From ‘Severance’ To Snubs, Breaking Down The 2025 Emmy Nominations

TV + Movies

By Erin Whitten

Updated 11 hours ago, July 16, 2025

The nominations for the 2025 Emmy Awards reveal a shift in what’s valued by the Television Academy. It seems the entertainment industry is leaving large franchise productions and traditional storytelling formulas behind. Fans are begging for anything that dares to deviate from the expected in tone, style, or content.

The 77th Primetime Emmy nominations underscore an obvious but important point, this year it was stories that embraced a sense of feeling, fresh voices and non-traditional storytelling that found favor over big franchises and flashy entertainment. Here’s a deep dive on some winners and notable snubs, before the September event.

‘Severance’ Takes It Home

Severance is this year’s most nominated show, with a total of 27 Emmy nominations. It has received nods in the four major categories (Outstanding Drama Series, acting, directing, and writing) in recognition of the high-quality work across the series as a whole. Severance had an outstanding year as it became a top-streamed show with over 9 billion minutes watched, surpassing Ted Lasso to become Apple TV+’s most-watched show ever while generating massive subscriber growth and sustaining weekly ranking success. Severance is unique for how it pulls together its eerie minimalist aesthetic with a contemporary existential sci-fi workplace thriller centered on memory, identity, and corporate control. The fans have became deeply absorbed in both the series’ sci-fi mysteries and the emotional and cinematic visuals which attracted many new fans to the series just this year. Severance has earned both critical acclaim and a dedicated fanbase which positions it beyond just an Emmy phenomenon and makes its success rewarding to those who love it.

‘The Studio’ Ties Records

In comedy, The Studio emerged as the season’s clear breakout, earning 23 nominations and tying the all-time freshman record set by The Bear. Created by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the Apple TV+ satire skewered modern-day Hollywood, while also managing to offer one of the most emotionally honest portraits of burnout in recent memory. Rogen, playing a thinly veiled version of himself (a creatively exhausted executive who has stayed far too long at the party of legacy media) earned his first Lead Actor nomination, anchoring a show that played the razor-thin line between caricature and catharsis. The directing style was focused yet limited and the writing displayed brutal elements while Kathryn Hahn and Catherine O’Hara showcased top comedic performances as supporting actors. The Academy gave recognition for acting nominations alongside editing, directing and casting work as well as multiple guest performances.

Setting The Stage Of Future Emmy Success

While Emmy veterans dominated the headline-making slots, the most interesting story running through the nominations was the rise of unproven shows that had taken big swings—and were rewarded for doing so. Adolescence, a Netflix limited series was one of the year’s most lauded surprises. With 13 nominations, including Best Limited Series, it found critical acclaim not just for its formal audacity, but also for the lead performance of 15-year-old Owen Cooper, who became the youngest person ever nominated in the category. HBO Max’s The Pitt also found itself with three nominations, anchored by a subdued but commanding Noah Wyle, used the genre trappings of a hospital drama to stage a quiet, meditative conversation on anxiety and institutional failure.

Harrison Ford, at 83, earned his first-ever Emmy nomination for Shrinking, a role that set aside the bravado of his earlier career to explore something tender and broken. Uzo Aduba’s supporting nod for The Residence, a (sadly) canceled Netflix mystery show, which shows the Academy’s increasing willingness to reward compelling performances even in projects that never found commercial success.

Snubs That Sting – A Fall From Grace

If anything was as indicative as the nominations, it was what was omitted. Squid Game Season 2 was nominated in exactly zero categories, in spite of its worldwide popularity and a massive promotional campaign. Critics are pointing to diminished returns with weaker writing as the reason, but several sources say the voters are still holding judgement until Season 3 completes the story arc. As an established Emmy favorite from Hulu, The Handmaid’s Tale received only one nomination for Cherry Jones in a guest actress role, while Elisabeth Moss was shockingly omitted from the list which marks a significant decline from its dominant early seasons.