How many Emmy winners for comedy performances went on to win at SAG Awards?

Matthew Stewart
·3 min read
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After recently pulling off her second consecutive Best Comedy Actress Emmy win for HBO Max’s “Hacks,” Jean Smart is now looking to retain the same title at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Like Julia Louis-Dreyfus in 2018, she is the only current solo SAG Award nominee who is also a reigning comedy Emmy champ, and she could further emulate the “Veep” star by achieving back-to-back wins from both organizations in a single awards season. This would mark the 22nd instance of a comedy Emmy winner individually triumphing at the SAG Awards less than a year later.

One factor working in Smart’s favor is that 16 of the previous 21 comedy Emmy-to-SAG Award translations have involved lead TV academy honorees. Last year marked her entrance into this club, the female subset of which was established in 2006 by “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman and has since grown to include Tina Fey (“30 Rock,” 2009), Louis-Dreyfus (“Veep,” 2014; 2017-2018), Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” 2019), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag,” 2020), and Catherine O’Hara (“Schitt’s Creek,” 2021).

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“Ted Lasso” headliner Jason Sudeikis was also added to this group last year, following fellow Best Comedy Actor Emmy winners John Lithgow (“3rd Rock from the Sun,” 1997-1998), Tony Shalhoub (“Monk,” 2004), Alec Baldwin (“30 Rock,” 2009-2010), and Jeffrey Tambor (“Transparent,” 2016).

As a “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (2020) cast member, Shalhoub is also one of four supporting comedy Emmy winners who then nabbed SAG Awards months later, along with Christine Baranski (“Cybill,” 1996), David Hyde Pierce (“Frasier,” 1996), and Louis-Dreyfus (“Seinfeld,” 1997). Uzo Aduba (“Orange is the New Black”) stands alone in having won the 2015 comedy actress SAG Award after triumphing as a guest performer at the preceding Emmys. She also took the same SAG prize in 2016 right after being honored with a supporting drama Emmy.

Except in 2008 and 2018, at least one comedy Emmy winner per year has gone on to lose at the corresponding SAG Awards. There have been a total of 52 such cases, with supporting male Emmy victors making up the largest subgroup (15), followed by lead actresses (14), lead actors (13), and supporting actresses (10). If Smart is added to that list this year, she will directly follow failed 2022 SAG Award contenders Brett Goldstein and Hannah Waddingham of “Ted Lasso,” who in turn were preceded by “Schitt’s Creek” cast mates Dan Levy, Eugene Levy, and Annie Murphy. The good news for Smart is that there has not been a new lead female example since Louis-Dreyfus in 2016.

Conversely, there have been 26 instances of comedic actors coming up short at the Emmys but then prevailing at the same season’s SAG Awards. This is even further from a yearly occurrence, as the last case involved Shalhoub and his first “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” SAG Award victory in 2019. There is also a male majority in this group, with 15 examples compared to 11 female ones. This year’s possible new entrants are Brosnahan, Quinta Brunson (“Abbott Elementary”), “Barry” pair Anthony Carrigan and Bill Hader, and “Only Murders in the Building” duo Steve Martin and Martin Short.

The 29th SAG Awards ceremony will stream exclusively on Netflix’s YouTube channel on Sunday, February 26.

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