Heated Rivalry, Mussolini and The Other Bennet Sister did not receive Emmy noms because they’re not U.S.-funded Illustrated by Brian Taylor Among the biggest stories of this year’s Emmys is a show that wasn’t even eligible to compete. Last month, the Canadian-made, HBO Max-distributed Heated Rivalry proved conspicuously absent from the drama series nominees, the vast majority of which were returning shows. Sure, the steamy queer hockey romance never screamed “prestige.” But as the streaming phenomenon of this past winter, in a TV season light on new breakouts, its awards potential was undeniable. Star Connor Storrie, unknown a year ago, skyrocketed on the Academy’s radar to the extent that he became the year’s sole Saturday Night Live performer nominee, for his auspicious guest-hosting debut. Matt Damon and Ryan Gosling never stood a chance against voters’ one shot to stump for the hunk behind Ilya Rozanov.
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The drama race, at least, is filled with other buzzy shows, but Heated Rivalry‘s Emmys exclusion speaks to a larger issue that’s preventing great work from being celebrated on TV’s biggest night. Without American involvement at least as a co- production (Korea’s Squid Game, for instance), these shows are punted to the International Emmys, a separate ceremony plenty prestigious in its own right but carrying a fraction of the visibility.
The problem appears especially glaring in thinner fields that could desperately use a boost in the competition — like this year’s limited series crop. I come not to bury The Beast in Me and All Her Fault‘s frothy fun, Beef‘s admirably thorny encore, Love Story‘s zeitgeist bull’s-eye nor DTF St. Louis‘ subversive smarts. But taken together, it’s an underwhelming lineup, and few contenders were remotely up to the task of taking their places. At least on the actual ballot. Should they have been deemed eligible, some of this past season’s finest programming functioned as limited series, except they were produced outside the U.S. Ergo, “International Emmy” only.
Oscar nominee Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement) directed the entirety of Mussolini: Son of the Century, and it’s one of the British filmmaker’s finest achievements, a maximalist and unbearably timely portrait of encroaching fascism. The epic eight-part Italian drama was widely acclaimed and streamed in the fall on Mubi, a relatively novice player in the episodic game.
Wright is not the only Hollywood-anointed filmmaker who could have competed this year under a different structure. Thomas Vinterberg, the Danish director behind the Oscar-winning Another Round, launched Families Like Ours at the Venice Film Festival in 2024 before Netflix acquired it stateside for release the following summer. The intimate seven-episode drama hit close to home, vividly depicting an environmental catastrophe and the political crises that follow. Even Netflix’s massive reach was no match for stringent Academy rules.
And speaking of massive reach: The Emmys missed out on the chance to platform a genuine cross-continental smash in The Other Bennet Sister, Sarah Quintrell’s infectious drama (based on Janice Hadlow’s novel) imagining the life of Pride & Prejudice‘s most overlooked sister, Mary. After breaking ratings records in the U.K., its American launch on the multinational BritBox drove similarly unprecedented subscriber growth. “It’s safe to say it’s the biggest thing that we’ve ever done,” Robert Schildhouse, the BBC’s highest-ranking American executive in the U.S., recently told THR. It’s the Emmys’ great loss to not have the revelatory star Ella Bruccoleri, to say nothing of a decorated supporting cast including Richard E. Grant and Indira Varma, represented at this year’s show.
When it comes to submitting for Primetime Emmys versus International, some of these matters are strategic — those who know this beat may well remember that Netflix considered not submitting Baby Reindeer to the main awards until rave reactions started rolling in — while others, as in Heated Rivalry‘s case, are cut-and-dried. There may be hope for change, though: The separate organizations that oversee the two Emmy ceremonies — respectively known in short as the Academy and the National Academy — announced in July that they were entering “exploratory talks” to consider merging for the first time since 1977. That could put an end to this depressingly outdated segmentation.
In terms of media consumption, national boundaries have all but collapsed — something that studios like Netflix understand all too well. Expanding the Emmys’ parameters would not only increase the mean quality of nominated work but also bring attention to great stuff flying under the radar. Just look at the example set of late by the Oscars: The film Academy has globalized, nominating more and more non-English-language movies for best picture every year — bracing, worthy titles like Brazil’s I’m Still Here and The Secret Agent, France’s Anatomy of a Fall and Korea’s Parasite.
“Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” Parasite‘s director Bong Joon Ho said at the 2020 Golden Globes ahead of his movie’s Oscars triumph. Emmys, take note: The sentiment applies no less to TV.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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