Say it ain’t woe! Lady Gaga’s limited screen time on ‘Wednesday’ disqualifies her from 2026 Emmys

Lady Gaga‘s highly anticipated, hugely hyped guest appearance on Wednesday turned out to be more of a disappearing act.

In the sixth episode of Season 2, titled “Woe Thyself,” which finally streamed Sept. 3 on Netflix, Gaga’s blink-and-you-miss-it character is Rosaline Rotwood, a psychic teacher during the 1960s at Nevermore Academy, who is now a ghost. Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) meets with Rosaline in an attempt to boost her own psychic powers so she can locate Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), an escaped Hyde. When their abracadabra session is interrupted by Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers), the ghost teacher switches Wednesday and Enid’s bodies as a fun little punishment.

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“How dare you enter my chamber uninvited,” Rosaline coos while floating toward Wednesday in her light blue-and-white period costume. “The crack in your monochrome armor is overbearing arrogance. You positively reek of the stuff.” The pale apparition then warns Wednesday about the “price to pay” (i.e., the body-switching) if she removes her hand from the flame and breaks the raven’s gaze.

Gaga reportedly shot her scene in Ireland in a single day. Watch her one-minute, 46-second sequence below. (Rosaline also appears later in the episode, but only for a few seconds.)

“Woe Thyself” is the longest episode of the season, clocking in at 69 minutes. Some quick math tells us that Gaga only appeared in about 3 percent of the episode. And that limited screen time will cost her a shot at submitting for Best Comedy Guest Actress at next year’s Emmy Awards.

Per the Emmy rules for guest stars, “The minimum stand-alone and contiguous-screen time (performer has an ongoing engagement in the scene, on or off camera) for eligibility is 5 percent of the total running time of the submitted episode.” Looks like the Television Academy won’t be giving this performance its applause.

Had the episode’s running time been shorter, or had Gaga had a slightly larger role, she could have reached the 5 percent threshold needed for eligibility. Gold Derby has reached out to Netflix for comment.

In any event, fans took to social media to express their disappointment at Gaga’s minimal presence.

News of Gaga’s guest appearance first broke in November, and Netflix officially confirmed it in May; Gaga had a featured role in the streamer’s Tudum presentation, rising from a coffin and performing two different songs to a packed house.

Something tells us Gaga will be just fine not receiving a Best Comedy Guest Actress Emmy nomination next year. After all, she just won a Sports Emmy in May for Best Music Direction of “Hold My Hand” at the 2025 Super Bowl, and with previous victories at the Oscars and Grammys, she is just a Tony Award short of EGOT. She has already been nominated four times at the Primetime Emmys, for Lady Gaga Presents: The Monster Ball Tour at Madison Square Garden (2011), Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek Live (2015), Super Bowl LI Halftime Show Starring Lady Gaga (2017), and One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga (2022).

And even though she’ll miss on an acting nod for Wednesday, she still has a path to the Emmys next year for her contributions to the show.

On Sept. 3, the music video for Gaga’s spooky new song, “The Dead Dance,” was released to coincide with Part 2 of Wednesday‘s second season. The show’s producer-director Tim Burton helmed the nearly five-minute video. The song makes its onscreen debut during Episode 7, in a scene involving Enid and Agnes DeMille (Evie Templeton).

“The Dead Dance” will likely be a contender at the 2026 Emmys for Best Music & Lyrics, though it is not eligible for the 2026 Grammys because it was released four days after the eligibility window closed.

The first two seasons of Wednesday are streaming now on Netflix.

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