Come awards season, there are only so many acting nominations to go around, and you won’t find “admit one per ensemble” anywhere in the fine print. It’s common to see two or more names from the same project pop up in the same category, especially in the TV world. So when nominations for the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards come out on July 8, voters looking to support their favorite shows will face some tough choices.
In today’s TV landscape, strong ensembles have become the norm, with casting directors approaching big-budget projects like Nick Fury assembling the Avengers. And though the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences does hand out best casting Emmys, unlike SAG-AFTRA’s Actor Awards, it doesn’t honor outstanding ensemble performances. Any number of factors can result in castmates getting stuffed into the same acting category: a buzzy hit storming the gates, a beloved institution taking a victory lap, or simply a bunch of movie stars making small-screen moves.
The 2026 field checks all these boxes; here are the various ways it might play out.
Crack open the ancient texts, and you’ll find the same zero-sum math playing out across decades, with three very different outcomes.
Take the beloved ’80s sitcom “The Golden Girls.” Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Betty White shared the lead actress category several times; Estelle Getty was a perennial nominee for supporting actress. Faced with an embarrassment of riches, voters split the difference, awarding each actress one trophy over the show’s seven seasons.
“Friends,” the supreme TV comedy ensemble of the ’90s, had a considerably messier awards history. The show navigated Emmys chaos for 10 seasons; although the cast all competed in the supporting category for most of the run, there were just three instances of same-cast rivalry on the final ballot. Only Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer scored supporting nods for Season 1, which debuted in 1994. Kudrow then held the line as the cast’s sole nominee for the rest of the decade, winning in 1998. Jennifer Aniston joined her in the supporting category in 2000 and 2001, then ascended to lead in 2002 and stayed there. Kudrow started blanking. Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc battled for lead actor for the first and only time in 2002. Courteney Cox…well, she made great money.
Today, the grand pooh-bah of deep TV benches remains NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” which has never quite cracked the ensemble awards puzzle. Over its half-century on air, dozens of full-time players have broken out to receive individual nominations, often only one performer at a time. Just four won while they were cast members: Chevy Chase (1976), Gilda Radner (1978), Dana Carvey (1993), and Kate McKinnon (2016, 2017). The latest standout on a nomination streak, Bowen Yang (2021, 2022, 2024, 2025), departed the show in December, meaning this year is his last shot to seal the deal with voters.
Competing co-leads: When a stacked cast hits Emmy season, the first question is where to put everyone on the ballot. Some shows, like Steve Martin and John Hoffman’s Hulu comedy-drama-mystery “Only Murders in the Building,” choose to bill competing co-leads. Main men Martin and Martin Short both campaign as lead actors, leaving voters to sort out which comedy legend they love slightly more. (Selena Gomez gets to chill in the lead actress lounge by herself.) Notably, Short has received four nominations for this role, compared to Martin’s two, suggesting voters have been making their preference known all along.
The lead/supporting split: One way to handle potential nomination overlap is to split ’em up. Consider the campaign strategy for Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky’s “Hacks”: Jean Smart always vies for the lead acting trophy, and Hannah Einbinder competes in the supporting category. One could (and many would) argue that they really function as co-leads in all the ways that count—narrative focus, screen time, prominence in promo material. Smart does get top billing, though. Regardless, “Hacks” fans have avoided an impossible choice right till the end. Smart has steamrolled the competition since 2021, and Einbinder picked up her first-ever Emmy in 2025. With this year’s final season, they’ve got one last opportunity to secure their respective bags.
“Hacks” Courtesy HBO Max
The harder version of the dilemma arrives when the lead/supporting divide feels like a billing fiction. This year, watch for exactly that dynamic from Lee Sung Jin’s Netflix anthology series “Beef.”
The second season’s core ensemble—Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, and Cailee Spaeny—carry equal dramatic weight across eight episodes. The show’s premise is symmetrical by design: two couples, two sides of a beef, no obvious protagonist. Yet established names Isaac and Mulligan are top-billed and tapped for lead nominations, while relatively newer faces Melton and Spaeny are slotted into supporting.
This kind of artificial split has precedent. A pair of hit HBO dramas, Mike White’s “The White Lotus” and Jesse Armstrong’s “Succession,” illustrate what happens when a show can’t (or won’t) manage the problem at a category-wide level. In 2023, those two shows supplied every nominee for supporting actor in a drama, taking four slots each, and “Succession” star Matthew Macfadyen took home the prize. Just last year, more than half of “The Pitt” stalwart Katherine LaNasa’s supporting actress rivals were “The White Lotus” ladies. Did those castmates dilute each other’s chances both years in the final round? Perhaps; perhaps not. But undoubtedly, “Succession” and “The White Lotus” loyalists faced an extra layer of decision-making.
“The Pitt” Credit: Warrick Page/HBO Max
Crowded supporting fields: Sometimes there’s simply a great ensemble and not enough ballot lines to go around. R. Scott Gemmill’s HBO Max series “The Pitt” may be the purest current case study of this, and the one with the fewest elegant solutions. There’s no debate about the lead actor on the medical drama; that’s Noah Wyle, who won (at last) at the 77th Emmy Awards for playing Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch. As for the rest of the folks playing medical professionals? The universe will pit them against each other in the battle to claim precious supporting nominations—and possibly to win final-round votes. In 2025, only two other cast members (LaNasa for supporting and Shawn Hatosy for guest actor) scored nods for the show’s first season. The rest of the players, mostly young up-and-comers, went unrecognized. But the buzz around “The Pitt” has only grown after Season 2. Could Patrick Ball and Gerran Howell give any competition to Hatosy, now that he’s been upgraded to the supporting actor race? LaNasa, who won the Emmy the first time around for her role as charge nurse Dana Evans, faces an even longer list of intra-cast competition—perhaps Sepideh Moafi and Taylor Dearden will help her pack the supporting actress slate with “Pitt” talent.
And “The Pitt” isn’t the only series that could swamp a single category. The large casts of Brad Ingelsby’s HBO drama “Task,” Connor Hines’ FX miniseries “Love Story,” and Megan Gallagher’s Peacock thriller “All Her Fault” contain worlds of possibility—and it certainly wouldn’t be shocking for a celebrity-soaked debut like the Apple TV comedy “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” (starring Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Nicole Kidman) or a returning power player like Christopher Storer’s FX (controversially classified) comedy “The Bear” to load up on supporting slots, either. In all likelihood, the 2026 field will produce its orderly “Golden Girls” moments, free-for-all “Friends” chaos, and all-too-predictable “Saturday Night Live” deferrals. The Emmys still award only one trophy per category; the ensembles just keep getting better at making that feel like a crime.
This story originally appeared in the June 15 issue of Backstage Magazine.
