Reminder: For our annual Emmy contenders coverage, Sepinwall does his personal preferences, while I handicap mostly in terms of likelihood of landing nominations. As usual, the first six slides in each gallery are my nomination predictions. The next eight or nine slides are the actors and shows most likely to sneak in, based on precedent, quality or something nebulous. And then at the end of each gallery, I tend to throw in a couple oddballs who have no chance at all of being nominated, but who I think deserve to be a part of the conversation, or might accidentally become part of the conversation, just because.
Our next category:
OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A COMEDY
The four returning nominees in this category are locks and, unlike some of the Lead Actor in a Comedy locks, they're not just default favorites. And, unlike the Lead Actor in a Comedy field, there are a few very likely contenders to add nominations this year, starting with “Orange Is The New Black” star Taylor Schilling, who will be close to a lock unless Netflix drops the ball in some way. From there, voters could go with one of several new faces, category transplants and briefly displaced former winners. This is a fun category and unlike Lead Actor in a Comedy, it's not an embarrassing “Well, we've gotta nominate somebody” fun.
Last Year's Nominees:
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Laura Dern
Lena Dunham
Edie Falco
Tina Fey
Amy Poehler
Attrition: Farewell to Tina Fey and Laura Dern. We'll miss you, “30 Rock” and “Enlightened,” but in your absence there's room for some fresh faces in this category. But not too many fresh faces. The four returning nominees are all pretty much iron-clad, locked-down, 100 percent guaranteed nominees. But that's when things get intriguing.
Here are Sepinwall's personal picks.
My predictions are below.
Your thoughts? Predictions? Analysis?