Awards Seasoning: The 2025 Emmy Nominations and Snubs That Most Annoyed Me

Why would you ignore my beloved vampires like this?

The Emmy nominations dropped yesterday and, generally speaking, critics seem pretty okay with the line-up. Really, that’s the best we hope for when it comes to any awards ceremony. Just don’t embarrass yourselves, guys. The 2024/5 season of television was an embarrassment of riches, and it’s exciting to see shows like The Pitt, The Studio, Nobody Wants This, and Severance do so well. Some nominations are more inexplicable than others, and the inevitable omissions always make us sad. I am resigned to my fate of forever being dedicated to shows that never get awards season attention (shout out to my fellow Fannibals.) 2025 was no exception, so here are the nods and snubs that made me the crankiest.

Everything in Interview with the Vampire

Look, I knew that my favourite show currently on the air wasn't going to dominate Emmys morning. AMC has an awards campaign budget of, like, $15 and some lint, and genre shows that are this queer do not fit with their preferred take on sci-fi/fantasy/horror. Still, the lack of any love for Interview with the Vampire stings. It's a stunningly made and written piece of work that lovingly adapts a beloved novel while still doing its own thing with such iconic material. It reinvented Anne Rice's world without insulting her or losing the foundations of these characters. Every actor was stellar but especially Jacob Anderson and Assad Zaman. The exploration of humanity, desire, identity and power was thrilling. If voters had been paying attention, then they'd know all of this, but apparently gay vampires are out of their skillset. Lestat, baby, they're not good enough for you.

Diego Luna and Stellan Skarsgård for Andor

I have to assume at this moment in time that the Emmys have a grudge against most of the cast of Andor. How else to explain the baffling decision not to nominate the show’s stunning lead, the one who gave, in my opinion, one of the best performances on TV of the 2020s so far. The murderer’s row of character actors on this series was astonishing, helping to ground this show in the thoroughly real as it braved issues of fascism, genocide, and culpability. The snub of Luna really does feel like a snub. The same goes for the lack of Skarsgard, who did some career-best work in Andor, which is saying something because he’s Stellan f*cking Skarsgard. The Emmys aren’t entirely allergic to speculative shows, as evidenced by their continuing love for The Last of Us and that Best Drama nod for Andor. But this might be the most unforgivable omission of the season.

Nothing for The Righteous Gemstones

Danny McBride’s work is probably just a bit too dark and abrasive for Emmy voters (although they did give Nathan Fielder some love this year, which feels very unlike them.) Still, the lack of love for one of the funniest shows of the decade really sucks. Good on Walton Goggins for being one of 76 actors nominated for The White Lotus, but I am going to pretend he got the nod for Uncle Baby Billy (he just needs an 8-ball and $2m.) The Righteous Gemstones ended on a real high note, with some of its funniest ever episodes (Teenjus!) as well as some truly tender character beats. Also, did you know that John Goodman never won an Emmy for playing Dan on Roseanne/The Connors? AND he’s never been nominated for an Oscar? Just saying, TV Academy, you could have been forgiven for a lot of your sins had you celebrated this national treasure while you had the chance.

Or Poker Face

Sadly, it felt like a lot of people forgot about Peacock’s comedic detective series, starring Natasha Lyonne in full Columbo mode but with a guest cast to die for (many of whom were acknowledged.) I’m okay with AI shill Lyonne not making it, especially since it’s a stacked category and they made cuts that I found more egregious (why no love for Natasia Demetrieou in What We Do in the Shadows, for instance?) If we’re really in the age of Too Many Streaming Services, then Peacock was one of its biggest victims.

Nobody's Here for Everybody's Live?

Okay, I never really thought that Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney would make the cut. The Emmys love Mulaney, but more in traditional stand-up and presenting mode. His unwieldy and proudly no-f*cks-given talk show on Netflix clearly didn’t care about appeasing anyone aside from Mulaney and Richard Kind. They had Mulaney fight three teenage boys! There was a sketch featuring a Cenobite that made me laugh so hard I couldn’t breathe! Bone Thugs n Harmony finally showed up! But if the talk show format is indeed dying off then it would have been a nervy choice to celebrate one of the series keeping it alive while blowing up the format

Ew, Monsters

Ryan Murphy true crime TV shows will continue until morale improves. I really hated Monsters, the overtly glossy and weirdly sexualized take on the story of the Menendez brothers. It was a show that fell into all of the worst Murphy-esque excesses and turned a very difficult true story into a leering soap with prestige delusions. So, of course the Emmys loved it enough to give it four nominations, including in Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. Say Nothing was right there! I think that category and its related fields are going to be swept by Adolescence, and rightly so.

It wasn’t all bad. Here are some noms I was happy to see:

Sharon Horgan’s surprise nod for Leading Actress in a Drama for the second season of Bad Sisters; the welcome inclusion of Jeff Hiller in a stacked Supporting Actor in a Comedy series for Somebody Somewhere; a good turnout for Dying for Sex (especially those nods for Michelle Williams, Rob Delaney, and Jenny Slate); Kathy Bates’ grand comeback with Matlock (a title that must be pronounced like Grandpa Simpson); Ruth Negga’s sinfully underrated work in Presumed Innocent getting some love; a deserved writing nod for Say Nothing.

The Emmys will be held on September 14th and will be hosted by Nate Bargatze. Sure, why not? He seems nice.