Will ‘Yellowjackets’ increase its Emmy nomination haul in Best Drama Actress?

Luca Giliberti
·6 min read
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“Yellowjackets” may have lost one of its leading ladies in the second season, but it could very well see an increase in lead actress nominations at the Emmys.

Last year, the Showtime hit pocketed just a single lead actress bid for Melanie Lynskey, who, unsurprisingly, is also the likeliest of the show’s leads to crack the lineup this year, according to our drama actress odds. The season-long frontrunner before being recently dethroned by Sarah Snook — who has moved from supporting to lead for the fourth and final season of “Succession” and wasn’t added to lead in our predictions center until her upgrade was confirmed in late April — the New Zealander is currently in second place and the closest to a lock in the category outside of Snook and No. 3 Bella Ramsey (“The Last of Us”). Like Snook and Ramsey, she is in an expected series contender, and she could benefit from being the only one of last year’s six nominees to be in the running again this year. Plus, she turns in another killer performance as Shauna in “Yellowjackets'” second season — just hand her the Emmy for the chop shop scene in the third episode, “Digestif” — and could get a surplus of support for her guest stint on “The Last of Us,” for which she is also predicted to land a nom, per our odds.

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Submitted alongside Lynskey in lead last year were Juliette Lewis and Tawny Cypress. Both are back in contention again this year, but they are outside the top six, in 11th and 19th place, respectively, at the moment. Making the lineup after missing last year will certainly be a tall order for both actresses, especially with the restricted ballot now in play, but remember that circumstances are different for them this time around. A word-of-mouth success, “Yellowjackets” was still an underdog contender heading into last year’s Emmys, so it likely just lacked the visibility to support multiple nominees in lead. But now that it’s an established series that has only grown in popularity and visibility since its debut — which already exceeded expectations with seven citations overall, including one for Best Drama Series and two for acting, the other for Christina Ricci in supporting — there’s a good chance it enjoys an uptick in its nomination haul this year, as many series have done for their sophomore installments in the past.

Lewis and Cypress, then, become formidable as key players on the show. Though both have reduced screen time in the second season, each of them still makes a lasting impression, and it’s possible that voters, especially those who were late to the survival drama, consider both seasons when they vote. This could particularly boost Lewis, as her character, Natalie, not only has a fully rounded arc across both seasons but also bites the dust at the end of the second, making this voters’ last opportunity to reward Lewis (as a series regular at least) on the show.

SEE ‘Yellowjackets’ eyes Emmy record with 3 Best Drama Actress nominees

Rounding out the lead actress contenders for the second season is the person who plays Lynskey’s younger counterpart, Sophie Nélisse, who competed and was snubbed in supporting last year. The biggest question for the 23-year-old, who is ahead of Lewis and Cypress in 10th place in our odds, is whether voters are up to date on the series. Though already a revelation in the first season, the former gymnast and Olympic hopeful is given her biggest showcase yet in the sixth episode of the second season, “Qui,” in which Shauna suffers a stillbirth in the wilderness. If enough voters have seen at least up until this installment and are as taken by Nélisse’s heartrending work in it as fans of the show were, Nélisse could have enough individual passion to get over the line on a restricted ballot. It only helps her that Lynskey is already a strong contender in the race, as voters may not want to shortlist one over the other now that they’re competing in the same category.

Whether “Yellowjackets” can expand in Best Drama Actress will also depend on how high voters are on the second season in general. While the reviews for it are almost on par with those for the first season — it has a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 94 percent and Metacritic score of 77 versus Season 1’s 100 percent and 78, respectively — its finale was met with mixed critical and audience reception and could prevent the show from, if nothing else, building on its Season 1 nomination total. But even if the TV academy membership at large has cooled on the twisty drama, don’t expect that to necessarily reflect in its acting bids, as actors are usually the last people to be punished for a show’s drop in quality (see: Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh being the only noms for the panned final season of “Killing Eve” last year).

What also helps the leading ladies of “Yellowjackets” is that the drama actress category could go many ways outside of the forecasted top three. Imelda Staunton (“The Crown”), Emma D’Arcy (“House of the Dragon”) and Elisabeth Moss (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) presently close out the top six in our odds in that order, but each actor has their own set of challenges to overcome. Staunton is the first person portraying Queen Elizabeth II on “The Crown” to miss out on a Screen Actors Guild Award bid and has to overcome the unenthusiastic response to the historical drama’s fifth installment; D’Arcy is a first-time hopeful who could be hurt by the apparent lack of industry love for “House of the Dragon” and being in only half of the “Game of Thrones” prequel’s first season; and Moss, though a winner for “The Handmaid’s Tale” in 2017, has been snubbed before for the dystopian Hulu drama.

So given that “Yellowjackets” is already a safe bet for Lynskey and its second season — which aired weekly on linear Showtime from March 26 to May 28 — could very well be one of the last things voters watched before marking off their ballots, don’t be surprised if the show takes a, uh, good bite out of the drama actress category and rakes in nominations beyond Lynskey.

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