An Embarrassment of Riches: Digesting the Emmys’ Ensemble Noms Dominance

Like a pageant in a town with a populace as attractive as, well, Los Angeles’, there simply aren’t enough tiaras to hand out for worthy competitors come TV awards season.

Snub lists stretch longer and longer each Emmy nominations morning. An actress the caliber of Julia Roberts can go unnoticed without anyone batting an eye. And, even among those series fortunate enough to score mentions, the consolidation of wealth among the top-performing projects can be jarring. Just look at the supporting actress race for limited series. Five of the categories’ seven nominated performers — Connie Britton, Jennifer Coolidge, Alexandra Daddario, Natasha Rothwell, Sydney Sweeney — came from HBO’s White Lotus. Top nominee and reigning drama Succession (also from HBO) has 14 nominated performances. And Apple’s Ted Lasso, a juggernaut comedy for two Emmys running, has 10 performers on the final ballot.

Maury McIntyre, the Television Academy president and chief operating officer and an all-around Emmy expert, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday and acknowledged the substantial showings from a few shows. “It’s somewhat a testament to the phenomenal ensemble shows out there,” he says. “Succession is an ensemble show. You can’t just identify one star who’s fantastic. That whole ensemble is fantastic. Similarly, people love Ted Lasso for the ensemble. It would be great to be able to recognize more shows for their performances. And that’s something we look at, to make sure that there isn’t something endemic to the voting process that’s causing some of these one-show ensembles to [get nominated].”

Who and what gets nominated is a source of endless debate, but the pool does seem to be evolving. The breakthrough of Korean-language drama Squid Game, itself the recipient of five acting nominations, is evidence that TV Academy voters are open to material that could have gone completely ignored until only recently. But there are more than a few critically-favored foreign-language shows — see: Pachinko or My Brilliant Friend — to slip through the cracks.

Volume doesn’t help matters. Comedy submissions jumped 67 percent from 2021, and drama jumped 30 percent — back to pre-pandemic levels. Limited series, the genre that was least impacted by production stoppages, climbed 50 percent.

“Our job is to make sure our voters are watching as many different kinds of shows as possible,” says McIntyre. “How can we, in the months leading up to voting, expose our members to all the very many phenomenal shows that are out there? But we can’t ask them to watch everything, only ask that they judge what they’ve watched.”

Inspired by snubs or category sweeps, there’s often calls in columns and the cozy campfire that is Twitter to up the available performance slots from seven to 10. No one at the TV Academy can commit to such suggestions until the board next revisits the rules, subject to annual debate and change, but those arguments are always going to be balanced with the hard truth of all awards. They excite, upset and exist because there simply aren’t enough to go around.

“There’s always the question of ‘Should we have more nominees?’ or ‘Should we expand categories?’” says McIntyre. “Clearly we want to have a balance — because, with scarcity, you certainly see more value.”