In State of the Streamers, Vanity Fair’s Awards Insider goes inside the campaigns of some of this Emmy season’s biggest players—from front-runners to underdogs, on streaming networks both well established and brand new to the game. This entry focuses on Netflix, seeking its first prime-time category win after years of close calls.
For Netflix, this is finally the year—the moment it wins a top program Emmy Award for the first time. Or at least, for those both inside and outside the company, that is the hope and the expectation, after a string of disappointments and years of pricey campaigning.
This is thanks, mostly and perhaps oddly, to a flagship hit that’s lost the best-drama category three times before: The Crown. Peter Morgan’s royal drama soared in both acclaim and buzz for its Diana and Charles-centric, Gillian Anderson-boosted fourth season; it has already won the equivalent Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice Award, and SAG Award. In a relatively weak year for drama, there’s nothing blocking its clear path toward the best-series Emmy. “We feel really good,” a source on Netflix’s awards campaigns tells Vanity Fair. “We’re hopeful that all of that climbing of the mountain will come to fruition this year.”
As talk has spread around Netflix becoming the “CBS” of TV’s streaming era—broad-skewing, a little bit of everything for everyone, not exactly the critical darling of the bunch—the studio suddenly has a ton to prove in an awards context. Amazon and Hulu have won program Emmys. Apple, far newer, is all but sure to win comedy this year for Ted Lasso. Netflix is no longer the shiny new toy, but the veteran on the block, compelled to reassert its dominance and relevance. “I feel like Netflix crawled so everyone else could run,” the source says. “We’ve not had it easy in the awards space…. We’ve had to really fight for it.”
The push in drama has been strong. Beyond The Crown, which could nearly sweep the performance categories with lead-acting front-runners Josh O’Connor and Emma Corrin and supporting stalwart Anderson, Bridgerton is the most likely first-year show to be nominated in the category, and its breakout Rege-Jean Page is similarly a lead-actor threat. Then, because it has so many shows, relative to its competitors, you can expect to see some sporadic big nominations for other, less well-reviewed titles like Ratched (specifically, for stars Sarah Paulson and Cynthia Nixon).
For a good chunk of this awards season, it looked like Netflix was primed to totally dominate: Along with The Crown, The Queen’s Gambit won everything of note this winter for best limited-series. An Emmy would surely follow, right? Well, the smart money (barely) remains on the Scott Frank-helmed chess epic, one of Netflix’s most-watched scripted originals ever, but momentum is on the side of HBO’s Mare of Easttown, which built buzz over seven weeks of airings in the late spring—a release model that can help when it comes to eking out a win. “[Netflix] is a binge model and we’ve always been usurped by other shows that have had that week-to-week buildup,” Netflix’s awards source says. The race feels even tighter in the lead-actress category, a nail-biter between Queen’s Anya Taylor-Joy and Mare’s Kate Winslet.
While Netflix has boasted edgy comedies like Russian Doll and Dead to Me in recent years, it’s something of a conservative player among the 2021 group, which will consist largely of freshmen. At least it’s got The Kominsky Method as the only 2020 nominee still eligible; the Chuck Lorre dramedy looks safe for its third and final season. On shakier ground? Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, which despite going two-for-two in this category previously, is back with a long-awaited, radically different new batch of episodes that met a relatively mixed reception. Can familiarity, at least, propel it to a third best-comedy nod? “I think that there’s still a lot of affinity for Aziz with the Academy,” our source says. “I hope that carries through.”
The one wild-card in all this points to Netflix’s enduring power as a game-changer: Cobra Kai. The Karate Kid sequel ran as a well-liked YouTube Red confection without much awards attention—save for its stunt coordination—before the network got out of the scripted programming business. Netflix acquired the third season (which had been filmed under YouTube), and while it didn’t look much different, viewership exploded. “We definitely pressed a little bit of the gas on that one,” the source says of the aggressive campaign for Cobra Kai. “To see the chatter around it, we thought, ‘We might have something here’…. It’s a Cinderella story that we’re really excited about.”
Regardless of Cobra Kai’s particular chances, one thing’s for sure: Netflix’s fight—and might—is ready for its golden payoff.
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