PT Entertainment
Will this be the year that the Emmys stop being so monotonous? Probably not, but we can keep hoping.
Because most categories involve ongoing series that stick around for years, the Emmys have always suffered from predictability in a way that the Oscars, Grammys, or Tonys do not. The easiest way to win an Emmy, it often seems, is to have already won one. In recent years, that predictability has begun to manifest itself in other ways, with one show per genre often winning most, if not all, of its categories, leading to repeat winners apologizing by the end of the night.
Will that happen again this year? Things are complicated by the fact that several big victors from past years, like Succession and Barry, are returning after taking a few years off. And matters are also complicated by the arrival of a few newcomers that could be as dominant as Ted Lasso or The Crown were last year.
Maybe the Emmy voters will get weird and try to share the wealth this coming Monday night, but we doubt it. Regardless, here are our picks for who should win all the major categories, who is most likely to win, and whose snubs still annoy us the most.
OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES
Abbott Elementary (ABC)
Barry (HBO)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO)
Hacks (HBO Max)
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Prime Video)
Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)
Ted Lasso (Apple TV+)
What We Do in the Shadows (FX)
Should win: This is a real apples-vs.-oranges-vs.-tangelos category. The show that had by far the best season was Barry, but most of what was great about it this year was on the dramatic end of things. What We Do in the Shadows (eligible for its third season, rather than the fourth one that just finished airing) remains the funniest show on TV, and Only Murders in the Building (eligible for its first season, rather than its just-completed second) did a wonderful job juggling mystery and parody. But since the category is not called “Funniest Comedy Series,” the winner has to be Barry.
Will win: When in doubt, pick last year’s winner, and Ted Lasso had a more ambitious (if not always as creatively successful) second season that could easily make it a repeat champ. That said, there are still a lot of Emmy voters who spent a long time working in the broadcast network trenches, and who are invested in the idea of broadcast still mattering. So the fact that Abbott Elementary was both a hit and a genuinely terrific comedy could garner it a lot of support, and maybe even turn it into a juggernaut like Ted was last year. (It also won the casting award earlier this week at the Creative Arts Emmys ceremony, and that’s often a harbinger for what will win in the series categories.)
Robbed: Shadows got nominated, but its fantastic FX peers Atlanta, Better Things, and, most egregiously, Reservation Dogs, got left out. It’s also disappointing that the lovely final Pen15 season didn’t get nominated after the show made it into this category last year.
OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
Better Call Saul (AMC)
Euphoria (HBO)
Ozark (Netflix)
Severance (Apple TV+)
Squid Game (Netflix)
Stranger Things (Netflix)
Succession (HBO)
Yellowjackets (Showtime)
Should win: After several years of feeling like an afterthought compared to the limited series categories, this is a pretty tough field. (Well, a tough field that still has Ozark in it, because Emmy voters can’t quit that show.) Keep in mind that the Saul episodes under consideration are from the first half of the final season, which weren’t quite at the level of the series-concluding chapters that will be eligible a year from now. Even if you set that aside, it’s hard to choose from among the anticapitalist trio of Severance, Squid Game, and Succession. But from this corner, the blend of a high-concept idea with nuanced and devastating character work gives Severance the edge.
Will win: Succession seems likely to repeat its victory from 2020. (It took last year off, when The Crown finally gave Netflix a series category win.) But Squid Game was a phenomenon, and Better Call Saul will — like Breaking Bad before it — benefit from voters having watched the final episodes while voting for the previous batch. The safe bet is with the Roy family, but this feels like more of a toss-up than we often get.
Robbed: Riveting as Squid Game was, it wasn’t even the best Korean-language streaming drama from the eligibility period. That would be Apple TV+’s powerful historical epic Pachinko (which also had a fair number of Japanese- and English-language scenes), whose only nomination this year was for its fantastic musical opening-credits sequence. (And that already lost to Severance, whose own main title sequence is great, but not at the Pachinko level.)
OUTSTANDING LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES
Dopesick (Hulu)
The Dropout (Hulu)
Inventing Anna (Neflix)
Pam and Tommy (Hulu)
The White Lotus (HBO)
Should win: A much less impressive group of nominees than we’ve had in recent years, including one outright terrible show (Inventing Anna), and one (Dopesick) that is getting way too much credit for what its story is about rather than how well that story is told. In general, the field is a reflection of a trend towards uninspiring nonfiction stories that are often meant as vehicles for movie actors. Pam and Tommy and The Dropout have their charms, but the wholly fictional White Lotus — Mike White’s satire of the destructive behavior of the ultra-rich, set at a Hawaiian resort — is easily the class of the group. (It’s also, arguably, in the wrong category, as HBO is already producing a second season that brings back multiple characters. But category fraud is now a standard part of the Emmy process, and White Lotus is just that much better than the other four.)
Will win: The sheer number of White Lotus nominations — including a whopping five nominees for supporting actress in a limited series — suggests the TV Academy loves it the most. Dopesick has an outside chance, simply because so many people’s lives have been touched by the opioid epidemic, but bet on Mike White.
Robbed: HBO Max’s surprisingly joyful post-apocalyptic tale Station Eleven did well in other categories, but couldn’t crack the top group. Netflix’s Maid, meanwhile, was a much better example of a true story being dramatized well than several of the shows that made it here. As was HBO’s We Own This City, but Emmy snubs are beyond old hat for David Simon at this point.
OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Donald Glover, Atlanta
Bill Hader, Barry
Nicholas Hoult, The Great
Steve Martin, Only Murders in the Building
Martin Short, Only Murders in the Building
Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso
Should win: Again, what exactly are we supposed to be voting for here? Hader gave an incredible performance that was almost entirely dramatic. Martin deftly balanced his famous comic gifts with some genuine emotion. Nicholas Hoult remains hilarious on The Great. Tempting as it is to go Hader, it’s hard to pass up the idea of Martin winning his first Emmy in 53 years, the last one coming back when he was one of 10 writers on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour to share a variety-show writing award.
Will win: It’s probably Sudeikis, unless Ted Lasso has just lost all momentum after a slightly less-loved second season. (And/or if the divorce-papers drama with Olivia Wilde turns some voters against him.) And even if Ted dominates elsewhere, don’t be surprised if industry love for one of the Only Murders elder comic statesmen triumphs.
Robbed: How have three seasons of What We Do in the Shadows been Emmy eligible, yet not a single one of its actors has ever been nominated? Justice for Matt Berry, among all the others! Also, while it was unlikely that Anthony Anderson would have gotten an Emmy for the half-forgotten final black-ish season had he been nominated, it feels strange that he will never have won for that show.
OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Quinta Brunson, Abbott Elementary
Kaley Cuoco, The Flight Attendant
Elle Fanning, The Great
Issa Rae, Insecure
Jean Smart, Hacks
Should win: Like Nicholas Hoult, Elle Fanning wasn’t even nominated for the first Great season, an oversight that was rectified for the second. The tightrope walk she has to do between the absurd comedy and unspeakable tragedies on that show should be impossible, yet she handles it with grace. Lots of wonderful competitors here, but Fanning’s work is special.
Will win: Smart won last year, is a beloved showbiz veteran, and is playing a different kind of beloved showbiz veteran. This may be a Julia Louis-Dreyfus situation, where the category is hers to lose for the bulk of the show’s run. But if we wind up with an Abbott Elementary tidal wave, then Brunson would benefit as the face of the show.
Robbed: Only Murders in the Building is so clearly a three-hander that it seems very wrong that Selena Gomez wasn’t nominated alongside Steve Martin and Martin Short. The show needs all of them together to work as well as it does. The great (if messy) second season of Russian Doll received a lone nomination, for cinematography, despite Natasha Lyonne somehow being even better than she was in the first season.
OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Jason Bateman, Ozark
Brian Cox, Succession
Lee Jung-jae, Squid Game
Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul
Adam Scott, Severance
Jeremy Strong, Succession
Should win: Odenkirk is long overdue for one of these before Saul ends. Hopefully, he gets it a year from now, when his strongest material of this final season will be eligible. So for the moment, let’s go with Adam Scott, who had to play two very different but recognizably related versions of the same character, and who did the best job of anyone on Severance of conveying just how weird a version of a person would be if they only existed at work.
Will win: Even if Succession does not have a big night overall, Strong seems a relatively safe choice to repeat — unless, again, recency bias with the final Saul episodes pushes Odenkirk into the winners’ circle for the first time.
Robbed: Jason Bateman’s automatic annual nomination left no room at the inn for Winning Time star John C. Reilly, whose charismatic and ingratiating performance carried an otherwise uneven show, and would have been a lock for a nomination, if not a win, in a less crowded era.
OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Jodie Comer, Killing Eve
Laura Linney, Ozark
Melanie Lynskey, Yellowjackets
Sandra Oh, Killing Eve
Reese Witherspoon, The Morning Show
Zendaya, Euphoria
Should win: Melanie Lynskey’s case might seem like an odd one at first. A lot of the excitement around Yellowjackets centered on the half of the show set in the Nineties and spotlighting young actresses playing the same roles as Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and friends. And even in the adult sphere, Lynskey spent most of the first season siloed off from the mysteries that are theoretically the show’s bread and butter. So why is she the pick here? That’s just how emotionally present and exciting her work was as a middle-aged housewife gradually letting herself accept the fact that she wants so much more, and is capable of so many darker things than anyone suspects from her.
Will win: Zendaya won a million years ago for the first Euphoria season, and she was great in year two, even if the show’s most talked-about performance this year was arguably from Sydney Sweeney (nominated in drama supporting actress). If Zendaya is not a repeat winner, there seems to be a lot of industry love for Lynskey, who’s been plugging away since she was a teenager without the kind of awards recognition she’s gotten this year.
Robbed: Britt Lower’s work on Severance is just as important as Adam Scott’s, and she is arguably the main character of the office half of the show. Minha Kim was remarkable as the young adult version of Pachinko heroine Sunja, but she got ignored like almost everything else about that series. And Elisabeth Moss’ Emmy success with The Handmaid’s Tale did not carry over to her equally fierce work on Apple’s time-travel thriller Shining Girls.
OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE
Colin Firth, The Staircase
Andrew Garfield, Under the Banner of Heaven
Oscar Isaac, Scenes From a Marriage
Michael Keaton, Dopesick
Himesh Patel, Station Eleven
Sebastian Stan, Pam and Tommy
Should win: Often, the best acting contenders come from the best shows in a particular category, since a great performance tends to make the show around it great. But our top candidates here come from deeply flawed series: Oscar Isaac’s incredibly raw work in the often-frustrating Scenes, and Michael Keaton’s heartbreaking performance in the aforementioned Dopesick.
Will win: Regardless of how Dopesick does overall versus White Lotus, this feels like Keaton’s year.
Robbed: Horror as a genre has a dicey awards track record at best, so it’s not surprising that Hamish Linklater would be ignored for Netflix’s vampire tale Midnight Mass, but his work there was astonishing in its intensity. And Jon Bernthal fully committed to embodying the proudly corrupt cop at the center of We Own This City.
OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE
Toni Collette, The Staircase
Julia Garner, Inventing Anna
Lily James, Pam and Tommy
Sarah Paulson, Impeachment: American Crime Story
Margaret Qualley, Maid
Amanda Seyfried, The Dropout
Should win: Everyone in this category played a real person. Qualley and Seyfried were just better at it than the others, with different challenges. Seyfried had to inhabit an infamous woman with a distinctive persona and speech pattern that would seem ripe for caricature, yet she made tech scammer Elizabeth Holmes feel like a very real, if largely insufferable, human being. Qualley, meanwhile, had to run an emotional gauntlet as a single mom struggling to escape homelessness, and is in practically every frame of the 10 episodes of Maid. It’s a close call, but Qualley’s the pick for a performance as watchable as it was nuanced.
Will win: The usually reliable Garner is awful in Inventing Anna, but she is also an Emmy darling, so do not discount the possibility of her winning. But Seyfried was by far the most successful of this spring’s “movie stars play infamous people in a prestige miniseries” entrants, and it feels like the Academy will want to reward her for getting it right.
Robbed: Mackenzie Davis from Station Eleven and Jessica Chastain from Scenes From a Marriage were both spectacular, and both wound up ignored while their excellent male co-stars were nominated.
The 2022 Primetime Emmy Awards will be presented on Sept. 12 at 8 p.m. on NBC.
