This morning's announcement of this year's Emmy Award nominees played out about as you'd expect any award show's nominee announcement to play out: some of the picks were foregone conclusions (Succession was the most-nominated series), some were pleasant surprises (Dan Trachtenberg was nominated for "Outstanding Directing For A Limited/Anthology Series Or Movie" for last year's Predator prequel, Prey), and of course there was the customary handful of snubs, which will surely keep Twitter (loudly) busy for the rest of the afternoon.
That HBO's blockbuster series The Last of Us would bring in a number of nominations is not, on its face, terribly surprising. The series was more-or-less universally praised by critics, embraced by the vast majority of fans who'd played the Naughty Dog game franchise upon which the show is based, and both its widespread popularity and recency were all but guaranteed to have it at the top of the mind of Emmy voters. That this post-apocalyptic horror series would rack up two dozen nominations, however, is worth taking a moment to recognize. That total makes The Last of Us the year's second-most Emmy-nominated series.
Yowza.
Here's a partial list of the categories in which The Last of Us was recognized:
- Best Drama Series
- Best Actor in a Drama Series - Pedro Pascal
- Best Actress in a Drama Series - Bella Ramsey
- Best Writing for a Drama Series - Craig Mazin
- Best Directing for a Drama Series - Peter Hoar
- Best Guest Actor in a Drama Series (4) - Murray Bartlett, Nick Offerman, Lamar Johnson, Keivonn Montreal Woodard
- Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series (3) - Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid, Anna Torv
The show nailed down another dozen nominations in technical categories, including Outstanding Production Design, Outstanding Contemporary Costumes, Outstanding Contemporary Hairstyling, Outstanding Sound Mixing, and more. We are, of course, still talking about nominations (we'll have to wait and see how many of Emmy's the show actually pulls in, though we're guessing it'll be plenty), but that's an incredible feat for a show that's this unapologetic about being a violent, unsettling genre series.
As fans of the series, we are of course very excited to see The Last of Us showered with so many nominations, and will definitely be tuning in to see how the show fares when the Primetime Emmy Awards airs on September 18th. Until then, we'll be hoping that the AMPTP gets its collective head out of its ass, strikes a deal with the WGA, and gets The Last of Us season two on the air as quickly as possible.
Stay tuned for further updates on The Last of Us as they roll in, and a sincere "Congrats!" to all of the nominees from Team FANGORIA.
