On Sept. 15, Dan and Eugene Levy will make history as the first father-son hosts of the Emmys (and Eugene also is nominated for outstanding hosted nonfiction series or special for his Apple TV+ series The Reluctant Traveler With Eugene Levy).
But there will be plenty of other families with multiple representatives — a slew of spouses and partners have been nominated this year.
In some cases, the nominees met on set. In other instances, one nominee might have reached success first, potentially boosting the other partner in various ways. Whatever the reason, viewers will see a winners community that is exceptionally tight-knit — and likely to thank individuals who could soon be thanking them on the same stage.
Sarah Paulson and partner Holland Taylor received Emmy nominations for outstanding guest actress in a drama series and outstanding supporting actress in a drama series, respectively: Paulson for her role in Prime Video’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Taylor for Apple TV+’s The Morning Show. Both, of course, have received their fair share of Emmy nominations in previous years, and Paulson in fact won for her role as prosecutor Marcia Clark in Ryan Murphy’s FX series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story in 2016. Taylor also has one win under her belt, for her supporting acting role on ABC’s The Practice in 1999.
Following her Emmy nomination, Paulson told THR that because of poor cellphone service, she’d somewhat forgotten what was happening that day. “I remembered mostly because I knew that Holland could get nominated,” she said. “And I was waiting to see if it was going to happen. So I didn’t know if my publicist was calling me to tell me that, yes, Holland had been nominated, or if I had been nominated, but my call was not going through. I kept driving down the hill. She kept calling, dropping, she kept calling, it kept dropping. And I was like, ‘Well, maybe I’ll never know.’ ”
Carrie Coon and husband Tracy Letts also had much to celebrate with their Emmy nominations. Coon was acknowledged in the lead drama actress category for her portrayal of Bertha Russell in HBO’s The Gilded Age (her second nod overall), while Letts earned his first nomination in the guest actor drama category for his role in HBO’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.
Speaking to THR, Coon said her husband “was watching the livestream because he wanted to see if I got nominated. And as soon as he [heard my name], he turned it off. Minutes later, someone texted me, ‘Tracy just got nominated for guest actor!’ I was holding my crying son in my arms, and I immediately texted Tracy. That was the first he’d heard of it, so it was just very funny.”
Naomi Watts received her first-ever Emmy nomination in the lead actress in a limited/anthology series category for her role as Babe Paley in FX’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, while her husband, Billy Crudup, who has been nominated twice before and won in 2020 for his performance on The Morning Show, is nominated again for the same series. Incidentally, this all follows an Oscar season in which real-life couples Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach (Barbie), Margot Robbie and Tom Ackerley (Barbie), Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas (Oppenheimer), and Justine Triet and Arthur Harari (Anatomy of a Fall) were nominated for their collaborations.
Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olson.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Spouses (and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-stars) Kaitlin Olson and Rob McElhenney both received nods: Olson for her guest actress performance on Hacks and McElhenney for his executive producer stint on Welcome to Wrexham. Olson has three previous Emmy noms to her name, while McElhenney won in the outstanding unstructured reality program for the same show last year.
Creative collaborations between couples also are the order of the day. Paul W. Downs and wife Lucia Aniello are both nominated for writing Hacks (Aniello received a directing nomination, too). And Shogun creators (and real-life married couple) Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks scored noms — and not only in the outstanding drama series category. They were nominated for their writing on Shogun’s “Anjin” episode, with an additional nod for Kondo for “Crimson Sky.”
Finally, a reunion of sorts: Gary Oldman and Lesley Manville are both nominees this year. Oldman is nominated for lead actor in Slow Horses, while Manville gets the nod for her supporting actress work in The Crown. The two were married and even share grandchildren — but divorced in 1990.
This story first appeared in the Sept. 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
