“Severance” and “The Studio” got more Emmy nominations than anybody expected, “The White Lotus” didn’t receive quite as many acting noms as usual and fewer new shows made it into the top Emmy categories than at any time in the last five years.
Those were some of the lessons from Tuesday’s announcement of the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards nominations, which were announced by Harvey Guillén and Brenda Song on Tuesday morning in North Hollywood. With the number of submissions declining for the second consecutive year, many major categories had fewer nominees than usual, but that didn’t stop voters from dropping in a handful of surprises and from showing just how much they loved the second season of “Severance,” the runaway leader in nominations with 27, three more than last year’s big winner, “Shōgun,” received on its way to breaking the Emmy record for wins in a single year.
In recent weeks, Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller’s twisty sci-fi series had seemed to be losing some momentum to the first-year drama “The Pitt,” but the nominations suggested that we underestimate “Severance” at our own risk. Of particular interest were the show’s nine acting nominations, which was more than the presumed juggernaut “The White Lotus” and trailed only the 10 acting noms for first-year comedy “The Studio,” which had so many delicious cameos that it almost ran the table in the guest actor category by scoring nods for Bryan Cranston as a crazed studio head and Dave Franco, Ron Howard, Anthony Mackie and Martin Scorsese as themselves.
“The Pitt” and “The Studio” were two of the four new shows that managed to land series nominations, with “Paradise” joining “The Pitt” in the Outstanding Drama Series category and “Nobody Wants This” joining “The Studio” in Outstanding Comedy Series. The four series nominations for first-year shows followed four years in which five or six freshman shows made the cut each year; the last time fewer than five got in was 2020, when “The Mandalorian” was the only new show to do it.
In a way, that’s because the stop-and-start nature of recent TV production, caused by the pandemic and the strikes, means that many past nominees and winners have taken longer than usual between seasons, which led to this year’s influx of past nominees returning to the race after not being eligible for a year or more. “Severance” was foremost among those, returning three years after its first season, but it was also joined by “Andor,” “The Diplomat,” “The Last of Us” and “The White Lotus.”
That last show did well, with its 23 nominations tying it with “The Studio” for third most, trailing only the 27 for “Severance” and the 24 for “The Penguin.” But in the supporting actor and actress categories, where all but one of the show’s 20 eligible actors were submitted, the show’s third season didn’t do quite as well as Season 2 did two years ago. That season scored four supporting actor and five supporting actress nominations, while this year Mike White’s series had to settle for three supporting actors (Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs and Sam Rockwell), four supporting actresses (Carrie Coon, Parker Posey, Natasha Rothwell and Aimee Lou Wood) and one guest actor (Scott Glenn).
Still, “The White Lotus” contributed mightily to the seemingly obligatory case of Emmy category-hogging. In the drama categories, only four shows – “White Lotus,” “Severance,” “Paradise” and “The Pitt” – supplied every one of the 14 nominees, continuing a trend that has plagued those categories in recent years. (The comedy supporting categories were more equitable, with eight shows sharing those nominations.)
Elsewhere on the ballot, the final season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” showed that the series has pretty much dropped off Emmy voters’ radar. For its first season in 2017, the adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel became the first streaming show to win Outstanding Drama Series, and continued to rack up nominations even when it was only eligible for “dangling episodes” rather than full seasons. But after Season 4 received 21 nominations in 2021, Season 5 was almost completely ignored by voters, garnering only a single nom for star Elisabeth Moss. And its final season suffered a similar fate, with a guest actress nomination for Cherry Jones its only recognition.
Another series that might have been expected to get a boost was “Saturday Night Live,” which concluded its 50th season. On one hand, the statistics say that the landmark season was snubbed by voters, with its seven nominations being the fewest the long-running series has received since 2009, when it began a 16-year streak of averaging more than 15 nominations per year. But the anniversary season brought a bunch of “SNL”-adjacent programs, all of which received nominations: 12 for “SNL50: The Anniversary Special,” six for “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert,” three for “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night,” two for “Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music” … So voters still love all things “SNL,” even if they don’t love “SNL” itself quite so much.
With final voting beginning in late August, the nominations appear to set up some real showdowns. In the comedy category, the 23 nominations for “The Studio” seem to make it a strong rival to defending champion “Hacks,” which suffered a notable miss when Paul W. Downs didn’t get a supporting actor nomination that was considered a lock. (But then, “Hacks” wasn’t a favorite last year when it upset “The Bear” for Outstanding Comedy Series, either.)
In drama, “Severance” would seem to have smooth sailing, considering it leads its presumed rival “The Pitt” in nominations 27-13. But nomination totals can be deceiving, and this looks like a close race to the end. And in the limited series category, “The Penguin” showed unexpected strength with 24 nominations, but another 13-nom show, “Adolescence,” is sitting in the same spot as last year’s winner, “Baby Reindeer,” with enough key noms to hang onto its frontrunner status.
Final voting doesn’t begin for more than a month, and the 77th Primetime Emmys don’t take place for almost two. There’s a long road ahead for everybody.
