The 2022 Emmy nominations are in and some new blood has made the cut. Scratch that, a lot of new blood has made the cut.
Some 50 first-time nominees were recognized by voters this year for their outstanding contributions to TV and streaming and while we’re cheering them all on, a few performances from the past year stood out amongst the crowded lineup. All come courtesy of first-time nominees and all changed the TV landscape in 2022 for the better. Here’s a roundup of the newcomers you should keep your eye on, and where to watch them.
Lee Jung-jae
Category: Best Actor In A Drama Series
Where To Watch: Netflix’s Squid Game
When Netflix’s Korean survival drama broke the internet (and a bunch of streaming records) last year, Jung-jae’s character — a father struggling with a gambling problem — became the underdog audiences rooted for. Somehow he survived the sick, twisted gameplay that fueled the show’s first season, and now, he’s got an Emmy nom to show for it.
Jung Ho-yeon
Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: Netflix’s Squid Game
Another unfortunate participant in Netflix’s Squid Game, Ho-yeon’s capable and quiet North Korean defector was playing for a chance to rescue and reunite her family. She had a heartbreaking backstory and a complicated relationship with some of the other contestants which made her a stand-out in the show’s first season.
Rhea Seehorn
Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: AMC’s Better Call Saul
We know, we know. Rhea Seehorn has been killing it on Better Call Saul for six seasons now but, weirdly enough, this is the first time her magnetic performance as Kim Wexler, a sharp and scheming lawyer who becomes Jimmy McGill’s partner in crime, has been recognized by Emmy voters.
Melanie Lynskey
Category: Best Actress in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: Showtime’s Yellowjackets
Again, a damn travesty has been brought to light with this first-time nomination for the severely underrated character actress known as Melanie Lynskey. The best part of literally anything she’s in, here, Lynskey plays a suburban housewife just trying to keep pesky rabbits out of her garden and, you know, bury memories of when her high school girls soccer team was stranded in the wilderness and forced to resort to cannibalism to survive.
Adam Scott
Category: Best Actor in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: Apple TV+’s Severance
Oh, you thought celebrated comedic actor Adam Scott had nabbed an Emmy nom for his work in one of a dozen beloved TV sitcoms he’s starred in over the years? Well, you were wrong. Instead, Scott had to wait for this mind-bending workplace dramedy about a depressed widower trying his best to achieve that fabled work-life balance through morally questionable means to get some love from the Emmys.
J. Smith-Cameron
Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s Succession
J. Smith-Cameron has been baby-sitting Waystar Royco’s nepo-babies for a few seasons now but her ascent to interim CEO during season three’s hostile takeover meant she had even more scenery to chew.
Sydney Sweeney
Categories: Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s Euphoria, HBO’s The White Lotus
The only thing better than being a first-time Emmy nominee is being a first-time Emmy nominee with two nominations in two totally different categories, something only Sydney Sweeney can brag about this year. On Euphoria, she navigated Cassie’s episode-long meltdown with ease, playing a lovesick teenager willing to throw her life away for the absolute wrong guy. On The White Lotus, she played a judgemental and privileged white woman roping her less afluent friend into the worst vacation imaginable. Take your pick of which performance to watch first.
Park Hae-soo
Category: Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Where To Watch: Netflix’s Squid Game
Hae-soo is another first-time nominee to come from the streamer’s surprise foreign-language hit. His character on the show started as a quiet, unassuming Icarus who flew too close to the sun with some bad investments but ended as a cutthroat competitor willing to literally cut throats to claim the cash prize.
Nicholas Hoult
Category: Best Actor in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: Hulu’s The Great
An overgrown toddler outfitted as an 18th-century Russian tyrant, Nicholas Hoult has been having the time of his life playing Peter III on Hulu’s The Great. He’s tossed Pomeranians from balconies and survived attempted assasination plots but in the show’s latest season he had to perform his greatest feat yet — giving up his throne for the woman he thinks he might one day be able to kind of love.
Quinta Brunson
Category: Best Actress in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: ABC’s Abbott Elementary
Not only did Quinta Brunson script one of the best new comedies to land on network TV in the last decade, she did it while also starring in the show as a well-intentioned young teacher hoping to make a difference despite low budgets and an incompetent principal.
Elle Fanning
Category: Best Actress in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: Hulu’s The Great
Elle Fanning had a pair of standout performances for Hulu this year but her turn as the ambitious and untested monarch in The Great proves she can do comedy as well anyone. After all, who else could make a murderous coup seem like a fun time?
Janelle James
Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: ABC’s Abbott Elementary
Janelle James delivered the most memeable performance on TV week after week playing Ava Coleman, a social-media obsessed, totally underqualified school principal who somehow made her teaching staff’s jobs even harder — even when she wasn’t trying to.
Sarah Niles
Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso
Ted Lasso’s second season flirted with a bit more pessimism than its first, forcing its normally sunny, optimistic characters to confront their true feelings for the first time. As Dr. Sharon, the team’s new psychologist, Sarah Niles gently pushed the show’s titular character to move past the kitschy motivational quotes and start fixing himself. We should all be thanking her.
Sheryl Lee Ralph
Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: ABC’s Abbott Elementary
You either wanted a teacher like Barbara Howard or want to be the kind of teacher Barbara Howard is. Either way, that’s thanks to Sheryl Lee Ralph’s commanding presence and riotous straight-to-camera stares on Abbot Elementary.
Toheeb Jimoh
Category: Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso
Richmond’s nicest player on the pitch got an unexpected romance, a surprisingly topical character arc, and an offer to join another team over the course of Ted Lasso’s second season and Toheeb Jimoh made the most of all that screentime, giving Sam new layers and audience more reason to root for him.
Tyler James Williams
Category: Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Where To Watch: ABC’s Abbott Elementary
Is Tyler James William the new John Krasinski of network TV? It might be too soon to tell, but his will-they-won’t-they romance plot with Quinta Brunson’s character is a big part of what made the show’s first season so watchable. Add an Emmy nom to the mix and things are looking good for the new Jim and Pam.
Lily James
Category: Best Actress in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: Hulu’s Pam & Tommy
It wasn’t just the makeup department that turned Lily James into the spitting image of Baywatch star and 90s icon Pamela Anderson, it was James’ own nuanced and thoughtful take on the celebrity scandal. She played Pam as we should have seen her then — a strong, opinionated woman with incredible talent and a shrewd understanding of how the media viewed her.
Amanda Seyfried
Category: Best Actress in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: Hulu’s The Dropout
Amanda Seyfried adopted a lower octave, commandeered a closet full of black turtlenecks, and transformed herself into the fascinating real-life figure whose Silicon Valley unicorn would eventually land her behind bars. The story of Elizabeth Holmes is juicy enough, but Seyfriend manages to add weight to it by playing the easily-villainized CEO as a flawed young woman trying to succeed in a man’s world.
Andrew Garfield
Category: Best Actor in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven
Andrew Garfield’s first foray into TV is, predictably, awards-worthy. In this gritty true-crime drama he plays a Mormon detective tasked with investigating a heinous homicide that might have been committed by members of the church.
Oscar Isaac
Category: Best Actor in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s Scenes from a Marriage
Oscar Isaac continues his zadification in this drama about a marriage on the rocks, co-starring Jessica Chastain. If you thought the pairs’ chemistry on the red carpet was too hot to handle, gird your loins for when Isaac plays a scruffy college professor trying to save his relationship in this miniseries.
Himesh Patel
Category: Best Actor in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s Station Eleven
This surprisingly hopeful drama recounting the end of the world thanks to a deadly, fast-moving plague may have had an eerie sense of timing, but it also sports some terrific performances and Himesh Patel’s is chief among them. As Jeevan, a young man burdened with the responsibility of looking after his brother and a child he just met as the world goes to sh*t, Patel is both fierce and vulnerable in equal measure.
Sebastian Stan
Category: Best Actor in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: Hulu’s Pam & Tommy
Covered in tattoos, painted with black eyeliner, and having full-blown conversations with his sentient penis — Pam & Tommy gives fans a Sebastian Stan they haven’t seen before. He’s oddly charming and sympathetic, even when his character struggles to be the kind of feminist ally his wife needs, and his manic energy takes up the whole screen.
Jennifer Coolidge
Category: Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s The White Lotus
Jennifer Coolidge is an undeniable comedic talent but she manages to infuse her heartbreaking and frustrating turn as a woman reeling from the loss of her abusive mother and trying to make new connections in a tropical paradise with enough drama to keep things balance. The show wouldn’t be the same without her.
Murray Bartlett
Category: Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series
Where To Watch: HBO’s The White Lotus
Whether Murray Bartlett takes home a trophy come Emmys night or not doesn’t change this one, undeniable fact: he gave the wildest performance on television last year. We’re talking pill-popping, ass-eating, luggage-shitting wild. What’s a golden statue compared to that level of bragging rights?