‘Nobody Expected This’: Meet the Year’s Least Likely Emmy Nominee
‘Somebody Somewhere’ star Jeff Hiller became a first-timer for the cult HBO comedy. Plus: The cancel culture movie that could rock Oscar season
How’s your Emmy nominations hangover? I wasn’t popping champagne in celebration (or despair) on Tuesday, but I do feel a little wrung out by the whole process. The sheer number of nominees, the records set and broken, the debate over whether anything can be a “snub” when you’ve got a voting body of more than 25,000 — it’s a lot to take in!
Hopefully, amid the hubbub, you didn’t miss the exciting news about the launch of our subscriber-only VIP platform, Prestige Junkie After Party, which launches Aug. 1 with our first bonus podcast episode — and will feature in-depth coverage of the final weeks of the Emmy race, the beginning of fall festival season and much more. My colleague Christopher Rosen and I are so excited to bring the free-wheeling vibe of our group chats and Slack conversations to the rest of you, and we still want to know what awards season topics you’re dying to hear more about, so get in touch! And chat with us in the After Party in our two-way live subscriber chat.
Chris and I powered through some technical challenges to bring you live reactions to the Emmy nominations on Tuesday, but if you listened to us live and skipped the podcast episode, you’re missing out! I hopped on Zoom for a quick chat with Erin Doherty, a nominee for supporting actress in a limited series for Adolescence and a prohibitive favorite to win. Her vibe was a fun contrast to her careful, collected character on the show, as she glowed with excitement about her nomination and was full of praise for her collaborators, Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper. Take a listen below!
Then yesterday, I hopped on a Zoom with someone who seemed even more excited about his nomination and was genuinely shocked when he learned about the nod while waiting to board a flight. “My husband keeps texting me, being like, ‘Girl, can you believe this happened?’” says Jeff Hiller, nominated for supporting actor in a comedy series for his role on HBO’s Somebody Somewhere. “I know that that sounds like being fake or trying to do false modesty or something. It’s not. Nobody expected this.”
He’s right.
The Underdog
Somebody Somewhere, the wistfully funny and heartfelt series starring Bridget Everett as a woman returning to her hometown in Kansas, had ardent fans in the media and among awards pundits — and even won a Peabody Award in 2024. But even we faithful had given up hope after HBO canceled the show before its third season premiered last fall: The first two seasons were ignored entirely by Emmy voters, and it didn’t seem likely the third would be any different.
Hiller, 49, has worked steadily in Hollywood for 20 years, mostly playing minor roles (several in the food services industry) in film and television. He grew up in San Antonio and studied theology and theater at Texas Lutheran University. After graduation, he moved to New York and, in 2001, joined Upright Citizens Brigade. By 2004, he was booking acting gigs — eventually appearing on shows like 30 Rock, Glee, Community, Ugly Betty, Bored to Death, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Speaking now, he admits that when Emmy nominations were announced after the debut season of Somebody Somewhere in 2022, he tuned in with a small bit of hope for himself and his collaborators. “I spent a lot of time being like, ‘Why are you disappointed you didn’t get a stupid award nomination when you have this incredible life?’” he says now. “Of course, now that I have one, I’m like, ‘It’s necessary.’”
In addition to Hiller, Everett and series co-creators Hannah Bos and Paul Tureen are nominated for writing the show’s series finale — and none of them have figured out why it finally worked this time. Hiller — who beat out former Emmy winners and nominees widely predicted to land nominations this year, including Paul W. Downs for Hacks, Brett Goldstein for Shrinking and Tyler James Williams for Abbott Elementary — theorizes that since he’s been out promoting his new memoir, An Actress of a Certain Age, it served as “a shadow Emmy campaign that I didn’t even realize.” But it’s not like HBO encouraged him to link the two: “I think HBO was also like, ‘Girl, it’s over. It’s not going to happen.’”
Now that it has happened, Hiller is celebrating by doing what he’s spent much of his two-decade Hollywood career doing: reporting to set. He’s currently in Boston filming a small role in an undisclosed series, and says he’ll happily continue playing waiters or characters who exist primarily for exposition. (Early in his career, on 30 Rock, he proved just how good he is at making those roles shine.) But even if it will be hard to find another character as nuanced and well-observed as Somebody Somewhere’s Joel, the show has opened up unexpected doors. “I was on Will Trent, and I got to play a character who I never would’ve been able to play before,” he tells me of his guest spot on the ABC police procedural. Hiller played a hotel clerk in the season 3 episode. “I mean, he wasn’t the murderer or whatever, but he had several scenes,” he adds of the part. “Whereas before I would’ve been the maître d’ who just pointed you over there.”
Hiller is one of four queer nominees in his category alone — a fact fellow first-time nominee Michael Urie, who stars on Shrinking and once directed Hiller in the off-Broadway show Bright Colors and Bold Patterns, referenced in his statement about being nominated this week. “I’m so proud to be nominated alongside Jeff, Bowen Yang and Colman Domingo,” Urie said, before also shouting out Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ike Barinholtz and Harrison Ford, “even though they’re straight.” Hiller says he’s looking forward to attending Emmys alongside all of them, as well as fellow longtime friends and nominees from the comedy world like Downs (a nominee as co-creator and co-writer for Hacks) and The White Lotus’ Natasha Rothwell.
“I mean it’s weird, but it’s exciting too,” Hiller says of seeing himself and his friends make it this far. “I don’t mean to say everybody who’s super talented makes it, that’s not true. And I know so many people who are wildly talented who are temping. But I feel grateful that those of us who have had some luck have had that luck.”
I’m proud to say that most of the burning questions I identified ahead of the Emmy nominations announcement turned out to be essential themes of the day’s narrative. HBO Max did hang on to its bragging rights as the most-nominated network; Julianne Nicholson did snag that double nomination I was hoping for; Uzo Aduba did pull off the unlikely feat of being nominated for a show that had already been canceled; and yes, Mid-Century Modern also did get that spot in the best director in a comedy category that you wouldn’t expect if you hadn’t closely read the rules.
I also noticed that — even in their quick and carefully worded reaction statements — many nominees continued to emphasize one of the biggest narratives of the season: shows made in Los Angeles. John Wells, R. Scott Gemmill and Noah Wyle sent out a joint statement about the nominations for The Pitt that specifically mentioned that their “fantastic Los Angeles-based team consists of over three hundred and fifty crew, cast, writers, directors, producers and local artisans.” Even though DGA president and director Lesli Linka Glatter was nominated for Zero Day, which filmed in New York, her statement included this note: “I’m especially moved to be receiving this news while on set in L.A. — a resilient, endlessly creative city, where so many of us are eager to keep a hub for productions.”
Though the nomination tally for Severance is starting to look pretty indomitable, I still wonder if the hometown production angle on The Pitt could help it come from behind in the best drama series race, or at least continue to boost Wyle’s lead actor push. Many shows produced in L.A. didn’t make the Emmy cut — still rooting for you, High Potential — but I suspect this campaign slogan still holds a lot of power.
The first trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s new film — yes, coming just a year after he released two others — confirms that After the Hunt is likely the designated button-pusher this awards season. Combining a starry cast (Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, Chloë Sevigny) with the topics of campus cancel culture, race and sexual assault, it practically guarantees months of online discourse, no matter how careful the actors are on their press tour.
I also couldn’t help but notice the first name listed after the title card: Brian Grazer, who recently described his experience of voting for Donald Trump as almost like “getting canceled.” With After the Hunt almost certainly premiering at the Venice Film Festival in a little over a month — Guadagnino has premiered six movies at Venice, including last year’s Queer (Challengers would have been there too in 2023 were it not for the strikes) — Grazer may find himself posing on a red carpet with Kamala Harris endorser Roberts, among other potentially awkward encounters. But, hey, After the Hunt seems to be a movie where people talk about hard things! We’ll see if the offscreen drama can match what’s in the film.
The Toronto International Film Festival announced 11 more titles in its Gala and Centrepiece sections, ahead of the announcement of its full lineup that’s coming next week. I think anybody could have guessed that the new Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead, Man, would be there — the previous entries debuted in Toronto, and the franchise’s crowd-pleasing bona fides are ideally suited to TIFF. The trailer and release date for Paramount’s Roofman were likewise strong TIFF indicators. Beyond those two titles, I was glad to see Chloé Zhao’s Focus Features release, Hamnet, listed as a Canadian premiere, suggesting it will almost certainly play Venice — where Nomadland won the Golden Lion — and Telluride beforehand.
I’m intrigued by the presence of Paul Greengrass’s The Lost Bus, an Apple release starring Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey and Oscar nominee America Ferrera, which has been hard to pin down as a potential awards contender. Greengrass earned a lone director nomination in 2006 for United 93 and directed Captain Phillips, which garnered six Oscar nominations, including best picture (but not best actor for Tom Hanks; I’ll never forget or forgive!). However, his most recent films, 22 July and News of the World, have gone largely unnoticed. Set during the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California, The Lost Bus may be almost too timely, or it could be cathartic for L.A. audiences. The TIFF world premiere suggests it will appeal to a mainstream crowd, and following Apple’s success with F1, the streamer may be eager to test out another theatrical hit.
Mark your calendars. Chris and I will be going live again on Friday at 9 a.m. PT to share a few straggler Emmys takes and get into the other news of the week — if you have already bought your IMAX tickets for The Odyssey, please let us know! Join us here Friday for a preview of what we’ll be bringing you much more often when the After Party launches in August.