Will Viola Davis (“How to Get Away with Murder”) or Taraji P. Henson (“Empire”) become the first African American to win the Emmy for Best Drama Actress? Or can Robin Wright (“House of Cards”), Elisabeth Moss (“Mad Men”), Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”) or Claire Danes (“Homeland”) break through? Gold Derby editors Tom O’Neil, Chris Beachum, Marcus James Dixon and Matt Noble come out swinging with tough predictions in a lively pundit battle over this fierce diva smackdown. After watching our video slugfest below, be sure to make/update your own predictions for this category before the Emmy ceremony takes place Sunday, September 20.
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“This is an historic, absolutely breakthrough slugfest here,” notes O’Neil, who managed to gather four Gold Derby editors from all over the world together in one room. O’Neil and Dixon live in Los Angeles, Beachum hails from Mississippi, but recently moved to the City of Angels. Noble is visiting from Australia.
Three of the editors agree that Davis is the frontrunner to win her first Emmy, but Beachum stands rogue in predicting Wright. “Her show is up for Best Drama Series, which Viola doesn’t have that option. I don’t think there’s a lot of support for ‘How to Get Away with Murder.’ That doesn’t always kill you, but at least we know the voters are watching ‘House of Cards.'”
Noble does his best to straighten out Beachum, noting, “It’s gonna be a tough year for Robin just because of the competition. It’s so stiff. And it seems like the ‘House of Cards’ buzz has really died down from where it was last year.”
Dixon notes that because of the new Emmy rule changes, “It’s a big question mark this year what’s gonna happen with the voting because they’ve opened it up to the entire membership. If you could vote with your peer group in the first round of voting you could now vote in the second round. So, we’re going to see a lot more diversity. I think a lot younger people are going to be voting, too.”
See O’Neil’s Emmy predictions here, Beachum’s here, Dixon’s here and Noble’s here. Compare their Emmy predix to the overall combined Gold Derby odds and rankings here.
Experts Emmy predictions: All 32 categories
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Last year our Experts had an accuracy rate of 58.62% when it came to predicting the Emmy winners. That score tied them with both Gold Derby’s Editors and the Top 24 Users (those two dozen folks who did the best at predicting last year’s Emmys).
Our Users scored 51.72% (Click on any of these groups to see what they got right and wrong last year.)
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