As the 2023 Emmy Awards voting begins, Scott Feinberg, the Executive Editor of Awards Coverage at The Hollywood Reporter, and Kim Masters delve into its new voting system, the category gripes, and nomination predictions for the biggest television awards race.
This segment has been edited for length and clarity.
Voting has changed
Kim Masters: The rules have changed this year in Emmy voting. I didn't know that until you told me. How did they change and why?
Scott Feinberg: It's gonna be something that will be discussed once we see the nominations, and they look a little different than in the last few years. But it's not something that seems to be getting picked up on by many people at the moment.
What they've done is, for the last few years, the TV Academy has been trying to grapple with figuring out a way to make sure the nominations do a better job of reflecting the volume of good TV that's out there in this era of peak TV. And it's very hard because no voter, no matter how diligent, just like no TV critic, no matter how diligent, can possibly see everything. It's overwhelming, and what has ended up happening over the last few years is that there's a handful of “in platforms” that have a handful of shows that are heavily promoted and with big campaigns. And then it becomes the vast majority of the nominees end up being pulled from just those shows.
What they've decided to do this year is they put a kibosh on that… because again, what it was inadvertently doing was still just rewarding the shows that the most people watched. And so now, what they're saying is, based on the number of approved eligible shows or performances or whatever in a given category, they figure out what the eventual number of nominees in that category will be.
As a result, I think what they hope and what I think will probably happen is that there will be a more deliberate effort to spread those slots amongst a variety of shows, as opposed to just saying, “All right, you're telling me I have only six or eight slots, I'm giving them all to one show.” I think now people will be maybe more deliberate about including other shows. So we'll see. It's a big change no matter what the result ends up being.
Masters: I kind of hope so. There’s that problem of the inability to process all of this incoming, but maybe if you're restricted, you don't just throw all your nominations to one show, and you sort of see them as more precious choices. Is that the idea?
Feinberg: I think that's their hope. It's a trial for the first time since 2017 that they are pulling back the just nominate as many as you want policy.
The category competition gripe
Masters: Now with voting underway, we have a situation where there are huge gripes about which show is competing in which category. Is that happening as usual?
Feinberg: There's bits and pieces of that. The common gripe in the last few years has been, a show competes as a limited series, and then really they say, “Oh, by the way, we're coming back after,” because that category is easier to do well in than in drama series.
That happened with “Big Little Lies.” Now, it's happened with “The White Lotus.” The argument that “The White Lotus” and HBO/Max has made is that season one and season two, it's different locations, the only overlapping characters are Jennifer Coolidge and Jon Gries, and if they do another series, it's going to be a whole new place with new actors and all of that. So it's one of these where I think its competitors are frustrated.
But the truth is now that “Succession” subsequently had its entire final season, maybe “The White Lotus” is wishing it reconsidered that move because drama series is looking pretty in the bag for “Succession.”
Then in comedies, you've got a bunch of these that are, as has increasingly been the case, it's like, “Are these really funny, primarily comedies rather than dramas?” Excellent shows like “The Bear” or “Berry,” or others. So those are the big ones.
The acting categories
Feinberg: Then you get into sort of the acting categories, and there is a cap in the number of episodes that you can be in to be considered a guest actor. It's a percentage of the episodes of the season.
So spoiler alert, Logan Roy dies in the final season of “Succession,” and Brian Cox, who plays him, it was thought [that] Brian [would] be for that reason be a guest actor contender this year. But I guess given the significance of his character, he has opted to remain, submitting himself for the Lead Actor in a Drama Series category alongside two of his sons, Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong, so we might end up with three “Succession” guys among the six drama series nominees. And Brian Cox, who's only in I think, two of the episodes, would still be among them.
Plus, you got Pedro Pascal for “The Last of Us” and a bunch of other [actors], so it's gonna be a very competitive category.
Category front runners
Masters: In terms of front runners, you mentioned “Succession,” obviously. What are we looking at?
Feinberg: There's often been an inclination of voters to make sure that a show in its final season or a good show gets a big send off, and that's going to happen, I think, with “Succession.”
But there are others that are also coming to an end where it's definitely less certain that they will win major awards. You've got “Barry,” “Ted Lasso,” may or may not be over. There's a number of them that we have questions about.
There are actually quite a few strong rookies. So you've got “The Bear” from FX is strongly positioned in the comedy series category, probably “Abbott Elementary” and “Ted lasso” are the three that'll fight that one out.
On the drama side, we have “The Last of Us” as a new show that is extremely popular. HBO, we have to acknowledge, has probably the three strongest for drama series. You got “Succession,” “The White Lotus,” and The Last of Us are all essentially slam dunk nominees. And then they might also get “House of the Dragon.”
Netflix, which has been right up there with HBO Max in terms of total numbers of Emmy noms and Emmy wins over the last few years, they're less strongly positioned this year than they have been in other years. They had a weaker season of “The Crown,” but it will probably still get a bunch of nominations. They have a new show, “The Diplomat,” which we're just waiting to see if enough people watched it for it to get some big nominations.
Then on the comedy side, they've got “Wednesday,” which might be more about Jenna Ortega’s performance on the show, we'll see. So their big push… I think in the limited or anthology series category, that's where they have their strongest shot with both “Dahmer” and “Beef.” So they're going very hard for those two.
Another rule change affects late night show
Masters: Meanwhile, I gathered there has been a change in the rules again, that affects one of the big winner-of-winners, and yet another HBO show… that rule change will affect John Oliver.
Feinberg: So John Oliver has been completely dominating the category of late night shows, which until this year was, basically if you had a talk show you were all competing in the same pool. I think partly because there was a lot of displeasure among his competitors with the fact that, you've got this guy doing a once a week show, who's beating these guys who have nightly shows. They've worked it out that he is now no longer in that category. There is now a scripted variety series category, which was previously, variety sketch. And so now John Oliver is in that scripted variety series category up against the likes of “Saturday Night Live,” which has also been dominant for the last several years. So you've got two giant Emmy winners from last year, and one of them is gonna get knocked out. So that's a big thing.
It's also going to be interesting to see who assumes the pole position in the variety talk category that has been vacated by John Oliver. I think there's sort of an assumption that it will be Stephen Colbert, but Trevor Noah has this last season of eligibility. So there's some goodwill towards him. Jimmy Kimmel is sort of the Dean of late night at this point, and he's been nominated for years and years and years and has not yet won. Maybe this is his shot. NBC would be happy to just get Seth Meyers nominated again, which has been their big achievement last year. And James Corden in his last year of eligibility is also somewhat in the mix. And then, you got John Stewart, who's now been eligible in that category. Those are both going to be very, very interesting categories.
Masters: I am glad I don't have to vote. A lot of these shows that you've mentioned, some of them have won tons and tons of awards. And, maybe we want to say a fond goodbye, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to recycle, especially if they didn't maintain the standard of excellence. Right? Some of them do. And some of them not so much.
Feinberg: Totally. And with this much TV out there, it's hard to just kind of give courtesy votes. There's so much good stuff that if you're throwing a bone to somebody, you're robbing somebody else. So it's an interesting time to be following TV and TV awards.