The Awards Insider team, like anyone who pays way too much attention to awards season, has some burning questions about Sunday’s Primetime Emmy Awards. Ahead, they share them.
Will Anybody Watch?
It didn’t take a pandemic to get people panicking about the ratings for awards shows—they’ve been on an overall downward trend for the last decade, and when the ratings for the 2020 Emmys hit an all-time low, it was hard to feign surprise. There’s reason to believe this year will be no better, with so many major contenders having aired back in 2020 and the unease of the COVID era still lingering overhead. Then again, people will actually be there in person this year! There will be gowns! Hamilton is nominated! There may be hope yet. —Katey Rich
What’s a COVID-Safe Emmys Like?
This year’s Oscars pulled off an impressively safe, if decidedly low-energy, in-person event—or maybe an Altman-esque throwback, depending on your perspective—as Hollywood’s first big COVID-19-era awards ceremony. The Emmys are borrowing some of that show’s strategies: attendance strictly limited to nominees and a guest (in some cases, not even all nominees), table seating instead of the usual theater rows, and various precautionary requirements. But expect CBS and the Television Academy to try to rev up some more excitement too. Whether that actually translates to entertaining material, though, remains to be seen. —David Canfield
How Will Cedric the Entertainer Do?
At the 2020 Emmys, Jimmy Kimmel was one of the first awards show hosts tasked with shepherding a remote show. And he did...mostly fine, considering. But now we’ve had a year’s worth of remote or quasi-remote awards events, so the bar has been raised for what makes a good COVID-era show. Audiences will no longer tolerate Zoom glitches that cut off a winner’s speech or awkward lags in conversation between remote participants. Hosting an awards show has always been a thankless job (it’s criticized no matter what, and as the face of the show, the host is often partially blamed for the inevitably low ratings), but Cedric the Entertainer has taken up the task this year. The good news is that, unlike last year, there will at least be an audience for him to perform in front of—and hopefully that will translate to entertaining those tuning in at home. —Rebecca Ford
Can Netflix Finally Win a Big One?
The company that more or less invented the streaming era has taken a curious back seat at the last few Emmy ceremonies, taking home any number of major statues without winning in the overall-top-show categories. That seems likely to change this year, with The Crown and The Queen’s Gambit both heavily favored. But if Ted Sarandos really is Charlie Brown and the Emmys really are Lucy and that football, well, this would be the year for a wild surprise to truly prove it. —Katey Rich
Who Will Win Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy?
We know Emmy voters are certainly fans of Ted Lasso, which means avid viewers may have a hard time choosing between the four—yes, four—men recognized in this category. (Diamond Dogs, unite!) But Brett Goldstein, confirmed human being, is the clear breakout of the group, which makes him the default category front-runner. In the event he splits votes with his costars, however, a pair of Saturday Night Live-ers on opposite ends of the tenure spectrum—cast veteran Kenan Thompson and featured breakout Bowen Yang—are waiting in the wings, with a chance to pull off an upset. —David Canfield
Who Will Win Best Actress in a Limited Series?
It seems like an impossible choice. How does one pick between the performers in this category, which may be the most competitive at this year’s Emmys? How do voters choose between Michaela Coel’s vulnerable and electrifying work in I May Destroy You, Anya Taylor-Joy’s breakout performance as a chess genius in The Queen’s Gambit, and Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown, arguably one of her best performances ever? While the competition is likely between those three, the category is rounded out by Genius: Aretha’s Cynthia Erivo, who is fresh off her Oscar nomination, and Elizabeth Olsen, who carries the genre-shifting WandaVision on her shoulders. No matter who wins, it’s audiences who’ve taken home the real prize in getting to watch these astounding performances over the past year. —Rebecca Ford
Will Michaela Coel Finally Get Her Due?
The achievement of I May Destroy You has nothing to do with whether it wins awards—but from the moment Coel’s boundary-pushing series was snubbed by the Golden Globes, fans have been waiting for her to finally be on a stage with a golden statue in her hands. The competition in the limited-series category is fierce, and I May Destroy You aired last summer; it could still be a challenge to eke out a win. If the Emmys also pass up their chance to reward a star blazing as bright as Coel, they may never hear the end of it. —Katey Rich
Will Michael K. Williams Win a Posthumous Emmy?
I advocated for Williams to win his first Emmy this year just a week before his tragic passing, but the fact remains: The late, great actor was completely overdue for TV’s highest acting honor, based on how much he’d given to hits of the medium such as The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, and The Night Of, and how great he was in Lovecraft Country. Voting concluded before his death, so there will be no influence either way there, but a posthumous acknowledgment of Williams’s remarkable career would make for not only a profoundly emotional moment, but a deserving one too. —David Canfield
Will Jean Smart Become the True Queen of Television?
Jean Smart already has three Emmys sitting on a shelf somewhere (two for Frasier and one for Samantha Who?), but it turns out we were all waiting for the Jean Smartaissance—and what better way to celebrate that than to give her another Emmy (or two) for her work over the past year? Smart has the lead-actress-in-a-comedy win as locked up as it can be for her work as comedian Deborah Vance on HBO Max’s hilarious Hacks. So we can safely say she’ll be stepping onto that Emmy stage at least once on Sunday night. But there’s also a chance she could win supporting actress in a limited series for playing Kate Winslet’s character’s mother, Helen, on HBO’s Mare of Easttown. Wouldn’t it be twice as nice to see her up on that stage again? —Rebecca Ford
Does the Calendar Give Anyone an Advantage?
The Emmy calendar is still based around the traditional network-TV schedule, which more or less resembles the one for school—shows wrap up with their finales in May and get started in September, kicked off by the Emmy ceremony itself. That format now feels as outdated as Newhart, but there’s a reason you may be thinking more about Hacks than The Flight Attendant, or can conjure more enthusiasm for Mare of Easttown to win over The Queen’s Gambit. Shows that premiered in the second half of 2020 make up a huge number of this year’s contenders, but if the spring 2021 series make a surprisingly strong showing, we might know why. —Katey Rich
Is the Ted Lasso Backlash Real?
Taking a page from the Mad Men playbook, Apple TV+ smartly decided to air the second season of its Emmy-front-running Ted Lasso during voting for its first season, keeping it top of mind for Academy members. Less anticipated, perhaps, would be the potential for that strategy to backfire: While viewer reception remains strong overall, a backlash to Ted’s sophomore season settled in a few weeks ago, right when it might have counted. There’s no way the show or Jason Sudeikis loses out at this point, but if others swoop in in the supporting-acting, writing, and directing categories—like, say, Hacks’ Hannah Einbinder and that show’s pilot script—we’ll have some explanation as to why. —David Canfield
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