THE CROWN

All good things must come to an end, and The Crown’s final season was honored in the Outstanding Drama Series category — as has been the case for each of the show’s six seasons. As Queen Elizabeth, Imelda Staunton led the gifted ensemble cast through a two-part season covering Charles and Diana’s lives postdivorce, Diana’s death, Prince William meeting Kate Middleton, and Camilla and Charles’s wedding in 2005. Now, the cast celebrates their achievement with a raft of Emmy nominations. Staunton was nominated for her leading role, as was Dominic West for his portrayal of the future king.

Supporting nods went to Elizabeth Debicki for her affecting work as Diana and to Lesley Manville for her turn as Elizabeth’s sister Margaret, while Jonathan Pryce was nominated in the Supporting Actor in a Drama Series race for his turn as Elizabeth’s husband and confidante Prince Philip. “It can go out loud and proud, this show,” Pryce tells Queue. Claire Foy, who returned in the final episode for scenes as the younger Elizabeth, earned an Outstanding Guest Actress Emmy nomination, her fourth nod throughout the show’s tenure. 

Since its 2016 premiere, The Crown has won over millions of ardent fans, collecting 21 Emmys and becoming a phenomenon in popular culture. For Morgan — who was nominated for writing the episode, “Ritz,” while the finale “Sleep, Dearie Sleep” earned a nomination for director Stephen Daldry — the show’s mesmerizing hold on audiences is all about the drama. “These sagas, family sagas, they’re particularly well-suited to long-form television,” Morgan tells Queue. And while this particular bloodline has plenty of onscreen discord, when it comes to the cast and crew, “I think this is as harmonious and as cooperative a group of people as we could have found,” Morgan says. “Everybody’s reached the finishing line as friends.”

In the below-the-line races, The Crown received nominations for its production design, casting, cinematography, contemporary costumes, makeup, music composition, sound mixing, and visual effects. Additionally, The Crown: Farewell to a Royal Epic was nominated in the Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series category.

THE GENTLEMEN

With The Gentleman, star Theo James was initiated into writer-director Guy Ritchie’s improvisational way of filming — and he couldn’t have loved it more. “You have to take a leap of faith,” James tells Queue of working with the filmmaker beloved for such British gangster landmarks as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. “With comedy, the off-the-cuff nature of it really helps. It makes it more zingy, faster-paced. You can find things within the moment.”

A violent, drug-fueled romp set against the unlikely backdrop of elite British society, The Gentlemen sees James’s straight-arrow army man Eddie Horniman called back to his family’s estate to assume the title of Duke of Halstead after his aristocratic father’s demise. What he doesn’t realize the job requires is a partnership with Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) and her family of ne’er-do-wells, who run an underground cannabis enterprise on the property.

As the series’ gleefully madcap ringleader, Ritchie was nominated for an Emmy for directing the show’s premiere episode, aptly titled “Refined Aggression.” The Gentlemen also earned nominations for Outstanding Production Design for a Narrative Contemporary Program (One House or More) and Outstanding Stunt Coordination for Comedy Programming — fitting for all the foolhardy mayhem Ritchie and his team brought to the screen.

3 BODY PROBLEM

In adapting Chinese author Liu Cixin’s expansive sci-fi trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past for television, showrunners David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo set themselves a nearly impossible task: translating the author’s many-thousand-page story — rich in high-level physics, theories of war, and human drama — for the screen. The books and series present a host of thought-provoking questions, the most important one being: What would happen if we knew an alien invasion was coming, but we had four hundred years to prepare? Somehow, the creative team managed to tease out the novels’ most provocative ideas while also crafting a deeply human story. “I think [characters] are the secret to a television series that really gets under your skin and becomes something living,” Woo tells Queue.

The showrunners centered their series on a group called the Oxford Five, distinguished physicists and longtime friends who find themselves at the center of a harrowing mystery, as influential scientists around the world begin dying one by one, and they witness occurrences that modern science can’t explain. “It’s easy to forget how difficult it is to start something from scratch, to begin a show and to invite people into a world and a group of characters that they have never met before and make them care about those characters,” Weiss acknowledges to Queue. “I’m just proud that it all came together.”

They were clearly onto something — 3 Body Problem is now nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, in addition to earning below-the-line nominations for its cinematography, editing, main title design, sound editing, and sound mixing.

The fact that the trio of showrunners received Liu’s blessing before embarking on the project did relieve some of the creative pressure, however. “He said, ‘I know you’re going to have to make changes,’” Benioff recalls to Queue. “‘I know you’re going to change some of the characters, and I understand why.’ And it was unique in my experience of adaptation, having a writer say essentially, ‘Go forth and do what you think best. I’m excited to see what happens with it.’”

BABY REINDEER

Almost immediately after its April release, Baby Reindeer, which chronicles the unhealthy relationship between a traumatized comedian and his unrelenting stalker, began burning up the viewing charts as it amassed an ever-expanding global audience and universal critical acclaim. “It’s overwhelming,” Gadd told Queue’s Krista Smith just weeks after the series, based on his life story, took the world by storm. “I really believed in the show, and I thought that it would be liked, but to this scale? I never thought [that would happen]. It’s such a niche story, yet it’s struck a chord with so many people.”

The series certainly struck a chord with Emmy voters, earning nods in virtually all the limited or anthology series categories and several prominent crafts categories — including casting, costumes, picture editing, and music supervision. Gadd earned a nomination in the Lead Actor ctor race for his performance as Donny Dunn, whose aspirations to become an entertainer lead to profound tumult and terror in his life; not only is he subject to stalking, but he also experiences sexual assault at the hands of a trusted mentor played by Tom Goodman-Hill, who received an Emmy nomination for his supporting performance. 

In the Supporting Actress category, Gadd’s co-stars Jessica Gunning and Nava Mau earned nominations for their work as well; Gunning, for her portrayal of the deranged yet deeply lonely Martha, who becomes obsessed with Donny, and Mau for her turn as Teri, a vibrant transgender woman who embarks on a fraught romantic relationship with the comedian; with her nomination, Mau became the first trans actor honored in this category. Weronika Tofilska was nominated in the directing category for Baby Reindeer’s “Episode 4.”

“I think art is quite interesting when you don’t know whose side you’re on,” notes Gadd, who also received a nomination in the limited series writing race. “I think that’s what Baby Reindeer does quite well. You sort of feel sorry for [Martha], then you feel sorry for [Donny], then you feel sorry for her again, and you hate her or you hate him. I wanted it to be layered and to capture the human experience. People are good, but they have bits of bad and they make mistakes.”

RIPLEY

Anchored by Andrew Scott’s mercurial performance, Ripley is a finely drawn character study of one of the most beguiling creations of twentieth-century fiction: Tom Ripley, the criminal mastermind and delusional dreamer of Patricia Highsmith’s quintet of mid-century novels. Helmed by Directors Guild of America Award-winning director and Academy Award-winning writer Steven Zaillian, the gripping psychological thriller unspools over eight episodes shot in elegant black and white, tracing Ripley’s journey from a flophouse in 60s Manhattan to a dolce vita gone sour in Italy.

Having already earned plaudits and acclaim, Ripley is now nominated for 13 Emmys, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, Outstanding Writing and Directing for Zaillian, and Best Actor for Scott — Ripley was also recognized with nominations for its production design, casting cinematography, costumes, picture editing, sound editing, sound mixing, and visual effects. 

Having rocketed to stardom playing a classic literary villain, James Moriarty in the BBC’s Sherlock, the Irish actor is no stranger to getting into the bones of characters that subvert audience expectations. Scott recently scored an Olivier nomination for a tour-de-force turn in the West End’s Vanya, an audacious Chekhov adaptation in which he played every role. The actor’s Ripley is just as multidimensional, teasing out the humanity of a man who is certainly no hero. “I always think the great works of art are or should be about who we are and not who we should be,” Scott tells Queue. “I think we contain multitudes within us.”

Nominated in the supporting actress category is Dakota Fanning, who plays aspiring travel writer Marge Sherwood, companion to errant playboy Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn). Although her understated elegance and worldly sophistication suggest an upper-crust upbringing, Marge is something of an enigma, as though she’s at once part of Dickie’s world and perhaps also quite apart from it. Fanning told Queue that she loved every aspect of the role, though working opposite Scott in the confrontational moments between their characters was especially exciting: “I knew that it would be really fun to do those scenes with Andrew — and it was.”

GRISELDA

For Sofía Vergara, starring in the limited series Griselda was a dream dramatic role — the infamous 1970s drug lord Griselda Blanco she embodies had lived a life of such extremes that she’s almost unbelievable as a character. “During Griselda’s time, the idea of a woman being at the head of a cartel was just crazy,” explains Vergara, who received her fifth career Emmy nomination for her transformative turn in the drama, making history as the first Latina actress nominated in the Lead Actress in a Limited Series category. The limited series was also recognized for its cinematography and period costumes. “No one could believe that she was capable of doing the horrible things that she was doing. It’s like a horrible crash on a freeway; we all turn to look.”

As an executive producer working with the creative team behind Narcos, Eric Newman and Andrés Baiz, Vergara crafted an intrigue-packed series that allowed her to move beyond her Modern Family image to showcase her wide-ranging talents and venture into new territory. “I had never really acted in Spanish before or done anything that wasn’t comedy. When you go into something new, you have more insecurities,” she admits, “because I wanted to do the best job that I could. But it was a fun challenge.”

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

Like so many readers around the world, director and producer Shawn Levy developed an immediate and powerful obsession with Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the Light We Cannot See after reading the World War II tale when it was first published in 2014. Eager to adapt the book for the screen, the filmmaker was disappointed to learn that the rights were already spoken for. Levy tells Queue: “I said to my colleagues at 21 Laps, my production company, ‘Let’s all keep our eyes and ears open because you never know.’”

The wait paid off. After obtaining the coveted rights to the novel, Levy’s four-part limited series premiered to considerable acclaim in 2023. Now, it’s received four Emmy nominations. The powerful historical drama centers on a young blind woman (newcomer Aria Mia Loberti) who flees the Nazi occupation of Paris only to meet and form a deep connection with a German orphan conscripted into the war effort (Louis Hofman, Dark).

“The feeling when you read this book was, Oh, this is a destiny love story about intersecting fates, strangers from across the spectrum of this war-torn world who will only meet once for less than an hour, but it may very well be the most defining intersection and relationship of their young lives,” Levy says. “I wanted to convey that by building an inexorable momentum toward this gradual intersection.”

The limited series received nominations for its cinematography, music composition, sound editing, and visual effects — an impressive haul for a deeply affecting project.

BECKHAM

When David Beckham retired from his professional football career in 2013, two things were clear: He wasn’t going to be able to leave the sport behind for good, and someday he’d have to tell the story of his incredible life. He started with creating a new home within football, founding Inter Miami FC in 2018, and earning his first trophy as owner in 2023. Next came the perhaps more challenging task — finding a way to share his memories and life history with his fans. Enter actor and documentary filmmaker Fisher Stevens (Before the Flood, The Lincoln Project) who joined Beckham on the journey of making the candid four-part docuseries BECKHAM.

Stevens traces the highs and lows of the phenom’s career and personal life — his debut at Manchester United; the infamous red card; his very purple wedding to Victoria, Posh Spice herself; and the footballer’s relationship with his father. Stevens also interviews his family, friends, teammates, and managers and spends time with the Beckhams at home, offering an intimate look at one of football and pop culture’s greatest stars. “Going through the whole process of it, it was like an emotional rollercoaster,” Beckham tells Queue. “Looking at the good, the bad, the things that I’ve done over my career and my life, and some things that I’d never even seen before, was just unbelievable.”

Add earning five Emmy Award nominations to Beckham’s incredible list of accomplishments— BECKHAM will compete in the documentary series category, while Stevens also received a nomination for directing the episode “What Makes David Run.” But don’t expect the famous footballer to spend too much time reveling in glory. “I always think there’s a time to celebrate and there’s a time to move on,” Beckham tells Queue. “I don’t like to celebrate too much. I like to do something, achieve it, and move on.”

BECKHAM was also nominated for Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program, Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program, and Outstanding Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special (Outstanding Original Dramatic Score).

THE GREATEST NIGHT IN POP

Few songs have become woven into the fabric of the larger cultural consciousness in the same fashion as “We Are the World,” which, in the years since its release, has become one of the most successful philanthropic endeavors ever undertaken. The song has raised more than $60 million to help alleviate poverty in Africa and the United States. Filmmaker Bao Nguyen’s The Greatest Night in Pop charts how the now-iconic song came together, often through firsthand accounts with those involved in the project at every level, including musicians like Lionel Richie, who served as an executive producer and features prominently in the film.

“We were all aware of each other, but in a lot of cases, we were meeting for the first time,” Richie says of the song’s recording session, which took place over one epic night. “To bring that much star power to one room, number one, to bring that much ego to one room, and on top of that, hoping that we all get along . . . it was [like] a big corporate meeting where you sit around and try to get used to each other, but everybody had power . . . From one in the morning until about seven in the morning, we got ‘We Are the World’ done.”

A fascinating, uplifting, and historical record of that one extraordinary night, the documentary received three Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special, Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program, and Outstanding Sound Editing for a Nonfiction or Reality Program. 

BLUE EYE SAMURAI

In the Outstanding Animated Program category, newcomer Blue Eye Samurai earned two Emmy nominations — a milestone for showrunners Amber Noizumi and Michael Green who first began contemplating ideas for the animated project after the birth of their blue-eyed daughter. Inspired by the high-flying revenge fantasy Kill Bill, dramatic love story Yentl, and such classic samurai films as Yojimbo and 13 Assassins, Blue Eye Samurai sees seventeenth-century warrior Mizu, disguised as a man, traversing her homeland and seeking revenge on the only four white men in the country — any of whom could be her father.

Mizu is voiced by Pen15’s Maya Erskine, who leads a cast of Asian actors, including George Takei, Randall Park, Brenda Song, and Darren Barnet, featured on the series, which was also nominated for Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series (Half-Hour) and Animation. “Everyone was committed from day one to an all-Asian cast playing Asian characters,” says Green, who wrote the screenplays for Blade Runner 2049 and Logan. “And we were very, very fortunate that almost everyone we asked to be a part of the show said yes.” 

SCOOP

Back in 2019, the world watched as Prince Andrew’s reputation crumbled after associations with sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell came to light, leading to the interview with BBC journalist Emily Maitlis on the news program Newsnight that unraveled the prince’s public image. Newly Emmy-nominated for Outstanding Television Movie, Philip Martin’s television movie Scoop tells the story of how the interview came to be from the perspective of the women at the BBC who pushed the conversation forward to those on Prince Andrew’s team who unsuccessfully sought to own the narrative. “It’s about . . . this idea of bouncing between two huge British institutions, the BBC and the Palace,” says actor Billie Piper, who portrays Newsnight producer Sam McAlister. “But mostly, it’s about people. It’s about the unsung journalists behind the scoop itself.” Scoop presents a moment in not just British history, but also in journalistic history, and serves as a timely reminder of the power of a free press.

UNFROSTED

Conflict, ambition, betrayal — three emotions you may not instinctively associate with America’s sweetest breakfast offering, the Pop-Tart. Yet in Jerry Seinfeld’s feature directorial debut, Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story — also nominated for Outstanding Television Movie — the genesis of Kellogg’s rectangular snack is not only exciting, it’s hilarious. Seinfeld co-wrote the film and stars as fictional Kellogg’s leader Bob Cabana, alongside an impressive cast that including Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Amy Schumer, Max Greenfield, Christian Slater, Bill Burr, Dan Levy, Fred Armisen, James Marsden, Sarah Cooper, and Hugh Grant as a disenfranchised Tony the Tiger. “We love the idea of grown-up men in suits talking about cereal all day and the silliness of how they look,” Seinfeld told Queue. “It just seemed like a fantastic world to be in.”

COMEDY

Proof that Netflix is no joke? The number of Emmy Award nominations racked up by its one-of-a-kind comedy programming. My Next Guest with David Letterman and John Mulaney earned a nomination for Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special, and speaking of Mulaney, his experimental talk show John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A. was recognized with a nomination for Picture Editing for Variety Programming. The unforgettable The Greatest Roast of All Time: Tom Brady, which streamed live from this year’s Netflix is a Joke Fest in Los Angeles, was nominated for Outstanding Variety Special (Live).

STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING

For director Roger Ross Williams, the Emmy and Oscar-award winning documentarian of 2019’s The Apollo and 2010’s Music By Prudence, respectively, adapting the New York Times best-seller Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, was a creative undertaking that required a rich array of mediums — animation, live-action recreations, and visual effects — to name a few. Williams’s sweeping survey of the impact of systemic racism and the Black experience in America has earned an Emmy nomination for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.  

OUR PLANET II

“All life on Earth depends on the freedom to move,” declares narrator Sir David Attenborough in Our Planet II, the four-part series chronicling the extraordinary animal movements that shape our world. From the Emmy-winning team of Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey (Planet Earth, Our Planet), Our Planet II brings the migratory patterns of billions of animals to viewers at home with the help of innovative and captivating cinematography. Whether filming breathtaking drone shots of expansive savannahs, low-light coverage of the depths of the rainforest, or underwater footage of the sea, Kyle McBurnie (Our Planet) and Brad Bestelink capture never-before-seen moments of animal behavior — this morning, the docuseries earned a nomination in the Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program category.

LIFE ON OUR PLANET

In Life on Our Planet, Dan Tapster, Keith Scholey, and Alastair Fothergill take on one of the most daunting subjects in history: the epic four-billion-year-long lineage of Earth and the creatures that inhabit it. Equal parts technical feat, extinction polemic, and majestic portrait, the series tells the story of life as it has never been seen before. There was only one narrator befitting such an epic tale: Morgan Freeman, who was recognized with a nomination for Outstanding Narrator. “Freeman has become something of the voice of God,” Fothergill says. “To tell the story of life, a story that is big, profound, dramatic, relevant, his voice fits perfectly.”

ESCAPING TWIN FLAMES 

From filmmaking duo Cecilia Peck and Inbal B. Lessner, who previously earned an Emmy nomination for Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult, Escaping Twin Flames’s final episode “Up in Flames” was honored for Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program. The searing three-part docuseries delves into Twin Flames Universe, the online community that was accused of preying on members who were searching for love.

REALITY

Love must be in the air, as Love on the Spectrum U.S. was nominated in the Unstructured Reality Program category, as well as receiving nods for its casting, directing, and picture editing. Love is Blind and Queer Eye also took home nominations for Outstanding Structured Reality Program and Picture Editing. Additionally, reality series Squid Game: The Challenge earned nods for production design, casting, and directing for a reality program that tested friendships and strategy. 

FANTASY AND BEYOND

For six seasons, Black Mirror has dazzled viewers with sci-fi tales envisioning dystopian near-futures or imagining the unknown possibilities of technological evolution, exploring the fundamental contradictions and complexities of human nature. Created by British writer Charlie Brooker in 2011, the anthology series has set stories in different locations around the world and in space — though Brooker’s British sensibilities have never been lost in translation. Continuing to impress, the groundbreaking program earned nominations for Writing, Sound Mixing, and Picture Editing for a Limited or Anthology series. 

But it wasn’t the only imaginative series to impress Emmy voters. Newcomer Avatar: The Last Airbender, based on the popular manga, earned nods for its special visual effects and sound editing, while action-packed comedy The Brothers Sun, co-created by writers Brad Falchuk and Byron Wu, was also nominated for its stunt coordination. Finally, The Witcher received a nomination in the Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup category for the Season 3 finale episode “The Cost of Chaos.”