Succession, The Last of Us, and The White Lotus are the 2023 Emmy nominees to beat this year

Thanks to HBO, Warner Bros. Discovery is probably going to clean up exceedingly well at this year’s Emmy Awards, which might end up taking place during an actors strike.

by Charles Pulliam-Moore

Jul 12, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

Charles Pulliam-Moore is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

Ahead of the very real possibility of the Screen Actors Guild going on strike tonight, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced this morning the nominees for the 2023 Emmy Awards, a celebration that’s going to be very interesting this year, to say the least.

Before he and actress Yvette Nicole Brown began announcing this year’s Emmy nominees at a small presentation streamed from the Hollywood Athletic Club, Academy chair Frank Scherma took a moment to briefly acknowledge the looming potential strike and express his hope that “the ongoing guild negotiations can come to an equitable and swift resolution.”

“We are committed to supporting a television industry that stands strong in equity and where we can continue to honor all the incredible work you do,” he said, presumably speaking to the thousands of SAG-AFTRA members watching the livestream.

Rather unsurprisingly, HBO’s Succession — which just came to an end in its fourth season — emerged as a strong player by racking up an impressive 27 nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series and Lead Actor / Lead Actress nods to Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin, Jeremy Strong, and Sarah Snook for their respective performances.

Similarly, The Last of Us is up for 24 awards including Outstanding Drama Series, and both Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey have been nominated in the Outstanding Actor and Outstanding Actress categories for their turns as Joel and Ellie. The show’s third episode, “Long, Long Time,” has nabbed director Peter Hoar a nomination for Outstanding Directing For A Drama Series, and Murray Bartlett, Nick Offerman, Lamar Johnson, and Keivonn Montreal Woodard’s performances are all up for Outstanding Guest Actor awards.

With The White Lotus securing 23 nominations and Ted Lasso trailing just behind with 21, one imagines that the current conversation about how streamers’ revenue is (or, you know, is not) equitably distributed to the laborers who create it will be on people minds when the Emmys air in a few months. Currently, this year’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards are set to take place over the course of two nights on September 9th and September 10th, with FXX subsequently airing an edited and combined presentation of both evenings, and the Primetime Emmys will air on Fox on September 18th at 8PM ET.

You can check out a full list of this year’s Emmy Awards nominees here, but here are a few highlights: