Emmy Watch 2025 Phase One Completed: What This Weekend Clarified - Or Didn't

 

 

There were two significant and one more interesting awards this weekend in regard to the coming Emmys. The most important was the SAG Awards for 2025 which gave a mixed degree of clarity for the year to come. I’ll deal with that last but the other awards shows that happened have given some help in the past: the NAACP Image Awards and The Independent Spirit Awards: both of which took place on Saturday.

The Spirit Awards can be summed up very briefly: Baby Reindeer and Shogun. The former took both Best Male Performance and Best Female Performance for Richard Gadd and Nava Mau respectively. Best Breakthrough Performance went to Jessica Gunning who continued her sweep of almost every major award this year. However the Spirits didn’t do what might be considered natural and give the Best New Series to Baby Reindeer, giving it instead to Shogun. Go figure.

The Image Awards covered a wider net. As expected Abbott Elementary continues to dominate the comedy awards, winning Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Actress for Quinta Brunson. Supporting Actress went to Danielle Pinnock for her work in Ghosts which remains a sleeper possibility for an Emmy down the road. Damon Wayans Sr. and Junior both took prizes for their work in the new series Poppa’s House which has just been renewed for a second season.

Cross took Best Drama while both acting awards in this category when to Power Book II: Ghost: Michael Rainey Jr took Best Actor and Method Man Best Supporting Actor. Queen Latifah prevailed in Best Actress for The Equalizer while Lynn Whitfield took Outstanding Supporting Actress for her incredible work as the crime boss in The Chi.

The big winner for Best Limited Series was Peacock’s Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist which took Best Limited Series., Best Supporting Actor for Samuel L. Jackson and Best Supporting Actress  for Taraji P. Henson. It remains to be seen what the Emmys will think of this series as Best Limited Series has very few other contenders. Naturi Naughton won Best Actress over Sofia Vergara and Aaron Pierre took Lead Actor for Rebel Ridge.

Outstanding Breakthrough Creative went to Ayo Edebiri for her work in The Bear and that is by far the most likely to have an impact on the Emmys later this year. Writing doesn’t really tell us much though the fact that No Good Deed prevailed in comedy may be telling. As for directing none of the major candidates are likely to contend for Emmys, though it is still likely that the directors for Monsters will be in contention down the road.

Now let’s move on to the SAG Awards which I saw last night.

First of all for the third consecutive awards show this winter we once again get proof that the best man to hose any awards show is a woman. While Kristen Bell is not the kind of comedian that Nikki Glaser or Chelsea Handler has been, she spent the night in a similar aura of satire. Unlike Glaser or Handler, her humor was more a gentle poke in the ribs – and she was by far her biggest target.

This was clear after the monologue when she sang: “Do you want to be an Actor?” showcasing scenes from the earliest performances of some of the major performers that like a proud mother showing her children’s most embarrassing baby pictures. (In some cases this was nearly literal: Kieran Culkin was shown his film debut in Father of The Bride.) At the end of it she turned the lens on herself in a public service announcement that she filmed as a child.

Bell’s appearances were in relation to the running gag of who her favorite co-star was which took the full lens of almost every major Bell role in the last quarter of a century to hysterical effect. William Jackson Harper and Ted Danson had the Challengers like scene with Bell we never knew we needed; Jason Segel satirized his memorable scene from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (mercifully clothed) and saying “I discovered you, Bell did a scene with Leighton Meester in which she parodied her voice over in Gossip Girl and finally Adam Brody came out to remind her he’s her favorite co-star showing ‘his signature move’ from Nobody Wants This. We then saw Bell cut to various other romantic scenes in her career from House of Lies to The Good Place and said: “I guess I have a signature movie.”

There were more than a few montages during the night as expect, with a montage for LA in tribute to what it had been through this year. But every time it was undercut with humor. After that one Jack Quaid and Joey King came out and then satirized their own LA experience. Quaid said: “We can lead you to the nearest dispensary within a hundred yards….which might include Joey’s person.” King nodded and told them that they could find a place to get anything from lipstick to your social media scrubbed “and in some cases all from the same person.” Then both King and Quaid said: “Matty Matheson!”

The best part was a tribute to all of the great actors who had appeared in Law & Order which was both genuine and satirical. Tony Hale said that his parents said “Law & Order is the only show you’ve been on we can understand.” Then Colman Domingo and Keke Palmer came out immediately afterwards and tried to play a drinking game “Everybody who’s been on Law & Order take a shot” while Domingo said that if that happened “everyone in the ballroom would get drunk.” Palmer then asked everyone who’d been on the flagship series, SVU and Criminal Intent to take a shot – and then focused her attention on The Bear’s table. (I remember Jeremy Allen White’s role.) There will also tributes to soap operas which showed more than its share of talent in the room and a tribute to Scream Queens which was a lead up to Jamie Lee Curtis coming out.

There was a general sense of amusement throughout the night, from Quinta Brunson coming out with Andrew Scott and saying “Male actors don’t get enough credit” to considerable laughter. Kerry Washington and Keri Russell came out to present Best Female Actor in A Movie/Limited Series to great acclaim and Zoey Deschanel and Max Greenfield stole the show with their banter from New Girl. Max said he hadn’t talked to Lamorne since he won his Emmy for Fargo and Max said “be sure to know how much your co-stars get per episode.” When Zoey said: “But we all get the same amount” Max critiqued her as if she was Jess. Sadly what should have the highpoint – David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson coming out to present Best Dramatic Ensemble – was blundered by Duchovny who seemed a little drunk.

As for the awards for television there was a trend in the majority of the awards that has been continuing since the Emmys – with some key exceptions. As expected Shogun was the big winner, taking Best Dramatic Ensemble, Best Actor for Hiroyuki Sanada and Best Female Actor for Anna Sawai. Sawai was more humble as she knows this is likely the last time she will accept an award for her incredible work on Shogun. When Sanada accepted as part of Best Dramatic Ensemble once again he pointed out how much work it had been to do a series that was primarily in Japanese. The platitude “acting is truly the universal language” rarely has had a deeper meaning than that night.

Jessica Gunning was a not quite surprise winner for Outstanding Female Actor in a TV Movie/Limited Series. Her speech, as has been the trend, was moving particularly as she talked about her early days. She said that she had once had a power point with actors she wanted to be among and that her fellow nominees Jodie Foster, Cate Blanchett and Kathy Bates were all on that power point. She then shouted out to Cristin Milioti and Jessica Gunning.

When Colin Farrell won his Outstanding Male Actor in a Limited Series, it was fun from the start. Jamie Lee Curtis who presented it preceded it with: “The man who gave me Covid at the Golden Globes (no doubt in 2023 when both were nominated). When Farrell reached the stage he said: “Guilty as charged! But Brendan Gleeson gave it to me first!” This time Farrell went out of his way to thank not only his fellow actors but his actual family, many of whom were in the audience and were workers themselves. He concluded by thanking his two sons and promising “We’ll finish Shogun when I get home.”

It was in the comedy awards that we had by far the biggest shocks of the night. No surprise that Jean Smart finished her sweep of Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy and yet again she was absent. (They need to finish Season 4.) Then we got a rumble in Outstanding Male Actor in a Comedy. The winner was neither Adam Brody nor Jeremy Allan White but Martin Short for Only Murders in the Building.  Short is now the third different winner in this category in three different awards shows: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy is now completely wide open.

But if that was a rumble, Outstanding Comedic Ensemble was an earthquake. The winner was not Hacks as everyone, including myself, presumed it would be but rather Only Murders in the Building. Selena Gomez was stunned beyond belief when she came up onstage: “But we never win anything!” she said almost giggling. She thanked Steve Martin and Martin Short “who raised me”. (Both were absent filming Season 5 and I seriously think Gomez would have been absent too had she not been nominated as Best Film Ensemble for Emilia Perez.)

In hindsight it’s not so much stunning that Murders won but that it’s taken this long to win this particular prize: I don’t think there’s ever been any comedy since The Good Place that has had such an incredible cast of regulars and recurring guest stars used to such effect. No one can deny the immense talent of the winners each past year (Ted Lasso in 2022; Abbott Elementary in 2023; The Bear in 2024) but seriously any show that has Meryl Streep as a recurring role in Season 3 and only gets more elaborate from there really deserves recognition.

And notably Only Murders is the first show to win any major award (Comedy, Drama, Limited Series) that will be eligible for Emmys in 2025. Whether this will dislodge Hacks from the frontrunner status for Outstanding Comedy Series this September from Season 4 remains to be seen; it may just be a blip on the radar. What is clear after the major awards is that Jeremy Allan White’s has far less of a chance of a three-peat then he did at the beginning of it.  This is also the second major awards show where The Bear went home empty handed. Is it finally going to start coming in second going forward? We’ll have to see.

This weekend more or less concludes Phase One of Emmy Watch 2025. We’ll have to wait until the next phase of awards nominations – which will include the Television Critics Association, BAFTA and The Peabodys to see if we can get more of a handle on what will be contending in the next few months.  Considering that we can no longer look at what happened in the 2023-2024 season, both Drama and Limited Series nominees will start to focus in the weeks and months to come. Stay tuned.