Severance, The Penguin lead Emmy race

Otago Daily Times

16-07-2025

Psychological thriller Severance and crime drama The Penguin stacked up the most nominations for Emmy Awards on Tuesday, outpacing The Studio and The White Lotus in the contest for television's highest honours.
Severance received a leading 27 nominations and was nominated for the top prize of best drama alongside Star Wars series Andor , The Pitt , The White Lotus and others.
The Penguin , set in the DC Comics universe and starring Colin Farrell, earned 24 nominations and will compete for best limited series against Netflix hit Adolescence , among others.
Hollywood satire The Studio , an Apple TV+ show featuring Seth Rogen as a nervous film executive, and HBO's The White Lotus , about murder and misdeeds at a luxury resort in Thailand, received 23 each.
"What the heck?!! We never thought this would happen," Rogen said in a statement.
Comedy nominees included defending champion Hacks , previous winner The Bear , Nobody Wants This and Abbott Elementary .
The 23 nominations for The Studio tied the record for a comedy in a single season, set last year by Chicago restaurant tale The Bear .
Winners of the Emmys will be announced at a red-carpet ceremony held in Los Angeles and broadcast live on CBS on September 14. Comedian Nate Bargatze will host.
The television industry is undergoing a contraction as media companies curtail the sky-high spending they shelled out to compete in the shift to streaming platforms led by Netflix.
Long-time Emmy favourite HBO and the HBO Max streaming service topped all programmers with 142 nominations - a record for the network.
Walt Disney collected 137 nominations, including six for ABC's Abbott Elementary , one of the few broadcast shows in the Emmy mix. Andor , on Disney+, received 14.
Netflix garnered 120 nods and Apple scored 81, its highest total since launching its streaming service in 2019.
Severance tells the story of office workers who undergo a procedure to make them forget their home life at work, and vice versa.
"It's distinctive in every way - in terms of its storytelling, in terms of style, in terms of its directing, its tone," said Matt Cherniss, head of programming at Apple TV+.
Star Adam Scott, a best actor nominee, said the cast had been unsure of how viewers would respond.
"The fact that it's resonated at all has been just such an incredible feeling," Scott said. "We thought it was something that might be too weird."
WYLE, FORD IN THE RUNNING
Noah Wyle received his first Emmy nomination since 1999 for his role as an emergency room doctor on The Pitt . Wyle was nominated five times for ER but never won.
"I'm humbled and grateful," Wyle said of the recognition for The Pitt , which received 13 total nominations.
Harrison Ford, 83, earned his first Emmy nod, for playing a grumpy therapist on Shrinking .
Ron Howard, the former Happy Days star turned Oscar-winning director, also landed his first acting nomination, a guest actor nod for playing himself on The Studio .
"Who says nice guys finish last?!" Howard wrote on Instagram.
He will compete with fellow director Martin Scorsese, another guest star on The Studio .
Other notable acting nominees included Farrell and Cristin Milioti for The Penguin , The Bear actors Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, Kathy Bates for Matlock , Hacks stars Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, and Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey for The Last of Us .
Eight White Lotus actors were recognised.
"This is a bunch of cherries on the icing on the cake that was the gift of playing such a tortured and lonely human," said Jason Isaacs, who portrayed a suicidal father facing financial ruin on the show.
Beyonce also made the Emmys list. Her halftime performance during a National Football League game on Netflix was nominated for best live variety special.
Missing from the field was Netflix's popular Korean drama, Squid Game , while the final season of previous drama winner The Handmaid's Tale received just one nod.
Winners will be chosen by the roughly 26,000 performers, directors, producers and other members of the Television Academy.