‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’: How serious are Daniel Radcliffe’s Emmy chances?

Charles Bright
·4 min read
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Among the Emmy categories that “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” is looking to get nominated in, Best Movie/Limited Actor for its star Daniel Radcliffe is right at the top along with Best TV Movie. The Roku Channel’s hit telefilm may seem like an unconventional nominee, but there are several promising factors that are working in his favor.

The fact that the movie is a flat-out comedy could be viewed as something of an obstacle for it to overcome. But, performances from comedic-dramas have scored noms here, including Jeff Bridges for “A Dog Year” (2010) and Hugh Grant for “A Very English Scandal” (2019). We have also seen three comedy performances contend in this category: two for Ricky Gervais for “Extras: The Extra Special Series Finale” (2008) and “Derek: The Special” (2015) and one for Jesse Plemons for “Black Mirror: USS Callister” (2018).

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The most promising history for Radcliffe actually comes outside of the Best Movie/Limited Actor category. In 2014 Kristen Wiig scored a surprise nomination in Best Movie/Limited Actress for the satirical miniseries “The Spoils of Babylon,” which has a lot of similar tones to “Weird.” We also saw Tituss Burgess reap a bid in the Supporting Actor category for “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend” in 2020.

Also keep in mind that Radcliffe recently prevailed at the Critics Choice Awards. Since these kudos came into being, every winner of Best Movie/Limited Actor has gone on to be nominated at the Emmys (unless the performance was eligible at the previous year’s ceremony) with only one exception. In 2021, John Boyega missed getting nominated at the Emmys for “Small Axe” but, unlike at Critics Choice, he was submitted in the supporting actor race at the Emmys. This, at the very least, lends some prestige to Radcliffe’s performance going into Emmy season.

SEE Daniel Radcliffe can halt a decade-long drought with a ‘Weird’ Emmy win

Radcliffe not making it into the Screen Actors Guild line-up could be seen as a hurdle. However, the SAG Awards combine lead and supporting performances into one single category, and nominations are decided by committee, which is different than how the Emmys choose theirs. At the Emmys, all of the voting members can vote for the nominees of the categories in the branch that they are affiliated with. A more broad pool of voters could be more favorable for him.

The other ace-in-the-hole that Radcliffe has is that he’s playing an actual person in “Weird” Al Yankovic, even if it is an over-the-top fictitious version of the singer. Since 2010, just over half of all the nominees in Best Movie/Limited Actor have been performances portraying real life people. That amounts to 39 out of the 74 nominations that have been in the category since then. Most recently, we’ve seen wins by Ewan McGregor in “Halston” for playing Halston (2021), Jharrel Jerome in “When They See Us” for playing Korey Wise (2019), Darren Criss in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” for portraying Andrew Cunanan (2018), Courtney B. Vance in “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” for his work as Johnnie Cochran (2016) and Michael Douglas in “Behind the Candelabra” for depicting Liberace (2013)

PREDICT the 2023 Emmy nominees through July 12

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