Pete Hammond: Last News

The winners in the Emmy Lead Actor In A Comedy Series category for 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021 are once again in the race. The only catch is it could be one of three people: Donald Glover who took it in 2017, Bill Hader who nabbed it in 2018 and 2019, or Jason Sudeikis who won last year. Voters have given us all sorts of reasons to make a prediction for one of this trio. The other three in this year’s race are first-time nominees in the category, but two of them are true veteran showbiz icons. This group of heavy hitters presents us with a category that is not at all easy to prognosticate, one that could go any which way.

Two past winners compete against four challengers with varying degrees of Emmy history. The main question hovering over this entire category is just how much of a lock Jean Smart is, and if there is possibly anyone who can beat her to what would be a fifth overall Emmy win and second in a row for Hacks. The untried contenders are Elle Fanning and Quinta Brunson, the latter possibly in the same boat as Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who knocked it out of the park winning four Emmys for Fleabag, including this one. Can Abbott Elementary’s star/creator/writer Brunson achieve a similar feat?

Without question, the Limited Series area has become perhaps the most prestigious, and certainly the richest, of all the Emmy program categories. There can also be no question that the range of Limited Series nominees — with only five allowed rather than the eight in expanded Comedy Series and Drama Series — is also limited, and there is a movement to bring it in line with those categories. They should definitely do that, as it is a category that continues to explode with contenders representing the best work on television today. Four of the five nominees this year  — three of them from upstart Hulu — revolve around real people. And then there is the outlier, which stands out as the total opposite of the others but earned the most nominations by far.

In what is often the case, a group of actors known perhaps more for their work on the big screen than on the small screen managed to land most of the six Emmy nomination slots in the Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology or TV Movie category. Featuring a past Spider-Man, a past Batman and a past denizen of the Star Wars galaxy, not to mention a Best Actor Oscar winner, we have a lot of big names who also spent time in some unique television projects that called upon other acting skills. Only two of them are in Limited Series that also landed a nomination for the show itself in the main category, so voters clearly did a lot of sampling. Four of them got their first Emmy nomination ever, and none have ever won.

The 79th edition of the Venice Film Festival kicked off Wednesday night with an emotional opening ceremony celebrating 90 years of the event, the world’s oldest festival that first launched in 1932.

This is a choice category this year that leans, like its male counterpart, to some heavyweight names playing other heavyweight names. It has clearly been a great year for female roles in Limited Series if you simply consider some of the women who didn’t make the cut, including Julia Roberts who was sensational as Martha Mitchell in Gaslight, Jessica Biel as the murderous Texas housewife in Candy, Elle Fanning as the conflicted Michelle Carter who talked her boyfriend into suicide in The Girl From Plainville, Oscar winners Anne Hathaway, Renée Zellweger, and on and on. But let’s now take the contest to those still standing in this highly competitive category.

After struggling the past couple of years with Emmy campaigning in virtual lockdown, and with no in-person events or Q&As allowed by the Television Academy, things have gone back to ‘normal’. The pandemic protocol meant the 20,000-some voters in the Academy were relegated to participating in virtual online sessions where the opportunity for networking and word-of-mouth was greatly reduced.

For our final TV Talk podcast of the Emmy season, naturally Deadline Chief Film Critic and Awards Columnist Pete Hammond and Deadline Chief TV Critic Dominic Patten thought they would take a shot at calling some key races, not just in terms of what will win, but also in their individual views what should win.

‘We actually have the answers,” jokes Pete Hammond on what needs to be repaired by the TV Academy in today’s TV Talk podcast. “We want to talk about what we would do fix some of these egregious problems here,” Deadline’s Awards columnist adds.

Writer Sarah Burgess and star Sarah Paulson said they were trying to understand and depict what motivated Linda Tripp in Impeachment: American Crime Story. The FX limited series depicts the impeachment hearings of President Bill Clinton (Clive Owen) after his affair with Monica Lewinsky (Beanie Feldstein). Paulson plays Tripp, who recorded Lewinsky’s phone calls with Clinton and gave them to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr (Dan Bakkedahl).

This week on our Deadline podcast, TV Talk,  Chief TV Critic Dominic Patten and Chief Film Critic and Awards Columnist Pete Hammond continue our discussions on this year’s Emmy nominees, not necessarily ones that have managed to get into the race year after year, or after taking a hiatus, but those charmed shows that make it on their first try. How do you successfully break into a race that often favors the tried and true? Last year for instance the Outstanding Comedy categories produced two new shows, Ted Lasso and Hacks that simply plowed over the rest of the field. They are back this year in their season twos with a combined 37 nominations, but can breakthrough first season standout Abbott Elementary , or 17 time first season nominee Only Murders In The Building triumph on their Emmy race debuts and upset those favorites?  And what about Severance , Squid Game, and Yellowjackets out to crush the chances of past winner Succession in just their first season? What is the secret to Emmy glory for those shows on the first time at bat? We will dive into all of it, plus speaking of the tried and true in terms of Emmy nominations, you will also hear part of my conversation on The Actor’s Side with Killing Eve star Sandra Oh who is up with her 13th nomination for Emmys for the much acclaimed series that went out with a bang. She has never won. Will this be the first time? Listen to our podcast by clicking the link below.

The nominations for the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards were unveiled on July 12, and TV Talk is back to see the small screen trophy race across the finish line.

“I’m just making an argument to make this fascinating to our listeners here,” jokes our Awards Columnist today on Deadline’s TV Talk podcast.

Fulwell 73, the production company behind The Late Late Show with James Corden, would like to continue producing the CBS series when its current host steps down next year.

Comedy is the subject today for this week’s edition of Deadline’s podcast, TV Talk. Deadline TV critic Dominic Patten and Awards Columnist and Chief Film Critic Pete Hammond take on the Emmy Awards race for Best Comedy Series, where Apple TV+’s juggernaut Ted Lasso is looking for a two-peat after taking the category in its first season last year.

The tight race for one of Emmy’s most prestigious categories, Outstanding Drama Series, is the topic for this week’s edition of Deadline’s podcast, TV TALK.  Awards Columnist and Chief Film Critic Pete Hammond and Deadline TV critic Dominic Patten go at it in trying to make sense of the contenders, and who may have the edge – or not. Last year the winner was Netflix’s The Crown which finally triumphed after several tries and led to a breakthrough in the category for the first time for the streamer. However, as is the case with so many series that take a year off – or more – and then return to the contest, The Crown is not eligible to defend its Emmy crown this time around.

Deadline TV critic Dominic Patten and Awards Columnist Pete Hammond take on the status of a major staple of broadcast tv, talk shows, and their status as this year’s Emmy race gears up. It is all in our latest edition of the Deadline Podcast series, TV Talk. We argue that maybe it is time for some new blood in the winners circle.

On this week’s edition of the Deadline Podcast series, TV Talk,  Deadline’s television critic Dominic Patten and Awards columnist Pete Hammond take on network broadcast tv’s Emmy dilemna. Although the Television Academy heavily relies on fees from the four broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) who share the annual Primetime Emmy telecast on a rotating wheel, it is each of those networks that benefit the least from Emmy attention in the major marquee categories of  Drama, Comedy, Limited Series, and other categories which almost exclusively cater to pay cable networks like HBO or streamers like Netflix, Apple, Hulu, Amazon and others who have simply – and successfully – crashed and taken over bragging rights for TV’s most valued award which when the wheel with rights to telecast the Emmys was originally created, the Primetime Emmys was dominated by nominees and winners from those TV networks. My how times have changed.

The state of Netflix has become the subject of endless media speculation and investor worry as their value on Wall Street started plummeting dramatically late last month.  The streamer has even floated the once verboten (for them) idea of an ad-supported version to help stem the bleeding, and all of this seemingly is affecting the public and industry perceptions of the steaming behemoth.

Lady Gaga has released “Hold My Hand,” the power ballad she co-penned and performs for Paramount/Skydance’s upcoming Top Gun: Maverick which has its world premiere on Wednesday in San Diego. Attendees at CinemaCon in Las Vegas got their first taste of the song when the Tom Cruise sequel screened for exhibition last Thursday, and it’s another in Gaga’s and the Top Gun canon that could go all the way to the Oscars.

“There are so many good things, so many different kind of series here,” says Deadline’s Awards Columnist and Chief Film Critic Pete Hammond on today’s TV Talk of the Limited Series contenders for this year’s Emmys.