Emmys Coming Up Sunday: Best of Luck to Damian Lewis & Wolf Hall *UPDATED*

We’re almost there, ladies and gentlemen! Prime Time Emmy Awards Ceremony is coming up on September 20, 2015, 5:00pm PST, at Microsoft Theater L.A. and will be aired LIVE coast-to-coast on Fox!

Oh, yes, we have some high stakes this year — I imagine we will have some adrenaline rush as we root for our favorite actor to take home the Emmy! And, of course, before the awards ceremony, we will enjoy the glamorous red carpet! What will our glorious couple be wearing this year? 🙂

Anyhow… What do you think will happen at the Emmys? Here’s, for what it’s worth, the LATEST predictions as well as my two cents about the Emmys along with my three wishes that I just hope will come true at the ceremony 🙂

First… What do you think about show business awards? I admit I am a bit torn about them.

I second a certain someone saying “I don’t believe in judging art.” Personally, I believe academy voters objectively nominate 5-6 TOP performances in a given category and, in my humble opinion, this is the REAL recognition. Again, personally, I think the award decision could be a bit random thanks to a number of factors going into a voting member’s decision making process: say, from name recognition to what the voting member really watched carefully as well as personal connections. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the award winners regardless of who I root for but I just think that most of the time each nominee deserves the award as much as the next one. That’s why I LOVE it when an award winner invites the audience to give a round of applause for his/her fellow nominees before making an acceptance speech.

And, I am happy to report that our favorite actor is on the exact same page when awards nominations are concerned. When asked by Entertainment Weekly in 2012 about the rewarding quality of an Emmy Nomination — a nomination that, in fact, turned into an Emmy Award for Damian, he says:

“Everyone is always trying to be sort of tasteful about awards and it’s the work that’s important and awards don’t really matter. Of course, it’s nice when you get nominated. It’s ostensibly an Emmy. And it’s a recognition. It’s being in the club and just saying “We thought you handful of guys and girls did amazing work so we’d like to recognize that.” I wanna be a member of this club.”

So TRUE, Damian, and hey, you are an award-carrying member of the club, and Wolf Hall deserves to be a member, too!

Wolf Hall is one of these gems that rarely happens to TV — a dark, political and witty drama at its BEST with its wonderful writing, perfect directing, incredible acting, authentic costumes and gripping score. I think The Atlantic put it into the best words possible: “With Wolf Hall, PBS finds a drama worth of the word “Masterpiece.”

Hilary Mantel’s writing and Peter Straughan’s wonderfully condensed script open a beautiful window to the intrigue and manipulation in the court of Henry VIII in the 16^th century. It helps us understand history through a contemporary perspective, and does it through its politics and in particular, through the quite contemporary conversations its characters have all the time. As I have already said a million times, Wolf Hall is timeless. And, that’s why this masterpiece should sweep the Emmy Awards — it has scored eight nominations — in the limited series/TV movie category.

What about our guy?

Gold Derby, a website that predicts and also lets viewers predict the show business awards tweeted this week:

Hey, you got to be kidding me, guys! I don’t know if Damian Lewis will be taking Emmy home… But… I KNOW that if he wins the Emmy, it will certainly NOT be a shocker to his or Wolf Hall fans! Damian Lewis deserves the Emmy with his fantastic portrayal of Henry VIII in Wolf Hall.

Gold Derby experts (a group of journalists from Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, etc.) predict the Emmy award for outstanding Limited Series/TV movie is likely to go to Olive Kitteridge and predict Bill Murray to win the outstanding supporting actor in limited series/TV movie award with his role in Olive Kitteridge, too.

Well… I read Olive Kitteridge and it’s a great book. However, it’s no Wolf Hall. Since I haven’t seen the TV adaptation of Olive Kitteridge, I could just speculate based on my reading of the book and the wonderful cast including Frances McDormand and Peter Jenkins as the leads and Bill Murray as a supporting actor with an appearance only in one episode. I’m confident it’s very good. But, again, independent of Damian Lewis being in it, I have such strong opinions for Wolf Hall the book as well as Wolf Hall the TV Drama — which makes it a bit difficult for me to admit Wolf Hall is the underdog here even though it seems to be the case.

While Gold Derby commented his being already popular with Emmy voters may help Damian Lewis at the Emmys, they still ranked him third after Bill Murray and Finn Wittrock (AmericanHorror Story) in August. Then by late August, Damian started an upward trajectory in predictions which he has kept since. First, he got tied in second place with Finn Wittrock and his odds came from 50/1 to 12/1. Nice! And now… he’s doing even better!

Yes, Murray is still very much the front-runner here… But… I just LOVE getting excited about our underdog and we all know it happened before that it’s always possible for an underdog to make a lovely surprise — so I am very much looking forward to the adrenaline rush come Sunday! I am rooting for Damian Lewis and Wolf Hall until the moment I see the award going someplace else!

But then, of course, Gold Derby is not the only website that makes predictions. Here’s Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg also ranking Damian Lewis as the second top contender for the Emmy:

And then we have Awards Watch, another awards prediction website, that predicts the Emmy going to Damian!

Finally, we have Deadline predicting “playing a vibrant and younger King Henry VIII than we have seen before in PBS’ Wolf Hall, Lewis could nab another Emmy win for a wildly different role. It seems to be in the cards for him.”

Well, I buy THAT 🙂

How does the voting process work? We talked about how the Emmy nomination process works earlier here and let’s now talk a bit about how final round of voting works. Please feel free to scroll down couple of paragraphs to more fun stuff in case you are not interested in technical aspects of voting.

Up to this year, once the nominations were announced, the academy asked for volunteer voters to judge the nominees and choose the best in each category meaning only a small subset of the academy members made the final decision on most awards. Everyone voted only in the outstanding program categories.

This year, TV Academy decided to eliminate the volunteer panels to dictate the final winners. In a February press release, the academy announced the new set of rules including expansion of final round voting:

“In an effort to increase member participation in the voting process, and to take advantage of the Academy’s extension of online voting to both rounds, all voters eligible to vote in a category’s nominating round are now eligible to vote in that category’s final round, so long as they meet two additional requirements: much like the former Blue Ribbon panel process, voters must watch the required submitted material online and attest to no specific conflicts of interest with the nominees.”

So, it’s now in the hands of ALL members of the academy to decide.The Emmy website says the final round of voting is taking place between August 17-28 which essentially means the votes are in! And, I envision a lot of debate about the this new rule change once the ceremony is over.

Now… Now… Now… Last but not the least, I make three wishes that I hope will come TRUE at the Emmys!

Wish #1:

I know… It’s so obvious! I want the “pesky Brit” to repeat this!

No pressure though, Damian! If it happens, it’s great and we’ll celebrate but if it doesn’t happen, it’s not the end of the world – not even close! First, no one can take that fantastic HenryVIII performance away from Damian Lewis and second our guy has so much in pipeline that I am sure we will get to see him in other awards shows in no time! I just hope Damian will have a great time and dance the night away, too! Having said all this though, of course, my fingers are crossed all the way and I just hope that the academy voters did vote the right way 😀

Wish #2:

You know… Both halves of our most favorite on-screen couple are nominated for an Emmy this year! This means both Claire Danes and Damian Lewis will be at the Emmys… Now, tell me, could there be a better opportunity for them to have a re-union? Well, my wish is to have the two of them present an award together! What say you?

Wish #3:

Finally… My third wish is not just for myself, fans, believe me, for Damian, too 🙂 Well… You all know that Damian Lewis LOVES Don Draper, don’t you? Besides, I told you in my first ever blog post that I first met Damian Lewis on TV when he got the Emmy award for his fantastic portrayal of Nicholas Brody in Homeland in 2012. I was surprised to see that an actor that I had no clue about beat an extremely strong group of contenders, including Bryan Cranston, Jon Hamm, and Steve Buscemi. And, I was like “Who is this guy? I really wanted Jon Hamm to get this!” And… the rest is history! Anyhow, and now… you know… it should finally be Jon’s turn. And, besides, Mad Men is in the drama category so there is no competition whatsoever with Wolf Hall — so I hope they sweep the drama awards!