It’s official: Better Call Saul hasn’t won a single Emmy.
The acclaimed Breaking Bad spinoff scored 53 Emmy nominations over its six-season run but failed to win a single award. The final season was nominated for seven awards at the 2023 Emmys, including the top prizes of best actor in a drama series and best drama series.
During its AMC run, Breaking Bad won 16 Emmys, including two awards for best drama series.
But Saul, which also aired on AMC, couldn’t compete with its predecessor’s Emmy success.
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Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Monday’s Emmys, Better Call Saul actress Rhea Seehorn, nominated for supporting actress in a drama series, indicated she was happy with the series even if it went into history without an Emmy win.
“I think at this point, we all truly feel proud of the work we created, and [co-creator, finale writer-director] Peter Gould, even if I wasn’t on this show, nailed the final season and the finale and that’s a really hard thing to do. I guess I’d be lying if I didn’t say, who doesn’t want to run up on stage and go, ‘Thanks for recognizing our last time out here.’ But I have a feeling we’ll feel that way about our show no matter what,” she said.
Better Call Saul wasn’t the only multiple nominee that went home empty-handed from the Emmys telecast, where The Bear, Succession and Beef dominated the comedy, drama and limited series categories.
During the three-hour Fox awards show, 21-time nominee Ted Lasso (a past Emmy favorite, winning in multiple categories including comedy series for its first two seasons) failed to win a single award. Similarly, The Last of Us, the second most Emmy-nominated series in 2023, didn’t win any awards handed out at the broadcast ceremony on Monday. The Last of Us did, however, win eight awards during the Creative Arts Emmys, where the majority of this year’s Emmy trophies were handed out last weekend, but none of those wins were televised during the main ceremony. Ted Lasso won two awards at the Creative Arts Emmys.
And former best comedy series winner The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which scored 14 nominations for its final season in 2023, also went winless during the main Emmys ceremony, despite receiving two awards at the Creative Arts Emmys.
Other top nominees shut out during the main ceremony include Wednesday (12 nominations, four awards at the Creative Arts Emmys), Barry (11 nominations, one win at the Creative Arts Emmys) and Only Murders in the Building (11 nominations, one win at the Creative Arts Emmys).
Still, other multiple nominees were shut out entirely, failing to win even at the Creative Arts Emmys. Limited series Fleishman Is in Trouble and Welcome to Chippendales won nothing despite landing seven and five nominations, respectively. And previous Emmys winner The Crown failed to win from any of its six nominations, but it will have a chance at the 2024 Emmys for the final season of the Netflix series, which premiered at the end of 2023. Four-time nominee Jury Duty was also shut out.
During the telecast, some of the surprises came in the few categories that The Bear, Succession and Beef didn’t win, including comedy actress, one of the few comedy categories in which The Bear wasn’t nominated as star Ayo Edebiri was nominated for (and won) supporting actress for the show’s first season. Instead, Abbott Elementary‘s Quinta Brunson won the lone award for the ABC sitcom, which went into the Emmys nominated for eight awards. However, Brunson and Abbott were expected to perform well at the Emmys (the lack of additional wins was perhaps the bigger surprise).
Black Bird‘s Paul Walter Hauser beat two Beef actors (Young Mazino and Joseph Lee) for the best supporting actor in a limited or anthology series or TV movie, and Dahmer-Monster‘s Niecy Nash-Betts topped Beef‘s Maria Bello in the supporting actress in a limited series category.
And while a number of pundits argued (correctly) that The Daily Show would win best talk series in light of the absence of perennial winner Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, others suggested that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was the more likely victor.
