Emmy Watch: Will newcomers dominate Lead Actor in a Drama Series?

Our team is breaking down the top contenders in all the major Emmy race and highlighting some of our favorites over the next few weeks. Today, we’re looking at Best Actor in a Drama Series.

Both Sterling K. Brown and Milo Ventimiglia have been nominated for Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series at the Emmys in the past. Can they repeat this year?By Christopher James

Will the Emmys stick to their favorites or invite the popular stars of now? This eternal question rears its head yet again in the race for Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Drama Series. Previous winners, such as Sterling K. Brown, Matthew Rhys and Billy Porter, might take on precursor favorites (Josh O’Connor - The Crown) and hot newcomers (Regé-Jean Page - Bridgerton).

Who will fill out the category when nominations are announced on July 13th? Let’s take a look at the field...

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Emmy Watch: An almost all-new lineup for Best Comedy Series

Our team is breaking down the top contenders in all the major races and highlighting some of our favorites over the next few weeks. Today, we’re looking at Best Comedy Series.

By Abe Friedtanzer

We opened last year’s look at this category with a caveat that, compared with the Best Drama Series race, there were considerably fewer contenders here. That’s true again this time, with just one (!) of last year’s nominees eligible and two other series that were nominated in the past possible as return inclusions. With so many slots open, there is tremendous room for new shows to break in, but few clues exist as to what’s at the head of the pack beyond a few frontrunners. Let’s dive in…

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On the Globes cancellation

You probably heard the news today that NBC has cancelled the Golden Globes for January 2022. The past couple of days have been a flurry of stars and distributors and PR firms condemning the Globes and boycotting them. Or 'stepping back from' to use Scarlett Johansson's gentler euphemism. But we find the timing of this sudden wave of condemnation to be suspicious and more than a little hypocritical of the industry given their own ethics problems and systemic racism and sexism. First and foremost, it's all happening three whole months after the Golden Globes exposé in the Los Angeles Times which touched a nerve with its revelation that the organization, which is made up of 87 people, had no black members. (Exacerbating that particular problem -- though nobody likes to try to understand structural problems as it's easier to simply condemn and move on -- is that they only allow one member to represent each "foreign" country and many aren't as diverse as the US; that 'per country' rule, at least, will have to go.)

Did Hollywood rise up against the Globes after that expose? Nope. They went right on courting their favor until awards season had entirely played itself out! There were awards to be won and films and tv shows to promote. No stars boycotted the ceremony and neither did any studios. But now, everyone is in the clear for another year. Distributors don't have to think about campaigning for awards or promoting their films and television shows in that particular way for a while now...

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93rd Academy Awards. The Winners List.

We'll have a few days of post-mortems here at TFE to discuss everything about the 93rd Oscar ceremony, but due to second vaccine sickness (we barely made it through the ceremony and not finishing it would have been a first since like 1989 so barrelled through in bathrobe with tylenol and a jug of water close by). How'd you fare on your predictions? I've marked what we got wrong and right below. Nomadland was the big winner but it won just 3 Oscars (Picture, Director, Actress). Trial of the Chicago 7 was the only Best Picture nominee to go home emptyhanded so the mistakes you see in the results are mostly due to pessimistic predictions that it would win two Oscars.

REVIEW OF THE SHOW | NEW RECORDS SET

The winners are after the jump...

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Final Oscar Predictions. What a thrillingly confused year!

This article was originally published in a slightly altered version at Towleroad.

by Nathaniel R

The 93rd annual Academy Awards, happening this Sunday night, will not be business as usual. Yes, there are still message movies, biopics, expertly acted dramas, and various movie stars milling about dreaming of golden statues, but otherwise things are different. We’re already in late April for one when the Oscar season is usually a distant memory. The COVID-19 pandemic has made all awards shows into Zoom meetings with breakaway rooms, considerably lowering their appeal (and ratings). It’s been ages since we’ve been able to see celebrities on red carpets, interacting with each other, and holding their trophies. Frivolous as these pleasures may be, they are missed! Nevertheless the show must go on. This year’s ceremony is doing things a bit differently — how differently we won’t know until Sunday night — including a pre-show “Oscars: Into the Spotlight” where all five Original Song contenders will be performed.

So who is going to win this year? It’s anyone’s guess. Oscar pundits agree that this is the most confusing Oscar race ever in quite a few categories. That’s exciting and potentially embarrassing for anyone who loves the guesswork. Let’s get right to the possibly terribly misguided assumptions…

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