The Emmy Race Is Down to the Wire |
Talk to folks around town as the final sprint of Emmy campaigning begins, and they’ll tell you the race to watch, at long last, is the big one: best drama series. By this point in recent years, we’ve known with near certainty that Shōgun, Succession, and The Crown would go all the way in their respective seasons. The last time we could plausibly call this category competitive was 2017, when newbie The Handmaid’s Tale beat out fellow breakout freshmen Stranger Things, This Is Us, and The Crown. It’s been a while.
I’m David Canfield, and this year, the race is between Severance and The Pitt. Most still argue that the winner will come down to a coin flip. The Pitt is currently in production on its second season, with details steadily leaking about what fans might expect when the medical drama returns in the winter. This helps the show’s messaging tremendously: Emmy campaigning unavoidably turns into a slog by the dog days of August, with contenders forced to tell the same behind-the-scenes stories for months on end. Having the cast energized and back at work tends to flow into the way people are talking about the show as a moving, living thing.
Severance, meanwhile, exploded in the nominations this year, whereas The Pitt merely performed as needed. Severance’s cast is everywhere on the acting shortlists. Its craft was widely recognized—crucial, since unlike The Pitt, Severance is in a bit of a holding pattern. As director Ben Stiller told me on this week’s Little Gold Men, he and the team are working to figure out how to make their show more quickly. But they’re not there yet, and so will have to rely on the clear outpouring of industry affection for their long-concluded second season to take them across the finish line. It may just be enough.
Final Emmy voting starts a week from Monday. Leading into that next weekend is Televerse, the Television Academy’s inaugural festival, taking place in Downtown Los Angeles. Studios and campaigns—including Severance and The Pitt, each confirmed to have several individual nominees participating—will be bringing out their talent for massive panels before a ton of voters, and yours truly may be hanging around for a few as well. Will we detect one last momentum shift at the JW Marriott at L.A. Live? |
