When we talk about snubs and surprises with this year’s Emmy nominations, we’re at times stretching each term. Some of the “snubs” mentioned below involve shows or performances that weren’t necessarily the best, but fit the pattern of the kinds of things that usually get nominated, while others were great but were expected to be ignored. And some of the surprises are more about matters of degree, rather than their presence at all. Let’s get to it.
SURPRISE: The Studio dominates
It was a great morning to be an Apple TV+ executive. Severance was the year’s most-nominated show, with 27, as everyone in the cast other than Christopher Walken got nominated. Meanwhile, the Seth Rogen comedy The Studio set a new Emmy record for the most nominations for a first-year comedy, with 23. It helped that Hollywood awards voters are susceptible to shows about their own industry (especially when they’re good), and that they’re particularly susceptible to celebrities who play themselves. Six of the show’s nominations were in the guest actor or actress category, for people like Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, and Zoë Kravitz. (Alas, actress turned director turned actress Sarah Polley wasn’t one of those six.)
SURPRISE: Voters didn’t punish The Bear Season Three
The 2024 Emmy telecast ended on a shocking note, as the second season of The Bear — one of the most acclaimed seasons of television in recent memory — lost the Outstanding Comedy Series trophy to Hacks. At the time, it was unclear whether this was the voters punishing the series for category fraud, since it’s increasingly hard to justify calling this intense and poignant show a comedy, or if Academy members were annoyed by the more uneven third season, which was released during the voting window for Season Two. If it was the latter, they certainly forgot their animus a year later, since the show landed 13 nominations, including a return visit to Outstanding Comedy Series.
SNUB: What We Do in the Shadows cast
The FX vampire comedy had a decent showing for its final season, with six nominations, including for Outstanding Comedy Series and for the writing of the series finale. But a show with some of the funniest performances of this century will end its run with a grand total of one acting nomination, a 2024 nod for Matthew Berry, who went back to being snubbed like all his hilarious co-stars this year.
SURPRISE/SNUB: Katherine LaNasa and Shawn Hatosy for The Pitt / Taylor Dearden for The Pitt
Everyone expected the critically-adored hospital drama The Pitt to have a big nomination total, and it did with 13 — what would be a huge haul for a rookie show in a year not featuring a series like The Studio. But because Noah Wyle is by far the most famous member of the cast, there was a question of whether he would be the only actor nominated. Instead, Wyle was joined by supporting actress LaNasa (as wise head nurse Dana Evans) and guest star Hatosy (as night shift doctor Jack Abbott). Both are hugely deserving. But if the Emmy voters weren’t so fixated on nominating every possible actor from The White Lotus (more on that below), they might have had room for Taylor Dearden, whose performance as anxious resident Mel King made her the year’s most endearing new character.
SURPRISE: Harrison Ford for Shrinking
Ford’s alternately funny and tragic work as an aging psychiatrist with Parkinson’s was among the biggest snubs of the 2023 Emmy nominations, so it’s a relief to find him on the list this year for his continually terrific work in the second Shrinking season. His co-star Michael Urie joined returnees Jason Segel and Jessica Williams. A good showing all around, as part of Apple’s overall huge day.
SNUB: Zahn McClarnon for Dark Winds
At this point, it shouldn’t be surprising that McClarnon keeps being ignored for his towering dramatic work as Navajo cop Joe Leaphorn on the AMC period crime drama. This is the third straight season without a nomination for him. Nonetheless, we’ll keep screaming about it, in the hopes that one day he might squeak in the way that Kyle Chandler eventually did for Friday Night Lights, Matthew Rhys for The Americans, and a few other Emmy cases of better late than never.
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SURPRISE: Jeff Hiller for Somebody Somewhere
Somebody Somewhere, HBO’s lovely, intimate comedy about life in a small Kansas town, was so small in both scope and audience that perhaps the biggest shock of the day is that it got two nominations for its third and final season: one for writing, and one for Hiller’s ingratiating, moving supporting performance as the best friend of Bridget Everett’s character. (And while Everett was snubbed for her own acting work, she shared the writing nom with Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen.)
SNUB: A Man on the Inside
Once the rom-com Nobody Wants This got three big nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series and stars Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, there was no room left at the inn for another Netflix rookie, the wise and warm senior citizen comic mystery A Man on the Inside, nor even for its star, Ted Danson. Danson has 18 previous nominations and two wins, and while he’s not always a lock to be recognized by his peers (no noms for shows like Becker, Bored to Death, or his stint on CSI), voters loved his previous collaboration with Man creator Michael Schur, The Good Place.
SURPRISE: Owen Cooper for Adolescence
That Cooper was nominated is in one way no surprise, since he was astonishingly great in his debut performance as the underaged killer at the heart of the single-take Netflix miniseries. And if you’re someone who pays close attention to which actors submit themselves in which categories, his presence in the supporting actor ranks is also not surprising. But it nonetheless feels like category fraud, and a way to potentially get wins for both Cooper and his co-star Stephen Graham, who was nominated as a lead actor. Because there are only four episodes, and no one from the cast is in all four, it’s hard to argue that there is a single lead of Adolescence. But Cooper was absolutely a lead of the show, dominating the two episodes in which he appeared in both screen time and presence.
SNUB: My Brilliant Friend
There are famous cases of classic shows never winning an Emmy, like The Wire, Parks and Recreation, and, most recently, Better Call Saul. But those shows usually got nominated, whether it was only a few (two for The Wire) or a lot (a whopping 53 for Saul). It’s incredibly rare for a series to run multiple seasons with intense critical acclaim and never get a single nomination. We can unfortunately add HBO’s Italian-language adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels to a list that also includes Rectify, Review, and Terriers. An incredible show that went wholly ignored, even though Emmy voters have been kinder to foreign language shows in recent years (see the dominance of Shōgun at the 2024 ceremony).
SURPRISE: Sam Rockwell for The White Lotus
Rockwell’s monologue about his character’s obsession with Thai ladyboys was easily the highlight of the bumpy fifth Lotus season. So in that respect, his nomination makes total sense, especially since the voters seem determined to nominate as many actors from that show as possible each year. The surprise comes down to him being in the supporting actor group rather than guest actor, though that turns out to be a quirk of Emmy math. Because he was in half of the season’s episodes — even if only briefly in some — he’s ineligible for the guest categories. (See also Pedro Pascal, who edged over the guest/lead actor eligibility line with a brief appearance at the very end of the fifth episode of this season of The Last of Us.)
SNUB: Past Emmy favorites
The easiest way to win an Emmy is usually to have already won an Emmy, just as the easiest way to get nominated is to be a past nominee. That trick doesn’t always work, though. The final season of The Handmaid’s Tale — a show with 15 Emmy wins, including Outstanding Drama Series for its first year — only got a guest acting nod for Cherry Jones. Yellowjackets, which got 10 nominations in its first two seasons — including drama series nods both times — was shut out for its third. Squid Game Season Two was also ignored, after getting 14 nominations and six wins for its first season. And Natasha Lyonne, who has five prior Emmy nominations, couldn’t get her second nod in a row for Poker Face, whose second season (at least, the half of it that debuted during this year’s eligibility window) only got nominations for guest star Cynthia Erivo and stunt work.
SNUB: The Rehearsal
The second season of the Nathan Fielder docu-comedy didn’t go home empty-handed, with two directing and one writing nomination. After the first season went unnominated, that’s a significant step up. That said, the nomination total feels light for a show that was so talked about this spring.
SNUB: Industry
[We close the list by welcoming Rolling Stone writer CT Jones to pen this particular objection.]
The war between millennials and Gen Z continues apace. HBO’s enfant-terrible drama Industry was completely left out of the lead and supporting actor categories, a puzzling oversight a drama that’s slowly built to a passionate cult following. Season Three saw actors Marisa Abela, Ken Leung, Myha’la, Sagar Radia, and even new cast member Kit Harrington leave the trading room floor behind for a whirlwind mélange of country clubs, man-child tech founders, green energy IPOs, and gambling. And while the stakes continued to rise, co-showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay coaxed generational performances from each star actor in their solo episodes. Why don’t Emmy voters want to see young, hot women succeed in business and possibly murder? It’s just not fair.
From Rolling Stone US
