Robert Downey Jr, Da’Vine Joy Randolph Help Set New Record for Oscar-Emmy Double Nominations

The list of acting nominees for this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards also includes six actors who were nominated for Academy Awards in January of this year, a record-breaking overlap between the two awards shows for a single year.  

Two of the four Oscar acting winners are also nominated for Emmys: Robert Downey Jr., who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for “Oppenheimer,” is among the favorites to win an Emmy in the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie category for his performance as five different characters in “The Sympathizer,” and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, an Oscar winner for “The Holdovers,” was nominated for guesting on “Only Murders in the Building.”

Other recent Oscar nominees who are now up for Emmys are Ryan Gosling, who was nominated for an Oscar for “Barbie” and now an Emmy for hosting “Saturday Night Live”; Lily Gladstone, nominated for the film “Killers of the Flower Moon” and the limited series “Under the Bridge”; Jodie Foster, for the film “Nyad” and the series “True Detective: Night Country”; and Sterling K. Brown, nominated for an Oscar for “American Fiction” and an Emmy for his voiceover work in “Invincible.”

Other Oscar nominees that were on the Emmy ballot but weren’t nominated include Emma Stone, Bradley Cooper, Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo and Paul Giamatti.

If Downey or Randolph win the Emmy, they’ll join a very short list of performers who have won Oscar and Emmy acting awards in the same calendar year, with previous double-dippers including Helen Hunt (an Oscar for “As Good as it Gets” and an Emmy for “Mad About You” in 1997) and Helen Mirren (Oscar for “The Queen” and Emmy for “Prime Suspect” in 2007). 

The six Oscar/Emmy nominees make this the first year in which that many Oscar nominated actors went on to receive Emmy nominations. Previously, the strongest Oscar-Emmy overlap came in 1980, when Peter O’Toole, Judd Hirsch, Ellen Burstyn and Eileen Brennan were nominated for both awards, and 1983, when John Lithgow, Jane Alexander, Glenn Close and Alfre Woodard did it.

Over the history of the two awards, about 80 actors have scored both nominations in the same calendar year. José Ferrer was the first to do it at the third Emmys in 1951, when he landed a Best Actor nomination about two months before winning the Oscar for “Cyrano de Bergerac.” (At that point, the Emmy nomination did not name a specific program for which he was being honored.)

Others who have landed both nominations in the same calendar year include George C. Scott, who did it three times; Peter Falk, Lee Grant and Olivia Colman, who did it twice; as well as Julie Andrews, Laurence Olivia, John Gielgud, Laura Dern, Frances McDormand, Forest Whitaker, Matt Damon, Melissa McCarthy, Julia Roberts, Matthew McConaughey, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Sam Rockwell, Andrew Garfield and Anthony Hopkins. With TV no longer holding any kind of stigma for film actors, the last decade has seen more back-to-back Oscar and Emmy nominations than any other period of time.

Last year, though, Angela Bassett was the only performer to score both noms. She was recognized by the Oscars in the Best Supporting Actress category for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” and by the Emmys for her narration of the documentary “Good Night Oppy.” 

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