How the Emmys Adopted Groupthink

Scott Feinberg
·4 min read
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When the nominees for the Emmy Awards are announced July 12, don’t be surprised if the acting categories are dominated by performers from a handful of shows — likely Succession, Ted Lasso, Saturday Night Live, The White Lotus, Stranger Things, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Euphoria, Yellowjackets, Squid Game and Dopesick.

Yes, this is the era of “Peak TV,” with more quality shows up for Emmy recognition than ever, but Television Academy members in recent years have spread their acting nominations among roughly the same number of shows as they did decades ago, when there were only a handful of networks airing Emmy-eligible content.

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In that bygone era, the miniseries Rich Man Poor Man in 1976 and Roots in 1977 each landed 13 acting noms, which remains the record for that program format (some of the acting categories in which they were nominated have been discontinued). Meanwhile, the record number of acting noms for a continuing series was, for many years, nine — that’s the number garnered by Hill Street Blues in 1982 (there were no guest acting categories that year) and L.A. Law in 1989 — until The West Wing scored 12 in 2002.

So how, all these years later, with exponentially more content on TV, are a select number of shows able to amass nominations in that same range?

Last year, for instance, hundreds of shows were eligible across 119 categories, yet only 12 series and 12 networks/platforms accumulated more than a single-digit number of nominations. But those shows and networks/platforms absolutely dominated.

In the acting categories specifically, Saturday Night Live landed 11 noms (including four of five comedy guest actors, three of seven comedy supporting actresses, two of eight comedy supporting actors and two of six comedy guest actresses); The Handmaid’s Tale scored 10 (four of eight drama supporting actresses, three of eight drama supporting actors and two of five drama guest actresses); The Crown collected nine (three of eight drama supporting actresses and two of six drama actresses); and Ted Lasso netted seven (four of eight comedy supporting actors and two of seven comedy supporting actresses), as did Hamilton.

One could look at this situation and reasonably theorize that TV Academy members are able and/or willing to consume only a finite amount of content, no matter how much is out there. But I believe the clusters are far more attributable to the fact that in 2017, the TV Academy stopped issuing nomination ballots with a fixed number of slots and instead began instructing members to nominate as many achievements in a category as “you have seen and feel are worthy of a nomination.”

Even if voters are seeing more shows than they did decades ago, not all are watching the same shows, so this selection process obviously benefits the handful of “prestige shows” — those from popular networks/platforms that have strong word-of-mouth and substantial campaigns behind them — that all, or at least most, members are watching, because those are likely to accumulate the most nomination votes.

Nobody is disputing that 2021’s nominees were excellent, but they simply did not reflect the year’s depth and breadth of quality TV. If you’re a voter and you’re given only six lines, you are likelier to be deliberate with your choices and spread votes around than if you are told to check off as many options as you feel are worthy, which increases the probability that you’re helping popular shows.

Unless and until the current nominating process changes, the current pattern will repeat.

This year, I have every expectation that the comedy supporting and guest acting categories again will be overrun by talent from SNL (Bowen Yang, Kenan Thompson, Pete Davidson, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Aidy Bryant and a bunch of hosts), the drama supporting actor race again will be overflowing with members of the Succession ensemble (Kieran Culkin, Matthew Macfadyen, Nicholas Braun and Alan Ruck) and the comedy supporting actor race again will be packed with members of the cast of Ted Lasso (Brett Goldstein, Nick Mohammed, Brendan Hunt, Phil Dunster and Jeremy Swift).

The White Lotus in all likelihood will account for a large chunk of the fields for limited/anthology/TV movie supporting actress (Jennifer Coolidge, Connie Britton, Alexandra Daddario and Natasha Rothwell) and supporting actor (Murray Bartlett, Jake Lacy and Steve Zahn), the latter a category in which several stars of Dopesick (Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg and Will Poulter) also could be included.

The drama supporting actress category could be filled almost entirely by performers from just three shows: Succession (Sarah Snook and J. Smith-Cameron), Euphoria (Sydney Sweeney, Maude Apatow, Hunter Schafer and Alexa Demie) and Stranger Things (Sadie Sink and Millie Bobby Brown). And half of the drama actress field could hail from Yellowjackets (Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis and Tawny Cypress) alone.

As a result, the path to an acting nom for standouts from similarly worthy but lower-profile contenders (Pachinko, The Good Fight, Julia, We Own This City or The Survivor) has never been rougher.

This story first appeared in the June 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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