Since the beginning of January, “The Flight Attendant” star Kaley Cuoco has risen from fifth place to third place in our combined odds for the Golden Globes. As of this writing, and with the Globe nominations right around the corner, she gets 5/1 odds of claiming Best TV Comedy Actress. But keep an eye on her at the Screen Actors Guild Awards too. She could potentially fly away with both prizes.
Cuoco has never been nominated at the Globes despite more than a decade co-starring on “The Big Bang Theory.” But the Hollywood Foreign Press Association loves to award buzzy new shows, unlike other awards organizations like the Emmys that are often pretty set in their ways. “The Flight Attendant” was such a series, premiering on HBO Max on November 26 to critical acclaim, and its murder mystery was popular enough to already earn it a renewal for a second season.
The series and its star will have to fend off “Schitt’s Creek” in both Best Comedy Series and Best Comedy Actress after “Schitt” made history with an unprecedented haul at the Emmys. Sometimes the HFPA likes to rubber-stamp an Emmy winning show so as not to be left out of the loop (they finally awarded “Breaking Bad” and “The Americans” in their last seasons, for instance). But “Schitt” was so dominant at the Emmys that the HFPA may decide to move on to the next big thing instead of try to follow such a historic Emmy sweep. That’s what happened with “Game of Thrones,” which the Globes shrugged off even in its final year in contention.
That could be good news for Cuoco, who currently gets 5/1 odds based on the predictions of Gold Derby users. She’s behind only Emmy champ Catherine O’Hara (“Schitt’s Creek”) with 82/25 odds and Emmy-snubbed Elle Fanning (“The Great”) with 9/2 odds. But two of Gold Derby’s Editors, Chris Beachum and Zach Laws, are betting on Cuoco to upset O’Hara. So are two of our Top 24 Users who got the highest scores predicting last year’s Globe nominations.
The SAG Awards are another story. They’re usually harder for new shows to break into. That may be because it’s so much larger an organization. Fewer than 100 international journalists decide the Globes, while thousands of nomination committee members decide the SAG contenders and than over 100,000 pick the winners. That means there’s a lot of inertia from year to year, and it often takes those voters an extra year or two to catch up to the zeitgeist. And the SAG Awards have the additional problem of lumping lead and supporting actors together in one category, making it all the more competitive just to get a nomination.
But newcomers do still break through and win, as Jennifer Aniston did last year for “The Morning Show,” which like “The Flight Attendant” was from a brand new streaming service, Apple TV+. Our latest odds show Cuoco knocking on the door in sixth place with 12/1 odds. But if you consider just the Expert journalists we’ve surveyed, Cuoco is in the top five, with more than half of them betting on her to get a nom. And she already has a SAG profile with six straight nominations as a member of the “Big Bang” ensemble (2012-2017), though she hasn’t gotten any noms individually. Now might be the time her acting peers make good.
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