Emmy Experts Typing: Can Maya Rudolph take down Jamie Lee Curtis?

Welcome to Emmy Experts Typing, a weekly column in which Gold Derby editors and Experts Joyce Eng and Christopher Rosen discuss the Emmy race — via Slack, of course. This week, we discuss the guest categories.

Christopher Rosen: Hello, Joyce! It’s our last chat before Emmy voting closes and we’re looking at the guest acting races, which may be more compelling than the regular acting competitions. Or is that even true? According to the odds, Claire Foy, Nestor Carbonell, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jon Bernthal are comfortably ahead of their nearest competitors — and I could sit here and type rational reasons for why each one of those actors will go on to victory. But after last year, when Sam Richardson and Storm Reid emerged as upset winners largely discounted by the odds, I feel like we’ll have at least two big surprises during the Creative Arts Emmys weekend if not more. On the drama side of things, I’ve still got Foy in first — although you’ve made a compelling case before for Michaela Coel, and I’ll let you stump for her in a moment. But for Best Drama Guest Actor, I’ve zagged and gone with your favorite “Slow Horses” star Jonathan Pryce. We’ve talked about how “Slow Horses” over-performed, hitting several key nominations including three in the acting categories. It’s a show on the ascent with Emmy voters and Pryce is a double nominee this year as he’s also up for “The Crown.” It just feels like he’d have a better case for a win than Carbonell, who — while delightful — is kind of an afterthought on “Shōgun.” (Plus, I’d almost prefer him to win an Emmy for “The Morning Show” if he ever wins one.) I think the “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” twosome of John Turturro and Paul Dano are also somewhat win-competitive as well, and while I could see Turturro taking this one as well — I just feel that Dano would steal some of his thunder because Hot Neighbor is just such a memorable character on the show. All of which is to type that there are basically four guys here who could win — no disrespect to Tracy Letts, a deserved nominee, but I’d be very surprised if he won here for “Winning Time” — and while Pryce doesn’t have the strongest show, he has the strongest character. Might that be enough for him to pull off the upset? After you tell me why both of these categories might go to “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” answer me this: Is Curtis really as locked in to win for “The Bear” as we assume?

joyceeng: It feels wrong to not predict Foy after what she did in 2021, but it in retrospect, it feels like the impending sweep by “The Crown” carried her to a name-check win, and the show is obviously not as strong now as it was with Season 4. That doesn’t mean she can’t win again, but her competition also feels stronger now too, namely with the “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” trio (no offense to Marcia Gay Harden). Back then, she was up against Alexis Bledel and Mckenna Grace from “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which ended up going 0-21 to become the biggest Emmy loser in a single year, Sophie Okonedo as the sole acting nominee for “Ratched,” and Phylicia Rashad for “This Is Us,” which was already on the downswing with voters (who also seemed to prefer the show’s male guest stars). I went with Coel because she has the most complete arc of the three, and while I want Dano to have an Emmy engraved with “Paul Dano as Hot Neighbor,” I did Turturro because… he’s John Turturro. And not to just go off of one year, but to go off of just one year, “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” is guest-forward like “The Last of Us” is. Obviously Nick Offerman was way more of a frontrunner than any “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” nominee, but I can see it pulling off the double the same way. Pryce is a sharp pick and I would honestly feel better about him if Season 4 of “Slow Horses” were already out because he’s all over it. Carbonell feels like he’s is in first place because he’s on “Shōgun” and “Shōgun” is the series favorite, but given how the show “only” received five acting nominations when it was predicted to grab almost double that, I’m erring on the side of caution with him (are there people predicting “Shōgun” to win four acting awards?). As for JLC, she’s still diligently posting about “Fishes” every chance she gets in between “Freakier Friday” content. Our fave is Deborah Vance roast MVP Kaitlin Olson, but dare I say I feel like Maya Rudolph has usurped her for second right now? She’s doing your fave — campaigning hard — and we just wrapped up the Democratic National Convention right in the middle of voting. Curtis is tougher competition than what Rudolph faced in 2020 (which included herself), and I’m not predicting it now, but if Rudolph does win, it would be the kind of upset that’s not really an upset and we would feel goofy for not going with her.

SEE Experts slugfest: Final 2024 Emmy voting begins as Phase 2 campaigning ramps up

Christopher Rosen: We’ve talked about how the voters can be lazy in the guest categories and truly no disrespect to Rudolph, who is a god… but wouldn’t she be the most obvious winner ever, just a total name-check of an Emmy fave who is advantageously back in the news thanks to her impending 2025 Emmy run (and win?) for playing Kamala Harris on “Saturday Night Live” for its 50th anniversary season? I’ve also wondered this: Do voters want to root for the character they’re honoring? Donna is, well, not my fave and her abrasive narcissism is so toxic that it poisons every single person in her life. She’s got a bit of a redemption moment in Season 3, but I could also see some voters so turned off by the character that they pick another actor. Not that I’d have the guts to pick against Curtis, but if she were to lose I wouldn’t be surprised. Where we’re both going against “The Bear” is in the guest actor category, where we’ve got Christopher Lloyd for “Hacks.” Lloyd has never lost an Emmy, going three for three before a 32-year nomination drought until this year. He’s hilarious on “Hacks” and “Hacks” has shown it can win in these guest categories before. Bernthal is another obvious pick, but if he was going to win for “The Bear,” wouldn’t he have benefited from the Season 2 enthusiasm last year? Instead, he lost to Richardson for “Ted Lasso.” Lloyd feels more formidable than Richardson, and I think he would even have the juice over Ryan Gosling, the current runner-up in the odds. “SNL” has won here a lot, but I’m not sure Gosling profiles as an “SNL” winner if that makes sense?

joyceeng: It does. If you look at the list of “SNL” winners across both categories, they are Justin Timberlake (twice), Jimmy Fallon (twice), Dave Chappelle (twice), Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey (twice, one shared with Amy Poehler), Betty White, Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Rudolph (twice). Almost all of these people are associated with comedy first and foremost, if not “SNL” itself. The exception is Timberlake, but he is closely associated with “SNL” because of “Dick in a Box,” which won an Emmy two years before his first guest win. Big-name actors like Gosling who get nominated for “SNL” — Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Matt Damon, Adam Driver — have not triumphed here yet. First time for everything, of course, but I don’t know if this is the year. Bernthal definitely feels like he should’ve gotten the Season 2 booster shot to a win last year after he hilariously submitted the Season 1 finale, in which he appears for, like, four seconds and the Emmys subsequently established the Jon Bernthal Rule, which has screen time requirements for guest eligibility. His impact. But I’m also taking note of “The Bear’s” slight underperformance in acting this year as it missed widely expected nominations for Abby Elliott and Oliver Platt, the latter of whom was looking for a guest-to-supporting transfer. Lloyd is hysterical on “Hacks” — I think about his line readings of “Cicely Tyson” and “Women drivers. Amazing” and laugh to myself not infrequently — and it’s great for him that he’s the lone “Hacks” nominee here when it could’ve yielded more. We haven’t yet mentioned “Only Murders in the Building’s” nominees, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Matthew Broderick. Neither was in the top six in Phase 1 — and Randolph was eighth in the odds and Broderick was 10th — and I don’t think either is winning, but should either be higher than their current respective rankings of fifth and dead last?

SEE Emmy Experts Typing: Is ‘Slow Horses’ a dark horse for multiple wins?

Christopher Rosen: I’m not sure I’d move Broderick, but Randolph was so funny in her brief appearance last year. I wouldn’t move her up either, but based on her performance in the embargoed fourth season, I’d be more bullish on her as a nominee next year. Joyce, I’ll leave you with the last word: who has the best chance of being Sam Richardson ‘24?

joyceeng: Well, since Richardson was dead last in the odds — and so too was Reid — I guess we should keep an eye on Broderick and his fellow underdogs, Harden, Letts and Kristen Wiig. Letts would be the wildest winner of the quartet, but I would love to see it for him and Carrie Coon, and he’d be three-fifths to his PEGOT.

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