Do voters follow their heart to ‘The Pitt’ or their head to ‘Severance’?

With Emmy voting beginning Monday and running to Aug. 27, four top awards experts — Variety‘s Clayton Davis, IndieWire’s Marcus Jones, and Deadline’s Pete Hammond — are grilled by moderator and Gold Derby editor-in-chief Debra Birnbaum about their latest predictions. Watch the Emmys Face-Off video above.

For Best Drama Series, it’s a matter of heart vs. head, which prompts Davis to joke, “I don’t want to reveal my heart. It’s too precious.” He then adds, “No, but 27 nominations [for Severance] is such a flex. It’s five short of the record of Game of Thrones, plus it has three editing nominations. It showed up. I think it has the edge, just based on momentum and the nomination haul.”

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For Jones, his head is saying Severance, while his heart picks The Pitt. “Something significant that we are alluding to is that when you have a lot more above-the-line nominations, that’s more public-facing, and it gets more publicity seeing these actors out there,” he notes. “And so with The Pitt, even though people love that show, it’s just Noah Wyle and Katherine LaNasa [and guest star Shawn Hatosy], and none of these other characters people fell in love with.” Comparatively, almost everyone on Severance “got nominated, and so you have to give it up for Apple really campaigning and believing in the show.”

Drama Series

Contender

Odds

Severance

72.7%

The Pitt

18.8%

The Last of Us

4.6%

The White Lotus

2.5%

Andor

0.8%

The Diplomat

0.4%

Slow Horses

0.2%

Paradise

—

Hammond brings anecdotal evidence that The Pitt is “really watched” by the voters he’s talked to, despite some of its actors getting snubbed. However, he reminds viewers, “Medical shows have a hard time winning. ER won in the ’90s, and you can go back to Marcus Welby, M.D., or things like that. It’s just tough for the win. The Pitt is admired, even though it didn’t get cinematography, it didn’t get editing.” Ultimately, he thinks Severance will win because of “its nominations and its across-the-board appeal.”

Is it possible Severance could sweep every major category, like Schitt’s Creek in 2020 and The Crown in 2021? “We talk a lot about this when we talk about Oscars,” Birnbaum says. “You want to vote for the winners, and because drama is so stacked, I don’t know that there’s a sweep potential here. There are so many strong performances, you’re going to want to vote for some of these people on The White Lotus, Severance, The Pitt.” She concludes, “I don’t know that you can see an all-category sweep for any one of these shows.”

In the extended Emmys Face-Off video, the pundits debate all of the major categories, including Best Comedy Series (The Studio vs. Hacks), Best Limited Series (Adolescence vs. The Penguin), and Best TV Movie (Rebel Ridge vs. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy). And, in a massive shake-up from a month ago, they all now think The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will win Best Talk Series in the aftermath of its shocking cancellation. “The Daily Show must have just gone, ‘Oh f–k,'” Hammond remarks.

Which Emmy expert do you agree with the most? Be sure to make your predictions and join the Emmy discussion in Gold Derby’s TV forum.

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