2023 Emmy Predictions: Will Frontrunner Coattails Populate the Drama Guest Acting Races?

Jalal Haddad contributed to this article.

For the true Emmy insider, the Guest performance categories are what separate the novice predictors from the experts.

That said, I’m always convinced whenever someone accurately predicts a nomination or a win for the Guest races it’s by sheer luck. More so the win than the actual nomination. Winners always seem incredibly random and give the sense that voting members of the Television Academy at large don’t really watch the nominated performances.

I know. Clutch your pearls.

The 2021 Guest Actress in a Drama Series Emmy race serves as a prime example of this. Here, the bizarrely Emmy-less Phylicia Rashad received her third consecutive nomination for NBC’s This Is Us for its penultimate season — a nomination she was all but guaranteed to win. Previously, Rashad had only received two nominations for The Cosby Show, losing both. She also failed to win an Emmy for the recreation of her Tony-winning work in A Raisin in the Sun (Laura Linney won for John Adams). This Is Us was shortly wrapping up, so there weren’t many chances left for her to win for the role. Nearly everyone looking at the race pegged her as the inevitable winner.

Other nominees that year included two nominated performances from The Handmaid’s Tale (previous Guest Actress in a Drama Series winner Alexis Bledel and Mckenna Grace) and Ratched‘s Sophie Okonedo, giving in my opinion the very best performance of the nominated actresses. She played Charlotte Wells, a woman suffering from dissociative identity disorder, and she soared with the performance, a complex series of distinct personalities battling for superiority in a damaged psyche.

But Claire Foy, already an Emmy winner for The Crown season two, emerged victorious for her roughly one-and-a-half minute performance as Queen Elizabeth II reading a speech, a performance that holds all of the impact of a postage stamp. The win came during The Crown‘s massive fourth season Emmy haul where the series dominated all four main acting races with only Charles Dance losing a performance Emmy in the Guest Actor in a Drama Series race.

Similar narratives formed recently for acting legends like Cicely Tyson (How to Get Away with Murder) and Diana Rigg (Game of Thrones) who, year after year, were declared the early frontrunners for their dynamite performances only to lose out, year after year.

Foy’s win actually proves a few things about the Guest races. One, they largely don’t watch the performances, and they tend to name check. Two, once they love you, they have a hard time letting go (see also: Cherry Jones). Three, if your series is a B.F.D. in the above-the-line races, then someone from that series is winning one of the Guest performance races. These things have become even more true once the Television Academy shifted their rules away from the panel and ranked choice voting system to the full body voting system.

So with Guest performances, that gives us a few rules to follow to get that Emmy nomination:

Be a Star (See: Brad Pitt for his 2-minute performance as Dr. Anthony Fauci in Saturday Night Live)
Host Saturday Night Live (I’m not even going to list an example. You don’t have that much time.)
Be Cherry Jones
Give Any Kind of Performance in a Conversation-Dominating Series (i.e. #justiceforbarb, Extra Points If You’re Claire Foy (See: The Crown)

With those simple rules in mind, let’s take a look at where the Drama Guest performance categories may land when nominations are announced on July 12. We’ll tackle Comedy Guest performances next week.

Guest Actress in a Drama Series

Claire Foy did appear in The Crown‘s fifth season in a flashback sequence where she launches the Royal Yacht Britannia. She gives a speech, yes, but it’s not of the same heft as her cameo in the previous season. Plus, Season Five just isn’t as strong across the board as Season Four. There’s an inevitable letdown after the peak Diana/Charles marital drama, and the season, as good as it was, struggled to find those water cooler moments that thrilled in Season Four. Many are still predicting her to receive her fourth Emmy nomination, but we think there are a few actors standing in the way.

This year’s inescapable contender has to be HBO’s Succession, and the Guest Actress in a Drama Series race will be populated with multiple actresses from the final season. Check off Cherry Jones for one of the six available slots as the Television Academy will likely name check her for her very strong, however brief, single episode performance. You can also save a slot for Harriet Walter’s performance as Caroline Collingwood. She’s been nominated here twice for Succession, and she makes a huge impression in the series finale, which voting members of the Television Academy most assuredly watched. Plus, she has that fantastic moment in the Logan Roy funeral episode where she assembles the coterie of former Logan wives and lovers. I’d give her the Emmy for that scene alone.

Also featured prominently in that scene is our likely third nominee Hiam Abbass for her work as Marsha, Logan’s estranged third wife, particularly in the episode where she icily confronts Logan’s final girlfriend Kerry (Zoe Winters) who was strangely not submitted for the final season. Hope Davis also appears in the final season and was nominated for her guest role in season three. She could very well show up for the final season over Hiam Abbass because she’s a bigger name, but we’re going both Abbass and Davis because this is Succession‘s year. The sky may not even be the limit.

Standing in Davis’s way are actresses from the other big HBO drama series of 2023, The Last of Us. The fantastic Melanie Lynskey is a stand-out for her 2-episode arc as Kathleen, the leader of a fringe Kansas City contingent rebelling against the government. She’s our fourth guaranteed nominee as The Last of Us will be a huge above-the-line contender, and she’s already a known quantity thanks to her Emmy-worthy work in Showtime’s Yellowjackets. Plus, she’s just a really kind person. I’d like to think that goes somewhere in the end. Anna Torv could see a nomination for The Last of Us as well, but we’re not predicting it. She doesn’t quite yet have the notoriety (I see you Mindhunter hive), and her role, however great she was in it, ended all too soon despite having one of the most impactful moments of the entire first season. Storm Reid also gives a strong performance in a single episode, so she’s also in the conversation for the series.

So what of the sixth slot?

Will it be another Succession long-time cast member, Natalie Gold as Rava Roy? Will The Handmaid’s Tale return to the category with Mckenna Grace, the only contender from the penultimate season in contention? If The Crown were bigger this season, then Vanessa Kirby’s return to the series could receive recognition. Former category winner Carrie Preston is again in contention for The Good Fight (along with the ludicrously overdue Phylicia Rashad for the same series). Ella Purnell returned (and was eaten) in Yellowjackets season two.

No, the final nomination comes down to two wildly different performances: Lizzo in The Mandalorian and Fiona Shaw in Andor. Ironically, it’s very likely that both series will compete for the eighth Drama Series slot. The Mandalorian is the series people know. Andor is the Star Wars series people love this year. But Andor doesn’t have Baby Yoda. But critics and audiences seemed to cool on The Mandalorian‘s third season. Lizzo surprised all last year with her unexpected victory over RuPaul for Competition Program with Lizzo’s Watch Out For the Big Grrrls (although RuPaul still won Host for a Reality or Competition Program). She’s obviously very popular with the Television Academy, and The Mandalorian is that known quantity. But…. Andor could be on the rise, and in the end, I suspect it pulls ahead of Mando for the Drama Series slot. As such, Fiona Shaw may have the slight upper hand as a previous performance Emmy nominee (Killing Eve).

My peer Jalal is going for chaos and predicting Lizzo, but I’m going conservative and predicting Fiona Shaw.

Watch it be Natalie Gold.

Predicted Nominees

Harriet Walter, Succession
Melanie Lynskey, The Last of Us
Cherry Jones, Succession
Hiam Abbass, Succession
Hope Davis, Succession
Fiona Shaw, Andor

Guest Actor in a Drama Series

For the gentlemen, Succession‘s final season promoted Alexander Skarsgård to supporting actor since he appeared in too many episodes to qualify for Guest Actor. That vacates a slot from the previous year’s nominees as with Adrien Brody who did not appear in the final season at all. However, we have to carry forward two guest performances nominated last year. Arian Moayed’s Stewy popped up in several memorable scenes, particularly toward the end of the season as Jeremy Strong’s Kendall tried to shore up his vote. Fresh off of a Tony nomination there’s no way he’s missing out for the final season , although he’s not number one in our book. That falls to James Cromwell who gives an incredibly poignant, honest, and moving Logan Roy eulogy — the eulogy we all wanted to give. He very likely could win after two previous nominations in the category.

Could other Succession actors show up in the vacated slots?

Justin Kirk’s Jeryd Mencken closed the election-focused episode with an election night victory speech that had people talking the next day. He also satisfies that “known quantity” attribute, if he’s not an outright star, having previously been nominated for Angels In America and prominently featured in the Emmy-nominated series Weeds. Ashley Zukerman is the only other Succession actor nominated in the Drama Guest Actor category. While he’s good in his role as Nate, he doesn’t feel like a must-have nomination for the series. He does have a fantastic scene with Strong during the election night pre-game episode, but I don’t think it’s enough to carry him over the top. I’m going with Justin Kirk for the third Succession nomination slot in this category. Again, it’s the coattails effect.

So who else shows up?

You have to reserve two slots for two of the most talked-about performances of the 2023 Emmy season: Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett from The Last of Us. Their sensitive, tragic, and deeply moving flashback episode “Long, Long Time” still captures viewers’ and critics’ attention months after their episode aired. We all loved the fact that The Last of Us paused the infected-influenced gore long enough to embrace two adult men finding love at the end of the world. They each give effortless performances that feel natural and lived-in. The only trouble here is who do you vote for to win? It’s nearly impossible to choose because they’re both so great. That’s why I’m ultimately predicting Cromwell to win, even though it’s heartbreaking to think Offerman and Bartlett’s work may go unrecognized.

And the final slot?

The Mandalorian offers two major names in contention, and if you’re seeing Lizzo show in the Guest Actress race, then you’re likely to see either Jack Black, Christopher Lloyd, Omid Abtahi, Ahmed Best (payback for The Phantom Menace), or previous nominee Giancarlo Esposito (the most likely Mando nominee) who has received both guest and supporting recognition for this role . Many prognosticators look to Andor to fill a slot here, namely with Andy Serkis for his celebrated work in the series’ freshman season. I’ve been down that “Andy Serkis is getting nominated” road before, and I’m not going down it again despite my earlier Shaw prediction.

The Crown offers performances from Timothy Dalton (name recognition but does anyone really remember him in the season), Khalid Abdalla (Dodi Fayed), Alex Jennings (Duke of Windsor), and Prasanna Puwanarajah (Martin Bashir). None of those will likely show as it’s just not The Crown‘s year for that kind of broad support. A nomination for Jon Gries’s performance in The White Lotus would give the Television Academy the opportunity to recognize his work across both seasons. I do feel he’s in contention, but he’s not my final slot.

That honor would go to another series wrapping its multiple Emmy-nominated run, Better Call Saul. Michael McKean, Emmy-winner Aaron Paul, Mark Margolis, Tony Dalton, and Emmy-winner Bryan Cranston make up a compelling roster of potential nominees. It would be unwise to ignore any of them, but I’m putting my bets on Walter White’s return to the Breaking Bad universe for another Emmy nomination.

Jalal is predicting Aaron Paul to receive another Emmy nomination after two wins for his work as Jesse Pinkman.