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By the time Netflix scored its first drama series win for The Crown at the 2021 Emmys, the show about the British royal family was already ruling the drama categories presented during the CBS broadcast, leaving no room for winners from other series.
Among the multiple nominees left out due to The Crown‘s reign was 21-time nominee The Handmaid’s Tale, which had previously been the only streaming series to win best drama at the Emmys, taking the top prize in 2017 in a coup for Hulu.
The Handmaid’s Tale was so popular with the TV Academy that it received multiple nominations in 2019 solely off of hanging episodes, but in 2021 the series won none of the awards for which it was nominated. Also completely shut out was multiple nominee The Kominsky Method, which wrapped its run on Netflix with its third and final season this year.
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The Crown also won both lead acting awards, preventing the TV Academy from making history by awarding Mj Rodriguez, who would have been the first trans woman to win best drama actress, and Billy Porter, who would have been only the second Black actor to win two lead Emmys in drama categories. Many experts predicted that the Pose stars would make history.
In fact The Crown‘s reign even extended to the supporting actor category with an absent Tobias Menzies taking the prize over Michael K. Williams who many experts expected to win in a posthumous honor for the Lovecraft Country actor who just died earlier this month.
Disney+’s WandaVision scored the second most Emmy nominations this year with 23, but the limited series only went home with three wins, all of which came in the Creative Arts ceremonies last weekend.
One of the categories in which prognosticators expected WandaVision to score a win was in the best actor in a limited series field, where Paul Bettany was the presumed favorite, but instead Halston‘s Ewan McGregor took that award in a surprise.
WandaVision‘s fellow Disney+ series The Mandalorian tied The Crown for the most Emmy nominations this year with 24, but while the Netflix series dominated Sunday night’s show, The Mandalorian didn’t win any awards presented on the CBS broadcast — it won seven Emmys this year but all of those were presented during the Creative Arts ceremonies.
HBO’s acclaimed I May Destroy You won an Emmy for writing, but sadly this was the only Emmy won in the categories presented during the CBS telecast (it won another at the Creative Arts ceremonies) for the acclaimed limited series, which landed on multiple best of 2020 lists.
Fans of Netflix’s Bridgerton and HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant were likely disappointed that each series only won one award, for hairstyling and main title theme music, respectively, at last weekend’s Creative Arts ceremonies.
The I May Destroy You win was also one of the rare prizes captured by a person of color during the 2021 Emmys as white stars dominated the awards despite a diverse slate of nominees.
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