They’re far from the most prestigious categories on the Emmy ballot. They don’t even get presented on the main Emmys telecast. But year in and year out, the Guest Actor and Guest Actress categories present some of the most wide-open and fascinating races, where Oscar darlings like Lily Gladstone compete against other Oscar darlings like Olivia Colman. Some of these actors are taking on meaty, episode-shifting roles, and others are just playing bizarro versions of themselves in a cheeky cameo. They might be the guest of the week in a crime procedural, or one of several A-list cameos brought in to make a prestige drama feel even more prestigious, or an SNL host. It’s bedlam!
To qualify for the Guest categories, a performer needs to have been in fewer than half of the season’s episodes. That’s really the only hurdle, so it often leads to regular cast members who were simply only in a handful of episodes getting nominated — think Samira Wiley and Alexis Bledel for The Handmaid’s Tale or Joan Cusack on Shameless. This year, the Guest Actor categories are playing a major role in the campaign of one of this year’s biggest shows — that’d be The Bear. It’s a narrative that strikes at the heart of one of the rare criticisms that came the show’s way last year, and has only been exacerbated with the just-released third season.
The Bear’s more-is-more approach to guest stars in season two led some of the more cynical observers to suggest that the show was baiting the hook for Emmy voters, a tried-and-true strategy that’s worked for shows from Succession (Guest Actor nods for the likes of Alexander Skarsgård, Adrien Brody, and James Cromwell) to 30 Rock (Matt Damon, Jon Hamm, Steve Martin, Steve Buscemi) to Glee (Gwyneth Paltrow, Kristin Chenoweth, Neil Patrick Harris). Hell, you don’t even need to be that cynical to look at the way The Bear hauled out Jamie Lee Curtis, Bob Odenkirk, John Mulaney, Sarah Paulson, and Gillian Jacobs to join Jon Bernthal (season one’s guest-star gambit) to take part in the overstuffed, nerve-jangling “Fishes” episode.
This isn’t to disparage The Bear’s guest stars. Odenkirk and Mulaney were quite good in “Fishes” and Will Poulter and Olivia Colman were phenomenal elsewhere in the season. But anybody who bristled at The Bear over-salting the sauce with guest stars last year couldn’t have been happy with season three doubling down with pro wrestlers, half the buzzy chefs in Chicago, and more ultra-intense Jamie Lee Curtis. Nomination voting closed before season three dropped, so such gripes won’t be reflected in this year’s nominees. As we mentioned here a few weeks ago, there is a very real chance that The Bear gets nearly everybody they submitted for a nomination onto the final ballot. At the very least, Bernthal, Mulaney, and Odenkirk should land Guest Actor (with Poulter waiting in the wings), while Curtis, Colman, and perhaps Paulson get into Guest Actress.
The Bear’s biggest competition in these categories comes from Saturday Night Live, a show all too accustomed to flooding the ballot with starry guest hosts. In the last five years, SNL has amassed 20 nominations and four wins in Guest Actor and Guest Actress in a comedy, for Eddie Murphy (2020), Dave Chappelle (2021), and Maya Rudolph back to back (2020-2021). This year, the show placed every single host from season 49 on the nomination ballot. That means Emmy voters could easily spam their ballots with SNL options … or the competition for votes could dilute the show’s totals. Among this year’s hosts, Ryan Gosling stands out strongest on the Guest Actor side, with his Beavis & Butthead sketch going aggressively viral. I’d also give a boost to Adam Driver, since he was a nominee for hosting in 2020, and Pete Davidson, since returning former cast members (Murphy, Adam Sandler, Bill Hader, and John Mulaney) tend to do well in this category. This is also why Rudolph, Kate McKinnon, and Kristen Wiig have good odds to show up in Guest Actress (especially Wiig for the Jumanji sketch). Voters could also drift toward Emma Stone and Ayo Edebiri, who are expected to be nominated elsewhere on the ballot (for The Curse and The Bear, respectively).
The predicted dominance of The Bear and Saturday Night Live in Comedy’s Guest categories puts pretty much anybody else in the realm of wishful thinking, but some wishes are more likely to come true than others. That’s because this category is where the oft-Emmy-nominated come to pad their gaudy stats. (Of Cloris Leachman’s record-holding 22 acting nominations, ten came from Guest Actress; eight of Michael J. Fox’s 18 career noms have been as a Guest; and all eight of Nathan Lane’s career Emmy nods have been Guest.) This year, Tina Fey is sitting on seven (could get her eighth for Only Murders in the Building) while Maya Rudolph has six (could be seven if she’s nominated for SNL).
This year, Ted Danson could get his 19th career nomination for his guest appearance on Curb Your Enthusiasm, though it would be his first ever for Curb, where he’s played a fictional version of himself since the show’s first season. Curb could also land Allison Janney her 16th nomination — and a chance to tie Leachman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus with a record eighth win. Comedy legend Mel Brooks could pick up a 15th career nomination for his brief appearance on Only Murders in the Building, John Goodman his 12th for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and Candice Bergen her tenth for her return to the Sex and the City universe in And Just Like That … A Guest Actor nomination for Sam Waterston for Law & Order would not only be the ninth in his career, but it would also mark the swan song of his L&O character, Jack McCoy.
I’d also expect twice-nominated J. Smith-Cameron to get a nod for playing Deborah Vance’s sister on Hacks — speaking of which, with Hannah Einbinder the front-runner to win Supporting Actress in a Comedy, she might as well get a guest nod for playing a White House social secretary on Julia. Abbott Elementary is still expected to get major nominations this year, so it wouldn’t be a huge shock if the show’s big stunt cameo sidles in. That would be, in case you forgot, Bradley Cooper, playing himself in the episode that aired after the Oscars.
Then there are the longer shots: Will Ferrell and Andy Samberg committing to the bit as withered old courtside-seat holders Lou Adler and Jimmy Goldstein on John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A. Since Richard Kind doesn’t qualify as a guest for that show, let’s give him a nod for playing himself in Girls5Eva. The list of Reservation Dogs hopefuls in the Guest categories is long, even with Ethan Hawke not submitting himself: Lily Gladstone and Wes Studi would seem to stand the best chance, but Graham Greene, Zahn McClarnon, and Kaniehtiio Horn all make for deserving nominees. Finally, there’s the matter of one Peri Gilpin, who put in 11 seasons on the original run of Frasier and was the only main cast member to never receive an Emmy nomination. Now a guest star on the rebooted series, here’s a chance for voters to right a historical wrong.
All this fuss about the Comedy categories ironically leaves very little drama for the drama categories. The top-contending shows did not submit very many people for Guest Actor/Actress consideration. Shōgun only offered up Nestor Carbonell playing a Portuguese sailor in Guest Actor and Yûko Miyamoto as shrewd madam Gin in Guest Actress. The Crown only submitted Claire Foy as flashback Queen Elizabeth, while Slow Horses is banking on Jonathan Pryce as Cartwright’s grandfather. The Morning Show submitted a returning Marcia Gay Harden (just one small scene, but were we ever grateful for it) and Natalie Morales, who played a whistleblowing tech worker and longtime friend to Greta Lee’s Stella. She’s probably not that likely to get nominated, and that’s a shame, as she’s been a near-constant presence on TV for more than 15 years in everything from The Middleman and White Collar to guest turns on Parks and Recreation, Girls, and The Newsroom, yet she’s somehow never received an Emmy nom.
The freshman dramas that did flood the ballot with Emmy nominees stand farther on the fringes of the major-category races, making their overall chances pretty dicey. Mr. & Mrs. Smith submitted ten guest performers, including Sarah Paulson, Wagner Moura, Michaela Coel, John Turturro, Sharon Horgan, and Parker Posey, though the most intriguing might be Paul Dano as “Hot Neighbor.” Meanwhile, Elsbeth, in classic procedural fashion, featured new guests every week, submitting 12 names for its ten-episode first season, including Emmy faves Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jane Krakowski, and Linda Lavin.
Because the Drama races are so open, there’s more room for those wishful-thinking long shots. Michael Emerson, an Emmy winner from his Lost days and a former Guest Actor in a Drama winner for The Practice, would make for a super deserving nominee for his turn as Dr. Siggi Wilzig in Fallout. Glenn Close may be famously bereft of an Oscar, but she’s a three-time Emmy winner and 14-time nominee, so don’t count out her performance in The New Look.
Ultimately, the Guest Actor categories will offer two very different conversations this year. Comedy is going to be all about how well The Bear performs, with its Guest nods playing into that show’s arc of dominance over this year’s ballot. In the Drama categories, because so few shows can dominate, the reactions will likely focus on smaller stories. Maybe it’ll be the long-awaited recognition for deserving actors like Carbonell and Morales; maybe it’ll be good showings for middle-tier shows like Elsbeth and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Maybe it’ll be both! Unlike in Comedy, that narrative will encompass more than just one or two shows.
Personally, the pair of prospective nominees to which I’m most partial might on the surface look like a deeply random pair of cameos of people playing themselves. But Rachel Ray and Vincent Pastore are so committed to that almost-too-real talk-show scene in the season finale of The Curse that I think they both deserve Emmys. Make it happen!
It’s a long shot, but Bruce Springsteen does appear on the ballot for his performance as himself on the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where he catches COVID from Larry. A surprise nomination for Springsteen would not only be awesome on principle, but would give the Boss his career non-competitive EGOT: He’s got an Oscar for “Streets of Philadelphia,” a bunch of Grammys, and a special non-competitive Tony for Springsteen on Broadway from 2018.
Meanwhile, a fun fact: Of the list of people who are one element away from a competitive EGOT (a.k.a. the real EGOT), there are only eight people for whom an Emmy would complete the list. It is by far the shortest of the four lists (40 people still need that Oscar). Of those eight people, six are dead, and two are Pasek and Paul, who, as we mentioned last week, could seal the deal with a win for their “Pickwick Triplets” song from Only Murders in the Building.
EGOT Watch
It’s a long shot, but Bruce Springsteen does appear on the ballot for his performance as himself on the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where he catches COVID from Larry. A surprise nomination for Springsteen would not only be awesome on principle, but would give the Boss his career non-competitive EGOT: He’s got an Oscar for “Streets of Philadelphia,” a bunch of Grammys, and a special non-competitive Tony for Springsteen on Broadway from 2018.
Meanwhile, a fun fact: Of the list of people who are one element away from a competitive EGOT (a.k.a. the real EGOT), there are only eight people for whom an Emmy would complete the list. It is by far the shortest of the four lists (40 people still need that Oscar). Of those eight people, six are dead, and two are Pasek and Paul, who, as we mentioned last week, could seal the deal with a win for their “Pickwick Triplets” song from Only Murders in the Building.
