In State of the Streamers, Vanity Fair’s Awards Insider goes inside the campaigns of some of this Emmy season’s biggest players—from front-runners to underdogs, on streaming networks both well established and brand new to the game.
For Netflix, this is finally the year—the moment it wins a top program Emmy Award for the first time.
Peter Morgan’s royal drama soared in both acclaim and buzz for its Diana and Charles–centric, Gillian Anderson–boosted fourth season; it has already won the equivalent Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award, and SAG Award.
As talk has spread around Netflix becoming the “CBS” of TV’s streaming era—broad-skewing, a little bit of everything for everyone, not exactly the critical darling of the bunch—the studio suddenly has a ton to prove in an awards context.
Beyond The Crown, which could nearly sweep the performance categories with lead-acting front-runners Josh O’Connor and Emma Corrin and supporting stalwart Anderson, Bridgerton is the most likely first-year show to be nominated in the category, and its breakout Regé-Jean Page is similarly a lead-actor threat.
An Emmy would surely follow, right? Well, the smart money remains on the Scott Frank–helmed chess epic, one of Netflix’s most-watched scripted originals ever, but momentum is on the side of HBO’s Mare of Easttown, which built buzz over seven weeks of airings in the late spring—a release model that can help when it comes to eking out a win.
While Netflix has boasted edgy comedies like Russian Doll and Dead to Me in recent years, it’s something of a conservative player among the 2021 group, which will consist largely of freshmen.
The Karate Kid sequel ran as a well-liked YouTube Red confection without much awards attention—save for its stunt coordination—before the network got out of the scripted-programming business.
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