Bill Hader and Jason Sudeikis Will Reunite for an Emmys Showdown

There won’t be many fresh faces in this year’s Emmy lineup for best comedy actor. The category, which has made a habit of honoring star-producers on their first-ever acting nominations—from Atlanta’s Donald Glover to last year’s champ Jason Sudeikis (Ted Lasso)—will instead lean heavily on the very familiar this year. Both of those aforementioned past winners are back in contention, as is two-time category champ Bill Hader (Barry) and perennial nominee Anthony Anderson, who’s made the cut for the past seven years and is now up for Black-ish’s final season. Don Cheadle (Black Monday), Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm), and Kenan Thompson (Kenan) are also vying for additional noms, having been recognized for their roles before.

That alone is more than enough to fill a field that last year only made room for five actors. And it doesn’t even factor in two more Emmy winners who’d be first-time players here: Steve Martin and Martin Short, each given career-best TV showcases in the highly regarded Only Murders in the Building. So who makes the cut—and with so many past winners, who comes out on top?

With Atlanta’s delayed third season meeting a more polarized response—and Glover only prominently featuring in about half of this year’s episodes—it’s likely the FX half-hour’s star won’t repeat this time around. Another long-awaited return, HBO’s Barry, is where reigning champ Sudeikis will find his chief competition. He and his longtime Saturday Night Live costar Hader are likely to go head-to-head in a race that might come down to a photo finish.

For one thing, Hader has recency bias on his side: Barry’s buzzy third season hasn’t even ended yet, while Ted Lasso’s eligible season aired nearly a full year ago. (For context, the latter’s first season swept the Emmys last year right as its second season was premiering on Apple TV+.) Hader has also never lost this category for his complex, grimly funny turn as a hitman turned actor; there’s no proof he’s beatable here. Emmy campaigning is a unique beast, but as Hader and his cast have actively promoted their show, Sudeikis has kept a very low profile for the last few months, with Ted Lasso gearing up for its own third (and probably final) run.

There’s also the matter of Hader’s range: He’s mesmerizing at the center of the series, a sly mix of wide-eyed optimism and dead-eyed menace. It’s hardly a sitcom performance, but in this past week’s episode, he barely gets a line of dialogue and commands the camera every moment he’s onscreen. 

As ever with the Emmys, the best-actor winner may come down to whichever show voters love most—and here’s where Sudeikis’s case for a repeat comes in. Ted Lasso dominated last year’s ceremony so thoroughly, that with the star its adored figurehead, it feels all but assumed he’d get grouped into another broad embrace from the Television Academy. Barry has never won the top comedy-series category, by contrast, and this probably isn’t the year that changes, no matter the continued critical acclaim. (It’s not quite nice, as the winds have blown for the Emmys and comedy of late.)

Still, a relatively divisive second season for Ted Lasso might leave an opening—and that’s where the true spoilers come in, in Only Murders’ investigative duo. Like Ted Lasso last year, the second season of the Hulu hit will stream just as the first is surely up for a boatload of Emmys. The recently revamped voting system is the main thing in the way of Martin and Short, who will prove difficult to choose between. (The Hulu comedy offers roughly equal screen time and character depth to each.) The popular vote system leads to inevitable splitting, and with very strong returning contenders set to be nominated alongside them, that dynamic could prove fatal to their winning chances. In other words, the Hulu campaign would have reason for some bittersweet optimism if one of the show’s two stars gets surprisingly snubbed on noms morning.

These are challenging circumstances for any network pushing for a first-time nominee. Hulu’s got to feel like Nicholas Hoult is close, stealing scenes with cruel aplomb on The Great and with an individual SAG nom under his belt, while HBO Max is harnessing the might of fandom for Our Flag Means Death’s Rhys Darby and that New Girl nostalgia for Minx’s Jake Johnson (both acclaimed newbies have been renewed). They’re presumably more likely to nab a slot than Cheadle or Thompson, whose series were quietly canceled, or Curb’s David, who hasn’t been included here in years. Yet regardless, there may be too many preordained favorites ahead for them to have a fighting chance.

At the Emmys, old habits die very hard. But between Hader and Sudeikis, anyway, voters will have to break at least one streak.

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