After months of critical and public acclaim, Amazon’s Fallout series can now add “Emmy nominated” to its list of superlatives. The annual television awards show just released the full list of this year’s nominees, and while the adaptation of the post-apocalyptic RPG games didn’t garner a huge number of noms, it did get two meaningful nods: one for the show at large and one for star Walton Goggins.
Come September 15, when the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards take place, Fallout will compete for both Original Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Goggins. It’s a well-deserved nomination for the show, which does an exceptional job of stringing multiple storylines together into a cohesive plot with the signature satirical yet poignant tone of the games. Goggins is equally deserving of praise for essentially pulling double duty as Cooper Howard, a centerpiece in the show’s flashbacks, as well as The Ghoul, a central character in its “current” timeline. Even with these two nominations, it does feel like a snub to leave out Ella Purnell who portrays Lucy, the de facto lead of the show.
This marks the third year in a row that a video game adaptation has made its way into the nominees. 2022 saw League of Legends show Arcane take home Outstanding Animated Program while HBO’s The Last of Us scored 24 nominations (including Outstanding Drama Series) and four wins. This year Fallout should enjoy the honor of being nominated, because there’s a fairly low chance that it (or Goggins) will actually take home an award. That’s because of a little series called Shōgun.
FX’s truly epic adaptation of the 1975 James Clavell book of the same name earned 25 nominations, and will probably go home with a majority of those come awards night. Shōgun is a masterful drama series full of political intrigue and incredible characters, all tied together by one of the strongest casts of a show in years. It’s led by legendary actor Hiroyuki Sanada, alongside a bombshell performance from Anna Sawai (both earned nominations) and numerous other memorable supporting actors. Shōgun also becomes the second foreign-language program in the history of the awards to earn a nomination for Original Drama Series—the first being Squid Game in 2022. Interestingly, the first television adaptation of Shōgun also garnered a number of nominations at the 1981 Emmys, eventually taking home the award for Outstanding Limited Series. So as good as Fallout is, it doesn’t seem likely that this will be the year a video game adaptation takes home the big prize.
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