“If you want to predict who’s going to win the Emmys this year, you better pay attention to a change in the voting patterns of the past few years that quite frankly is bedeviling all of us,” declares Gold Derby head honcho Tom O’Neil at the start of our editors’ deep dive into — what else? — vote-splitting. Senior editors Marcus James Dixon, Daniel Montgomery and Susan Wloszczyna join the discussion about how vote-splitting could affect some of this year’s Emmy nominees, including actors from “Game of Thrones” and “Killing Eve.” Watch the video above, or scroll down for the podcast version below.
As Montgomery reminds us, in the old Emmy system, “There was ranking of the nominees, so if you were a big fan of ‘Modern Family’ you could take the four [supporting actor] nominees and go first, second, third, fourth — push everyone else down to the bottom and one of the ‘Modern Family’ actors is likely to win.” A few years ago the TV academy switched to a plurality vote “and the difference there is that you’re just picking one winner out of an entire list of nominees,” says Montgomery, which has the effect of dividing support among costars.
So how might this affect the leading ladies of “Killing Eve,” Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer? “Both are gonna get votes, we know that,” predicts Dixon, citing Oh prevailing at the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice and SAG Awards and Comer triumphing at the BAFTA TV Awards. “If this happens that both ladies split the vote, you could see a potential surprise in the category and I think the surprise could be Laura Linney for ‘Ozark.’” He later warns, “We could see something shocking happen here.”
Wloszczyna runs through the list of other potential vote-splits, including “Game of Thrones” supporting actresses Maisie Williams, Lena Headey, Gwendoline Christie and Sophie Turner and supporting actors Peter Dinklage, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Alfie Allen, “Barry” featured actors Henry Winkler, Stephen Root and Anthony Carrigan, plus “Fleagbag” scene-stealers Olivia Colman and Sian Clifford, to name just a handful of instances.
“Alex won last year but it’ll be interesting to see if she can now beat her costar,” announces Wloszczyna, referring to Alex Borstein and Marin Hinkle of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Wloszczyna, who topped all Experts and Editors predicting last year’s Emmy winners, is sticking with Borstein again this year, not believing the vote-split is strong enough in this category to cancel out both Borstein and Hinkle.
O’Neil cites the example of Ben Mendelsohn (“Bloodline”), who lost the Emmy under the old system but shockingly won on the plurality ballot in 2016 because two “Game of Thrones” co-nominees, Dinklage and Kit Harington, likely split the vote. “It was the big Jon Snow year, we thought for sure [Harington] was gonna win!” recalls O’Neil. But all of those “GoT” fans were divided when it came time to cast their votes, and Mendelsohn prevailed.
“We’re still learning” how all of this might affect the various acting races, notes Dixon, “but I think this might be a defining moment where if Sandra Oh doesn’t win, we’ll know why.” BELOW: Listen to the audio podcast version of our chat. Or listen at iTunes, Spotify, Libsyn, Google Play or Stitcher where you can subscribe to our channel.
Be sure to make your Emmy predictions today so that Hollywood insiders can see how their TV shows and performers are faring in our odds. You can keep changing your predictions as often as you like until just before winners are announced on September 22. And join in the fun debate over the 2019 Emmys taking place right now with Hollywood insiders in our television forums. Read more Gold Derby entertainment news.
