'Shogun' Starts Some DramaFX's smash has a shot at breaking the 'GoT' nominations record while throwing the limited series races into chaos. Plus: My pod debuts tomorrow!
Ever since I started this job and started asking awards strategists what was on their mind, I kept hearing the same refrain: “Well, Shogun is moving to drama, right?” (Well, from anyone not affiliated with FX.) These people were all eager to talk up their own work, of course, and emphasize how little of a threat the FX show posed to their limited series – the category where Shogun was initially slotted — or drama series, which is where Shogun will now compete. But of course they saw Shogun as a behemoth. It’s such a smash hit on FX that Bob Iger has been out there bragging about it. It is prestige TV at its best: great television that people actually watched. Now that Shogun has officially made the leap to drama, FX is now backing the frontrunners in both drama and comedy, with The Bear still poised for its second Emmy sweep of the year. Meanwhile the networks and streamers that hoped to capitalize on a wide-open drama race, most notably Netflix and HBO, must scramble for new footholds. Before we tackle what else will change with Shogun’s large shadow in a new category, let’s take a moment to ask, Why is the limited series category so dang hard to pin down in the first place? The Limit Does Not ExistWhether you pin the beginning on 2011’s win for Downton Abbey or Ryan Murphy’s mid-2010s dominance with The People vs. O.J. Simpson and the American Horror Story franchise, the limited series has been a shiny new object for Emmy voters for some time now. Luring stars with the promise of short-term commitments and auteur directors eager for a prestige TV budget, limited series took advantage of the expansive peak TV landscape, building buzz that only had to last for eight or 10 weeks and scooping up statues in the process. That popularity, of course, then lends itself to a new problem: people wanting more of it. Downton Abbey, Big Little Lies, Fargo, The White Lotus and Beef are all limited series winners that then returned for additional installments. After “anthology series” was added to the category name in 2021, it gave cover for shows like Fargo and Beef, which are designed to return each season with new characters. The White Lotus, on the other hand, got bumped to drama thanks to Jennifer Coolidge returning as Tanya; time will tell if it will hop back to limited for season three.
At first, Shogun seemed exactly like the kind of show that would not have this problem. Like limited series winners The Queen’s Gambit and Olive Kitteridge before it, Shogun is adapted from a single novel, James Clavell’s 1975 blockbuster. The third of six books that Clavell wrote about Europeans in Asia, Shogun actually inspired its own bit of publishing trickery; after it became a bestseller, it was lumped together with Clavell’s previous books to form the “Asian Saga.” In development for five years and lavishly staged on every level, Shogun was an enormous commitment for FX, and anything short of blockbuster success would have guaranteed it could wrap up after a single, beautiful season with everyone holding their heads high. But then success came knocking. For weeks after Shogun began airing, series creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo had to deflect questions about a potential second season, though in one post-season interview Marks at least copped to reading the novel Clavell wrote immediately before Shogun, Tai-Pan. Of course FX was going to move heaven and earth to get more Shogun. Hitting nine million global views in its first week — even more than the second season of The Bear — Shogun was the biggest drama success for FX since those halcyon American Crime Story days in the late 2010s. They knew they were on to something. FX chief John Landgraf, speaking to my colleague Elaine Low in February before Shogun premiered, praised it as a show that “you just won't be able to enjoy if you don't pay attention to it. It's not a two-screen show.” In an era when some people are wondering if Gen Z’s “sludge content” is the future, a successful bet on long attention spans is an outright miracle. Like Oppenheimer before it at the Oscars, Shogun’s combination of highbrow appeal and commercial success made it a formidable contender for Emmys, even before it made the jump to drama. State of Play
The drama category, as I wrote last week, has been in a bit of flux since the end of Succession. Shows as varied as the historical epics The Crown and The Gilded Age, the soapy news drama The Morning Show and the puckish sci-fi saga Fallout had all been making viable claims for frontrunner status. Now Shogun has effectively swooped in and taken it, as efficiently and completely as Hiroyuki Sanada’s character Toranaga conquering a city. Netflix will certainly continue to make the case that The Crown deserves recognition for its final season, and HBO’s army of stars for The Gilded Age may have an easier time garnering attention than Shogun’s cast of up-and-coming, primarily Japanese actors. But two years after Squid Game’s breakthrough nomination in drama series and win for lead actor Lee Jung-jae, anyone claiming that subtitles are a barrier to entry is simply telling on themselves. Although Squid Game lost that best drama series nomination to, well, Succession, its nomination proved that Emmy voters really are capable of embracing something new — and when there’s not a juggernaut in the race, actually awarding it. (See: The Handmaid’s Tale in 2017, which seized an off-year for Game of Thrones to become the first streaming series to win the top drama prize.) The acting categories are also likely to be thoroughly dominated by Shogun, with Sanada — a veteran Japanese actor and also a producer on the show — and Cosmo Jarvis both competing in lead actor. Anna Sawai, with no competition within her show, is now at the top of the drama actress race, her strongest competition most likely from two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone, of The Curse. Yabushige, Shogun’s most magnetic character, is played by Todonabu Asano, who is competing in the supporting actor category and ought to sail past The Morning Show’s Billy Crudup and Jon Hamm. The only category that could prevent a Shogun acting sweep is supporting actress, where it could be tough to choose between Fumi Nikaido (who plays the formidable mother of the heir Ochiba) and Moeka Hoshi (who plays the gentle consort Fuji). Elizabeth Debicki had been tipped for a back-to-back victory for playing Princess Diana on The Crown before Shogun’s move over — and could very well hang on to that spot. We’ll talk more about crafts as the season continues, but count on Shogun to run away with nearly all of those — its crafts are extraordinary even by the high standards of modern TV. As Variety pointed out when detailing all 40 of Shogun’s Emmy submissions, it could even break the Game of Thrones record for 32 nominations in a single year. And Then There Were . . . Many! So Many!Back to limited series: What does the race now look like with Shogun gone? Netflix’s breakout hit Baby Reindeer is an obvious place to turn, though with controversy still brewing around the real woman on which the show is based, it’s possible that the fervor around it will cool before Emmy voting ends June 24. Netflix is also fielding the gorgeously made Ripley, which certainly benefits from Shogun’s absence, and should now give star Andrew Scott a very good chance at the lead actor prize. In what is probably a maddening turn of events for their rivals, FX is still competitive here; its limited series Feud: Capote vs. the Swans and especially Fargo stand to make a real impact, with both Fargo’s Jon Hamm and Feud’s Tom Hollander strong in what’s still a surprisingly competitive lead actor race. HBO also has dual contenders in True Detective: Night Country and The Sympathizer. Although the latter has failed to make the impact I hoped it would, Robert Downey Jr.’s supporting turn ought to be undeniable. In recent weeks I’ve had the chance to catch up with two more strong, female-fronted contenders in these categories. Last week in Los Angeles I spoke to Expats creator Lulu Wang and star Sarayu Blue on their collaboration for the Hong Kong-set limited series — and what they both learned about their own resilience while making it. On Hulu, there’s the harrowing and heartfelt Under the Bridge, with the stellar Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone both contending in supporting. As it turns out, I have some first-hand insight on what Gladstone put into her performance: She’s the first guest on the new Prestige Junkie podcast, which will be debuting tomorrow. Want to know more? Read on! In Other News . . .I Have a New Podcast!
I’m so excited to be launching the Ankler’s first awards podcast. Every Tuesday The Prestige Junkie Podcast will bring you the latest from the world of film and television awards, from the latest out of Cannes — have you heard the buzz about the new Yorgos Lanthimos anthology film? — to the state of Emmy season. On tomorrow’s episode, I’ll be joined by the host of The Ankler Podcast, Sean McNulty, to look back at his time at Upfronts last week and ponder why the face of television presented to advertisers is so very different than the one presented to awards voters. Then, as mentioned, I’ll talk to Lily Gladstone about her work on Under the Bridge, from the early connection with Keough that brought her to the project to the accessories that put her in the right headspace for the show’s 1997 setting. You can subscribe to Prestige Junkie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify — or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Got ideas for future podcast discussions? You know where to find me: katey@theankler.com Yes We Cannes
We’re at the heady midpoint of the Cannes Film Festival, where everything is either a disaster or a triumph — and, curiously, a whole lot of films this year seem to be both. Our friends at Screen International do an excellent job keeping track of the top critics reviews at the festival, and the range of star ratings speaks for itself. Of the four films with any four-star rating on the grid, three of them — Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez, and Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides — also have at least one single-star review to go with it. (The fourth is the Demi Moore-Margaret Qualley-starring The Substance, which debuted Sunday night to more consistent raves.) The inter-critic battles over Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis are already fiery. Even as Kevin Costner was being moved to tears by the ovation for his out-of-competition film Horizon on Sunday night, the mixed reviews were flying in. I texted my friend Esther Zuckerman, who is writing reviews from Cannes for The Daily Beast, to see if the critical responses are as wildly divergent as they seem from a distance. “It’s definitely a year where divisive seems to be the optimal word,” she tells me. “It’s a year full of big (huge?) swings that work for some and don’t work for others, i.e. Megalopolis and Emilia Perez. But I do think people are holding out hope for something still to be an unabashed favorite like Anora or The Seed of the Sacred Fig.” Anora, you might remember, is being backed by Neon and official friend-of-the-newsletter Tom Quinn, who also picked up The Seed of the Sacred Fig over the weekend. Then again, moments after Esther texted me, raves started rolling in for The Substance. So maybe the hit of the festival is even closer than we think. My colleague Gregg Kilday is still filing essential daily dispatches from Cannes, where he’s got the latest on Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada and Emma Stone’s newest boundary-pushing work with Lanthimos. I’ll be back later this week to speculate about which of these films might be official prize winners by this time next week. Follow us: X | Facebook | Instagram | Threads ICYMI
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