After having to wait until its third season to earn Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations, “Succession” could make up for lost time by pulling off a rare sweep of the drama categories. In our early odds, the HBO hit is in first place in all three drama races: ensemble, actor and actress. Should it pull off this haul, it’d only be the sixth time in SAG Awards history this has happened happened and the first time in 14 years.
The first five instances were across three shows: “ER,” “The Sopranos” and “The West Wing.” “ER” did it first in 1998 at the fourth ceremony with a with a drama ensemble prize, along with drama actor and actress wins for Anthony Edwards and Julianna Margulies, respectively. “The Sopranos” and “The West Wing” have each achieved the triple play twice; the former in 2000 and 2008 with stars James Gandolfini and Edie Falco snagging the individual awards, and the latter in back-to-back years in 2001 and 2002 with individual honors going to Martin Sheen and Allison Janney, respectively.
Since “The Sopranos'” second victory, some shows have come close to going three for three, including “The Crown.” The Netflix series was predicted to do the full drama sweep last year, but came up one short as Josh O’Connor lost the actor award to “Ozark’s” Jason Bateman, who pocketed his second win to go with his first in 2019.
It might sound crazy to predict a show that had never been nominated before to sweep, but if any show can do it, it’s “Succession.” It’s only gotten bigger since its Emmy-winning second season — SAG-AFTRA was the only major group to not even nominate it that cycle — is coming off yet another acclaimed season, and you can even argue that all of the show’s fans who are in the guild have been itching to vote for it for the past three years. And there’s the fact that it earned five nominations, tying it with “Ted Lasso” for most nominations in the TV field.
SEE Full list of SAG Awards TV nominations
“Succession’s” biggest rival in ensemble is “Squid Game,” a populist Netflix smash that could triumph like another populist Netflix smash, “Stranger Things,” did in 2017. “Squid Game” is currently in second place, followed by “The Morning Show,” which missed the ensemble lineup for its first season despite three individual bids, “Yellowstone” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
In actress, Jennifer Aniston trails Sarah Snook in second place. She won in 2020 for the first season of “The Morning Show” and this time is nominated alongside co-star Reese Witherspoon, who is in fifth. Will they cancel each other out? Aniston could very well pull a Bateman: reclaim the award after missing a year due to ineligibility. “Squid Game’s” Jung Ho-yeon is in third and “The Handmaid’s Tale’s” Elisabeth Moss is in fourth.
Actor will be the diciest category for “Succession” to conquer since it boasts three nominees in Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong. Strong is in first place, followed by Cox, Lee Jung-jae (“Squid Game”), Billy Crudup (“The Morning Show”) and Culkin. Sure, the “Succession” men could easily vote-split, but consider this: Assuming Culkin, as a supporting player going up against his lead co-stars who have collected hardware elsewhere, is not winning, Cox has yet to defeat Strong head to head at an awards show. And just last year, Gillian Anderson overcame her two co-stars from “The Crown,” Olivia Colman and Emma Corrin, to win drama actress. Yes, the two other nominees, “Ozark’s” Julia Garner and Laura Linney, were from the same show, so one of those shows was going to “vote-split” no matter what. However, Strong — and really, “Succession” — could look to “The Sopranos” for precedence. Falco defeated “Sopranos” co-stars Lorraine Bracco and Nancy Marchand, and two other nominees from different shows — Anderson (“The X-Files”) and Annie Potts (“Any Day Now”) — in 2000 as part of the series’ sweep.
PREDICT the 2022 SAG Awards winners until Feb. 27
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