hosted by Tony Hale and Sheryl Lee Ralph; you can watch it here. If you want to hear more specific predictions, listen to last week’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, in which Gold Derby’s Chris Rosen and I made our best picks in many categories. (This week’s podcast will come out soon after the nominations are announced on Wednesday, instead of our usual Tuesday release date, so thanks in advance for your patience).

So today let’s look at the big picture and identify the trends and surprises that might tell us something not only about this year’s Emmy nominations, but also the current state of TV. I’ve picked five things to look out for — but first, a little more intrigue about fall movie releases, as the festival season schedule slowly begins to take shape.

Coming Attractions

By the end of July, we should have a pretty solid sense of which fall films will be heading to each international film festival, but for now, it’s just one piecemeal announcement at a time. Last week Toronto added a few more high-profile titles to its lineup, including the Ron Howard-directed Eden.

TIFF also announced that A24’s We Live in Time will premier at the festival, and the studio released the film’s first trailer to coincide with the news. Starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, described proudly as Oscar nominees (but not yet winners!) in the trailer, We Live in Time comes from director John Crowley, whose Brooklyn was a little-Oscar-engine-that-could back in 2015. A lot of us thought We Live In Time might have some kind of time travel or other twist in store — and I suppose it still could — but this trailer promises a relatively straightforward dramedy about a romantic relationship impacted by cancer.

With big stars and an appealing premise, We Live In Time is a perfect premiere for Toronto, which draws in large crowds of fans and other interested locals. But awards buzz for that type of premiere doesn’t always follow — just ask Life Itself, which premiered at TIFF in 2018.

Meanwhile, Crowley’s Brooklyn star Saoirse Ronan is poised for a big fall of her own. Steve McQueen’s Blitz, in which Ronan plays a young mother, is already set for a London Film Festival premiere, and on Friday Sony Pictures Classics announced an October 4 release date for The Outrun, in which Ronan plays a young woman recovering from addiction. Both seem like viable paths to earn Ronan her fifth Oscar nomination — and maybe, finally, a win?

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5 Big Qs for Emmy Noms Morning

Will the Top Contenders Overperform Expectations?

We all expect Shogun, Baby Reindeer and The Bear to do very well on nominations morning — but what if they do even better? Nominations for performers who seem to be on the bubble, such as The Bear’s Abby Elliott or Shogun’s Takehiro Hira, might suggest an even greater swell of support for the show among voters and more potential for a sweep at the actual awards in September.

How will you know if a show is overperforming? Sadly it’s not as easy as just calculating which shows get the most nominations — a technical marvel like Shogun is practically guaranteed to earn the most, while the low-fi Baby Reindeer will be competing in far fewer areas. But the acting categories are an easy enough yardstick. If Shogun or The Bear get more than four acting nominations apiece, not counting the guest categories, and Baby Reindeer contends beyond its stars Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning, it’s safe to say they’re even more beloved than predicted.

Then there are the less widely predicted shows that I suspect might have even better mornings than anticipated. I’m keeping a close eye on HBO’s The Gilded Age, which has made a strong push for its second season, and also Prime Video’s Fallout, the violent sci-fi show that could prove the TV Academy’s anti-genre bias might really be a thing of the past.

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Will There Be Surprise Underperformers?

Repeat everything I just said about the presumed top three contenders and run it backwards. What if Shogun only scores nominations for frontrunners Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada and misses in key craft categories? What if The Bear loses out on some of its presumed guest acting nominations in favor of a perennial favorite like Saturday Night Live? What if Gadd is celebrated for Baby Reindeer in the writing category but ignored in lead actor entirely?

All outcomes are plausible, if not entirely likely, which is where the suspense of Emmy nominations morning comes into play. I’m also bracing myself for the possibility that Abbott Elementary will be overlooked for its excellent third season, perhaps swept away by Bear mania. I’m also very curious about The Crown, still treated as a heavyweight given past seasons but undeniably in a weaker position for its final season than it has been in the past.

What Will the Surprise Limited Series Nominee Be?

Remember Welcome to Chippendales? The Emmys certainly did, surprising everyone last summer by nominating stars Kumail Nanjiani, Murray Bartlett, Annaleigh Ashford and Juliette Lewis for a Hulu series that most pundits assumed was an also-ran.

Pundits are wrong all the time, of course, but it’s still rather rare for a show to be nominated while being so thoroughly off everyone’s radar. So will there one this year? On the podcast last week, Chris Rosen proposed it might be Under the Bridge, another Hulu series that flew somewhat under the radar when it premiered in the spring. It has a very different tone than Welcome to Chippendales, but with the star power of Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough, it might be able to break through all the same.

I’m also monitoring the fate of two splashy HBO limited series, The Regime and The Sympathizer, featuring major stars (Kate Winslet and Robert Downey Jr., respectively) but curiously little buzz. The Sympathizer was better received than The Regime, but both have been perceived to be struggling — which would make any nominations beyond Downey’s a solid surprise.

Which TV Veterans Cannot Be Stopped?

The Emmys are a club eager to keep its members close, and for some winners throughout history — Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Cloris Leachman, Michael J. Fox, etc. — once they start collecting trophies, they never stop.

Those three heavyweights aren’t in the mix this year, but I’m keeping an eye on a few who are. Tony Shalhoub, a four-time Emmy winner, is up for best actor in a limited series for Mr. Monk’s Last Case, and in that relatively thin field he’s a pretty likely nominee. Same for Kelsey Grammer, eligible as best actor in a comedy series for the reboot of Frasier, which won him four of his own Emmys in the 1990s and 2000s.

Jean Smart, a five-time winner, could very well win her sixth this year for Hacks; her nomination is all but guaranteed. Same for Jennifer Aniston, who won best actress in a comedy for Friends just once, in 2002, but is basically synonymous with the golden age of must-see TV. She and her Morning Show co-star Reese Witherspoon have both been nominated for best actress in a drama series, but never at the same time — could this be the year they finally both make it in?

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Which Network or Streamer Gets the Most Bragging Rights?

My bet is that FX will reign supreme with total nominations for a network, between the raft of actors on The Bear and the actors and craft categories for Shogun. But who gets second place? HBO, which has been accustomed to winning in the nominations total in recent years, could have a good run with The Gilded Age, Hacks and some combination of True Detective/The Regime/The Sympathizer — but, as discussed above, it could also face disappointment for nearly all of them.

Then there’s Netflix, which set a record for total nominations for a single network in 2020, earning 160. But with Baby Reindeer unlikely to tally a lot of technical nods, The Crown in a dicier position than years past and The Gentlemen as a solid but not guaranteed contender in the comedy categories, it could find its nomination totals significantly diminished.

If Hulu pulls off another Welcome to Chippendales-type surprise, it could have a lot to celebrate; same for Prime Video and Fallout, which stands to earn a ton of technical nominations if the Academy properly embraces it. I’m also interested to see if there’s a true surprise contender like Freevee was with Jury Duty last year. A breakthrough opportunity for Paramount+ with the Australian import comedy Colin From Accounts? A nod for Peacock with We Are Lady Parts? Not necessarily likely — but not impossible either.

Answers to all of these questions — and many more — will be revealed on Wednesday! Subscribe to the Prestige Junkie podcast so you can hear me and Jordan Hoffman gabbing about the nominations, and look out for an early edition of this newsletter for even more Emmy nominations analysis. Ready or not, here they come!