This year, more than 180 programs were nominated for Emmy Awards. While eight of those shows hit double digits in nominations, 88 of them — almost half the total — had to settle for a single one. Those one-nom programs ranged from “Antiques Roadshow,” claiming its usual spot in the Outstanding Structured Reality Program category, to “Your Way Out — Coinbase,” one of the finalists for Outstanding Commercial.
But one show, “Your Friends & Neighbors,” did something remarkable: It earned only one Emmy nomination, but that nom was for Outstanding Drama Series. Voters thought the Apple TV series’ second season was one of the eight best dramas on television in 2025-2026, but somehow they didn’t feel it warranted recognition in any of the 120 other categories.
How incredibly rare is that? So rare that it hasn’t happened since 2009, when the HBO series “Big Love” got the top nod for its third season without receiving anything else. That was the only other time the feat has been achieved in this century.
“It was very surreal,” creator and showrunner Jonathan Tropper said. “It took me a minute to comprehend it. It sort of felt like winning the popular vote as opposed to the electoral college. I just felt like enough people are watching and loving the show that we somehow got into the conversation, even though we’re not necessarily following the traditional path to do that.”
Tropper’s series follows Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm), a former financier who turns to robbing his wealthy neighbors after his life falls apart. This season brought James Marsden into the mix as an even wealthier neighbor who drags Coop into a world of larger-scale white-collar crime. Strangely enough, the first season of “Your Friends & Neighbors” similarly got only one nomination, for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music.
I ask this with all due respect, but are there mixed emotions that come with this nomination when you see that people like Jon Hamm didn’t get recognized?
Yeah, it’s weird. I’m very happy that we’re in the conversation, and I hope that will lead in future seasons to the actors getting recognized. I always believed that it would be the opposite. I believed from Season 1 that Jon would be recognized and the other actors would be recognized and that Outstanding Series might be out of reach because we’re sort of a comedic drama or a dramatic comedy or what have you. I’m actually shocked that Hamm hasn’t been nominated — and it does make it…not bittersweet, but it just makes you wonder how the whole thing works.
Coming into this season, what were you doing to escalate the storylines?
You can only set up the show once. We had brought in a show with this really fun premise, but now that’s been done. You couldn’t come in and say, “And now he does it again,” right? We had to come up with something different. The idea was that in Season 1 Coop was the disrupter in his neighborhood, and in Season 2 I wanted to bring somebody in who would disrupt him. The notion was to sort of keep Coop on his back foot, because by the end of Season 1 you get the sense he’s starting to get the hang of this thing.
“Your Friends & Neighbors,” “Paradise,” “Jury Duty,” “Dead to Me,” “Westworld,” “30 Rock” — these series have two things in common: James Marsden and outstanding-series nominations.
He’s got a good track record, huh?
How did he end up on your show, and what has he brought to it?
I think the best thing he brought was a kind of counterpart/alter ego for Hamm’s character. Coop is all these things, and in comes somebody who’s all these things to the nth degree. Coop is wealthy; this guy’s more wealthy. Coop is some kind of lady-killer; this guy’s more of a lady-killer — somebody who’s almost like the apotheosis of what Coop set out to be a million years ago, and it’s twisted him. He became a really good antagonist for Coop in a number of unexpected ways, which was what we had designed him to do. From a pure personality perspective, we wanted somebody who was a real contrast. Coop is fairly laconic and reserved, and then in comes this guy with seemingly no filters and no shame. We just knew that they would bounce off each other really well.
This story first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
