Author: Stacey Wilson Hunt

September 20, 2015 7:00am PT by Stacey Wilson Hunt

 Photofest

A streaming series winning best comedy or drama isn’t the only way TV history could be made on Sunday. Here are 10 other potential outcomes for the record books.

If Netflix’s House of Cards or Amazon’s Transparent nab best drama or best comedy trophies respectively, the TV business as we once knew it will (finally) officially be over.

But there are other significant races in the works whose winners would also signal giant shifts for the small screen. Here are ten other possible outcomes to watch for on Sunday when the 67th annual Primetime Emmy Awards are given out in Los Angeles.

Category: Drama Series

Potential History-Maker: AMC’s Better Call Saul

Why: The series would be the first dramatic spinoff of another Emmy-winning series (Breaking Bad) to take home gold.

Category: Lead Actor in a Drama Series

Potential History-Maker: Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk

Why: Odenkirk would become the first actor to win for playing a character that originated in another series.

Category: Lead Actor in a Drama Series

Potential History-Maker: Mad Men’s Jon Hamm

Why: Hamm would be the first actor to win for the first time after more than five seasons on a series – seven to be exact. The closest another actor came to this milestone was when Kyle Chandler (now contending for Netflix’s Bloodline) won for his final season of Friday Night Lights in 2011.

Category: Variety Sketch Series

Potential History-Maker: All of the category’s nominees: IFC’s Portlandia; Comedy Central’s Key & Peele, Inside Amy Schumer and Drunk History; and NBC’s Saturday Night Live.

Why: No sketch series has ever contended exclusively against other such shows until this year when the Academy split the variety category into two: talk show and sketch.

Category: Lead Actor in a Comedy Series

Potential History-Maker: Transparent’s Jeffrey Tambor

Why: Tambor would be the first actor – male or female – to win for playing a character who is transgender.

Category: Lead Actress in a Drama Series

Potential History-Makers: How to Get Away with Murder’s Viola Davis and Empire’s Taraji P. Henson

Why: No black female actor has ever won in this category.

Category: Lead actor in a limited series or TV movie

Potential History-Maker: Derek’s Ricky Gervais

Why: Gervais would become the first actor to win here for a comedic film role, this one a spinoff of his Netflix comedy series Derek.

Category: Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

Potential History-Maker: Inside Amy Schumer’s Amy Schumer

Why: No sketch-series performer has ever won a top Emmy acting prize.

Category: Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

Potential History-Maker: Parks and Recreation’s Amy Poehler

Why: She would be the first lead female actor to win for the first time for the final season of her comedy series.

Category: Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

Potential History-Maker: Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon

Why: She would be become the first SNL castmember to win a non-guest star acting Emmy.

Ricky Gervais Better Call Saul How to Get Away With Murder

Stacey Wilson Hunt

THRnews@thr.com

August 21, 2015 5:00am PT by Stacey Wilson Hunt

Jeremy Podeswa, Mike Judge, David Nutter  REX USA; AP Images; Courtesy of David Nutter

From a sheer numbers perspective, the cable titan stands the best chance of taking home a win with five nominations (five times more than anywhere else).

This story first appeared in the Aug. 28 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

COMEDY SERIES

Louis C.K., Louie (FX)

The 35-time Emmy nominee (35!) and five-time winner earned his sixth directing nomination for season five’s “Sleepover,” in which C.K.’s alter ego shleps his daughter and her friends to jail so he can post bail for his brother (Robert Kelly), after which the group shares a celebratory frozen yogurt.

Armando Iannucci, Veep (HBO)

The six-time nominee (and now departed showrunner) helmed the C-SPAN-esque episode “Testimony,” which infused congressional testimony with the show’s signature hysterics.

Mike Judge, Silicon Valley (HBO)

The EP-writer-director was behind the camera again for “Sand Hill Shuffle,” the first episode of season two, in which late actor Christopher Evan Welch’s character Peter is eulogized via PowerPoint.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, The Last Man on Earth (Fox)

The duo behind Sony’s hit 21 Jump Street franchise and Warner Bros.’ BAFTA-winning The Lego Movie scored their first-ever Emmy directing nom — the only one for a broadcast series — for the pilot of Fox’s apocalyptic comedy starring creator and acting nominee Will Forte.

Jill Soloway, Transparent (Amazon)

The previously nominated writer-producer (Six Feet Under) and Sundance-winning director (Afternoon Delight) earned her first directing Emmy nom for “Best New Girl,” a 1994-set episode about a missed bat mitzvah and Mort/Maura’s (Jeffrey Tambor) dreamy visit to a woodsy “drag camp.”

DRAMA SERIES

Lesli Linka Glatter, Homeland (Showtime)

One of few women ever to break into the drama directing race, the three-time nominee and series EP is nominated for “From A to B and Back Again,” in which Carrie’s (Claire Danes) young informant, Aayan (Suraj Sharma), is murdered in cold blood by his terrorist uncle.

David Nutter, Game of Thrones (HBO)

In the series’ fifth-season finale, “Mother’s Mercy,” five-time nominee Nutter (The Sopranos, The Pacific) pulled off one of the series’ most game-changing sequences in the effects-heavy (and very nude) walk of atonement by Cersei (supporting actress nominee Lena Headey).

Tim Van Patten, Boardwalk Empire (HBO)

The 15-time nominee and two-time winner (The Sopranos) directed the Prohibition-era drama’s series finale, “Eldorado,” which saw the long-expected demise of Atlantic City bootlegger Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi).

Jeremy Podeswa, Game of Thrones (HBO)

Three-time nominee Podeswa (Boardwalk Empire, The Pacific) helmed a similarly controversial Thrones episode, “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” featuring a grueling scene in which Ramsay (Iwan Rheon) rapes virgin Sansa (Sophie Turner).

Steven Soderbergh, The Knick (Cinemax)

The Oscar- (Traffic) and Emmy-winning director (Behind the Candelabra) earned a nom for helming “Method and Madness,” the pilot of this 1900s-set drama about modern medicine’s bloody beginnings that stars Clive Owen.

Stacey Wilson Hunt

THRnews@thr.com