2019 Emmy Predictions

My super early Emmy predictions post is my oldest tradition on this blog and one of my favorites. And it is exactly what it sounds like. With the Emmy Awards for 2018 handed out only a day ago, I'm going to make 10 predictions about the 2019 Emmys based on speculation about shows I do and don't know about that will air in the next year (technically, the next 10 months). Then, on Emmy night in 2019, I'll see how I did as part of my Emmy post-mortem post.

(Thanks to a few delayed premieres, I'll be reusing a few of  these that I didn't get to use last year)

HBO wins the big four series awards (drama, comedy, limited series, variety talk series)

This is even less of a bold claim than it was when I made it last year.

Game of Thrones just won the Drama Series Emmy despite taking a year off. In 2019, it will be nominated for what's sure to be a massive final season.

Veep - winner in 2015, 2016, and 2017 - took this year off and will return in for its final season.

Sharp Objects will be eligible for Limited Series and should get a nomination easily off the strength of Amy Adams' performance alone.

Last Week Tonight won in 2016, 2017, and 2018. There's no reason to think it won't win in 2019.

The only one of these four that feels at all vulnerable is the Limited Series award.

Julia Louis Dreyfus goes for seven and history.

JLD is tied for the most Emmys won by an individual performer ever. Her run of six consecutive wins for Lead Actress on Veep is hard to even put in context. It's baffling. In 2019, she'll be nominated for her final season on an Emmy juggernaut series. Oh, and before you think that Emmy fatigue will work against her, she's also battling through cancer.

Someone new from Veep is nominated

The roster of supporting talent is so deep on that show, it feels like someone other than Tony Hale, Matt Walsh, or Anna Chlumsky is bound to get nominated.

None of the 2018 acting winners in Comedy and Drama repeat

This sounds bolder than it is.

Lead Actor - Comedy. Barry is such a specific and dark show that it could easily fall off in season 2. I suspect Hader won by a slim margin to begin with.

Lead Actress - Comedy. Julia Louis Dreyfus will be back in the mix to take it from Rachel Brosnahan.

Supporting Actor - Comedy. Now that Henry Winkler, the legend, has his Emmy, they are likely to look to someone else.

Supporting Actress - Comedy. This felt like a career achievement Emmy for Alex Bornstein. This is regularly one of the deepest and most competitive categories. The margins are slim.

Lead Actor - Drama. The Americans ended. Rhys won't be back.

Lead Actress - Drama. Claire Foy's tenure as the queen has ended.

Supporting Actor - Drama. Dinklage hasn't won back-to-back yet. I'd even argue that his win this year was the result of a very weak set of nominees.

Supporting Actress - Drama. Thandie Newton probably should've been a lead and likely won because The Handmaid's Tale nominees cannibalized the vote.

So, yeah. I'm feeling OK about this prediction.

HBO overtakes Netflix in total nominations

Netflix ended HBO's 483 year run as the most nominated network this year. It barely edged HBO out (112-108). Netflix's nomination count has been growing at an insane rate (34 in 2015, 54 in 2016, 91 in 2017, and 112 in 2018). They are bound to hit a wall soon. HBO should be fine with the likes of Game of Thrones, Veep, and Sharp Objects expected to do very well all over the board. Looking at Netflix's nominations this year, can they rely on  three nominations in Children's Programming every year? And Amazon and Hulu are getting better at playing the game too. Look for them to take more of the low-hanging-fruit nominations that Netflix has been gobbling up the last few years. Maybe the documentary awards will even get interesting to track.

Someone new from Game of Thrones wins for acting

Peter Dinklage is the only person to win so far, but six different cast members have been nominated at some point (two more for guest roles). Emilia Clark and Lena Heady even have multiple nominations. A win for someone other than Dinklage becomes statistically probable at some point*.

*Please ignore Mad Men's track record.

Between Outstanding Reality-Competition Program and Variety Talk Series, there will be three new nominees.

These are painfully dull categories. Reality-Competition has only had two new nominees in six years. Thanks to weird category-splitting, Variety Talk Series has been slightly more dynamic over that time, but this year, it only had one "new" nominee*. Three new nominees among the two would be a major injection of new blood.

And, I should clarify that any show with a new host would count as new. Late Night with Seth Meyers isn't the same as Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The same goes for if Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn's new show replaces Project Runway.

*The return of The Daily Show, with Trevor Noah instead of Jon Stewart, which had 15 consecutive nominations from 2001-2015.

The Amazing Race falls out of the Reality Competition field.

This ties directly into my last prediction. The Amazing Race has been nominated every year since the Reality Competition Emmy was created (2003). It has to fall out of the field eventually.

Regina King continues her nomination streak.

I don't even know what Regina King's schedule looks like. She has three wins from four consecutive nominations between two shows since 2015. She just won for a cancelled Netflix series that no one watched. She will find a way to get nominated in 2019, be it lead, supporting, guest, or short-form.

Constance Wu gets nominated

I might as well have one longshot. Wu has been great for three seasons on Fresh Off the Boat. Crazy Rich Asians came too late to give her a bump this year, although she did present an award. Ideally, she'll get a long overdue nomination for Fresh Off the Boat, but a guest acting nomination (for a SNL hosting gig, maybe) would be nice too.