‘Succession’ Leads an Especially Strong HBO Drama Showing in 2023 Emmy Nominations

In what is at least the third most-pressing matter in Hollywood today, the Television Academy announced nominees for the 2023 Emmy Awards on Wednesday morning — the ultimate accolade for a sector of the entertainment industry that’s all but completely shut down.

But this is about good news, right? And the party with most of the good news was HBO, or, per the TV Academy release, the no-longer-technically-a-platform HBO Max. Either way, the group raked in the most nominations of any with at 127 and scored a coup in the drama race with four mentions: House of the Dragon, The Last of Us, The White Lotus and, expectedly the top nominee of any program with 27 in total, Succession. All of those hail from HBO proper. No one network has had four series compete in the best drama race in one year since NBC pulled it off in 1992.

There were zero surprises in the eight-strong list of best drama nominees, HBO’s foursome being joined by Andor (Disney+), Better Call Saul (AMC), The Crown (Netflix) and Yellowjackets (Showtime). Acting races in that genre brought similarly expected hauls for the top performers. Succession logging spots for three leading men (Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin, Jeremy Strong), lead actress Sarah Snook, four supporting actors (Nicholas Braun, Matthew Macfadyen, Alan Ruck, Alexander Skarsgård) and supporting actress J. Smith-Cameron. It also scored four guest actor and actress nominations, though that’s where network neighbor The Last of Us really shined — taking all seven of the remaining drama guest spots.

Speaking of The Last of Us, it was the second most-nominated of all series — edging out The White Lotus, 24 vs 23, in its move from the limited to the drama race. The Last of Us stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey were both nominated, as were a slew of supporting and guest players. Also notable acting nominations in the drama races were for nine mentions in the supporting categories for the cast of The White Lotus, including a repeat for 2022 winner (in limited) Jennifer Coolidge.

Comedy proved to be much more of a mixed bag. Ted Lasso again came out on top with 21 nominations, though the final season of Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel held its own with 14. And newcomers The Bear (FX) and Wednesday (Netflix), as well as returning series Barry (HBO) and Only Murders in the Building (Hulu), edged out broadcast darling Abbott Elementary (ABC) in nominations count. Perhaps most surprising in the category, however, was the Amazon Freevee breakout Jury Duty.

Ted Lasso led in comedy acting nominations with a total of nine across supporting, guest and lead categories — including a swan song mention for series star and creator Jason Sudeikis, who’s won for his work in the previous two seasons. Jenna Ortega pulled a nomination for best actress in a comedy for her role in Wednesday, while Steve Martin was conspicuously absent from the best comedy actor race. His Only Murders in the Building (Hulu) co-star Martin Short remained for the second year in a row, with Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) and Jason Segel (Shrinking) joining an also returning Bill Hader (Barry).

The limited series race offered no clear frontrunner. BEEF and the repetitively titled Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, both from Netflix, tied with the most nominations at 13 a piece. Daisy Jones And the Six (Amazon), which was absent from more than a few predictions list, scored a spot in the main race and nabbed 9 nominations in total. It was just ahead of Fleishman Is In Trouble (7 more nominations to the FX tally) and the somewhat flabbergasting appearance from Obi-Wan Kenobi (Disney+) — a miniseries that seems like it came out several years ago and whose spot was expected to go to Black Bird, A Small Light, Tiny Beautiful Things or even George and Tammy.

More to come…