2023 Emmys: How much screen time does each Best Comedy Actress nominee have?

Matthew Stewart
·4 min read
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With her 2022 Emmy victory for “Hacks,” Jean Smart became the seventh woman to take the Best Comedy Actress prize for both of her show’s first two seasons and, at age 70, broke her own record as the category’s oldest winner. Her history-making performance in her submitted episode, “The Click,” amounted to 21 minutes, translating to a sizable 62.31% of the roughly half-hour installment. If she were nominated for the exact same performance this year, however, she would land toward the bottom of the lineup’s screen time ranking.

Since “Hacks” has yet to return for a third season, Smart is incapable of retaining her title for a second time. The five current nominees (two of whom were bested by Smart last year) boast a screen time average of 27 minutes and 50 seconds, or 55.89% of their chosen episodes. This data was formulated using a simple definition of stand-alone screen time, which is basically any time a given actor can be seen on screen or heard off screen. Contiguous moments involving said performer silently and non-visibly remaining in scenes were not taken into account.

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One of the two immediately returning contenders in this group is Quinta Brunson, whose screen time in the “Teacher Conference” installment of ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” comes to 10 minutes and 32 seconds. While her percentage of 48.84 is the third highest in the lineup, her actual performance is at least twice as short as every one of her competitors’, with half of them surpassing her three times over. This can primarily be attributed to the fact that her episode is less than 22 minutes long, whereas the other four that have been submitted here have respective minimum and average running times of 39 and 57 minutes.

Next in this screen time catalog is 20-year-old Emmys newcomer Jenna Ortega, who has a shot at supplanting America Ferrera (23, “Ugly Betty,” 2007) as the category’s all-time youngest champion. She appears in 22 minutes and 56 seconds (or 47.25%) of the “Wednesday” episode “Friend or Woe,” which stands as the second shortest chapter in the Netflix series’ first season. Just over 10% of her nominated time is spent portraying Goody Addams, a 17th century ancestor of the titular character who appears to her in psychic visions.

In the middle of this group is another Netflix nominee, Christina Applegate, who has earned her third “Dead to Me” bid for her 30-minute and 18-second performance in the series finale, “We’ve Reached the End.” The vast majority of the episode focuses on her Jen and Linda Cardellini’s Judy enjoying a private vacation together, but about a quarter of her screen time is spent apart from her co-lead, whose character ends up succumbing to her cancer. In terms of percentage, Applegate outpaces all of her competitors (and every other 2023 comedy nominee) with a whopping total of 76.84.

The actress in this bunch with the lowest percentage (46.51) but second highest actual screen time (35 minutes and 11 seconds) is Rachel Brosnahan, who, after winning for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” in 2018, has now earned recognition for all five of the Prime Video series’ seasons. Like Applegate, she has submitted her show’s very last episode, which, although called “Four Minutes,” runs for a full 75. Rounding out the list is Natasha Lyonne, who was first nominated here for “Russian Doll” in 2019 and is now competing as the star of Peacock’s “Poker Face.” Her performance in the premiere episode, “Dead Man’s Hand,” totals 40 minutes and 15 seconds (or 59.99%), making it the physically longest one in any of this year’s comedy categories by at least five minutes.

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