In a very unsettled drama Emmy field, one of the few ostensible locks this year is Elizabeth Debicki. With 4/1 odds, she is the runaway favorite to take home the Best Drama Supporting Actress Emmy for her turn as Princess Diana on “The Crown,” which would make the Netflix series the sixth show to deliver two different winners in the category.
Twelve shows have won drama supporting actress more than once. Of those, seven shows have had one person triumph repeatedly, including “Lou Grant” for Nancy Marchand, who won a record four times, and most recently “Ozark” for three-time champ Julia Garner. The five shows that saw the wealth spread among its cast members are “St. Elsewhere” (Doris Roberts, two-time winner Bonnie Bartlett), “The West Wing” (two-time winner Allison Janney, Stockard Channing), “Hill Street Blues” (Alfre Woodard, Betty Thomas), “The Practice” (Camryn Manheim, Holland Taylor) and “thirtysomething” (Patricia Wettig, Melanie Mayron). No show has had more than two cast members win the award.
Interestingly, Marchand (1980-82; her first win was in ’78), Roberts (1983), Woodard (1984), Thomas (1985), Bartlett (1986-87), Wettig (1988) and Mayron (1989) all triumphed in the ’80s, so the Emmys only awarded four shows in this category that decade. “The West Wing,” ironically, might not be part of this multiple winners list had Janney remained in supporting for the duration of the show’s run. She scored back-to-back statuettes in 2000 and ’01, beating Channing both times, before moving to lead in 2002, paving the way for Channing to win that year. Janney won in lead in 2002 and ’04.
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“The Crown,” of course, is unlike any of these aforementioned shows with its rotating casts every two years, which prevents someone from winning more than twice and offers the chance for a greater number of cast members to be nominated and win. Through five seasons, “The Crown” has produced six nominations for five different actresses in the category — Vanessa Kirby, Gillian Anderson, Helena Bonham Carter (twice), Emerald Fennell and Debicki — with Debicki and Lesley Manville forecasted to receive bids this year. But only Anderson has struck gold, having prevailed in 2021 for her performance as Margaret Thatcher in Season 4 as part of “The Crown’s” unprecedented 7-for-7 sweep.
Debicki, who lost to Jennifer Coolidge (“The White Lotus”) last cycle, is matching Anderson’s path step by step to Emmy night so far. Like Anderson, she won the Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award and Screen Actors Guild Award in the winter. Anderson was expected to claim all three, but Debicki was not, which is just a testament to strong she is, no doubt helped by the Diana-focused first four episodes of the sixth and final season. While she was predicted to nab Critics Choice, she was in second place to Meryl Streep (“Only Murders in the Building”) in the Globes’ genre-less supporting category and in second to reigning Emmy champ Sarah Snook (“Succession”) in the SAG Awards’ single drama actress category. The SAG Awards have always loved “The Crown” (seven wins) more than “Succession” (two wins and no nominations until Season 3), so perhaps we should’ve seen that coming despite the latter’s general dominance.
Unlike Anderson, Debicki won’t be able to rely on the strength of her show. Season 4 was “The Crown’s” peak and widely embraced, earning 24 Emmy nominations, and the last two seasons were, uh, not. Season 5 only received six nominations last year — you know, one fewer than the above-the-line wins Season 4 had — and while Season 6 will likely perform better due to the openness of the field, it’s clear that passion for the royal drama has waned. But there is passion for Debicki’s performance and that ought to be enough for “The Crown” to bag another win in this category.
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