“Succession,” the HBO dramedy about a feuding media dynasty, landed 25 nominations for this year’s Emmy Awards on Tuesday, the biggest haul of any show.
The HBO series earned a nomination for best drama, the prize that it won in 2020, as well multiple nominations in the acting categories, including Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook J. Smith-Cameron, Nicholas Braun, Kieran Culkin and Matthew Macfadyen.
HBO’s “The White Lotus,” a limited series chronicling well-to-do vacationers at a Hawaii resort, picked up 20 nominations, and the Apple TV+ comedy, “Ted Lasso,” also picked up 20. “Ted Lasso” won last year for best comedy, and this year will face off against a new entrant, “Only Murders in the Building,” the Hulu series starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez. “Only Murders in the Building” landed 17 nominations, an impressive number for a rookie show.
Netflix landed three nominations in best drama, including for the smash hit “Stranger Things,” the first season of the South Korean thriller “Squid Game” and the final season of the crime thriller “Ozark.” “Squid Game” earned 14 nominations, the most ever for a foreign language show.
Emmy love is some welcome news to Netflix executives after an ugly few months that has sent the streaming giant into a tailspin: Its share price has nose-dived, hundreds of staffers have been laid off, and it’s a week away from potentially announcing another subscriber loss.
But Netflix’s top Emmy rival, HBO, and its accompanying streaming service, HBO Max, had a big year, and came armed with a fleet of programming that landed a significant number of nominations, including for “Succession,” “The White Lotus,” “Euphoria,” “Hacks,” “and “Barry.”
HBO and HBO Max finished with 140 nominations, the most of any network or TV studio. Netflix was in second place with 105. It is the second consecutive year that HBO, along with its streaming service, outpaced Netflix.
Bragging rights at the Emmys have been critical to Netflix, and that was before it needed a shot in the arm.
Last year, when Netflix tied a 47-year-old record set by CBS for the highest number of Emmy wins in a single year, its executives took a victory lap, staging a news media conference where they boasted about their “historic” night. And when visitors walk into the lobby of Netflix’s Hollywood headquarters, they are greeted by the sight of dozens of Emmy statuettes affixed to a wall, surrounded by hundreds of flowers.
Nominations for the Emmys were announced on Tuesday. The ceremony will be on Sept. 12, broadcast on NBC and live streamed on Peacock.