The Emmy nominations were announced this morning, giving streaming services plenty to celebrate, and while we still don’t know what the actual Emmy Awards ceremony will look like (beyond Jimmy Kimmel hosting it), we do know that the nominations are at least more diverse than last year. That’s according to The Wrap, which crunched the numbers on the nominations and determined that 49 of the 118 acting nominations went to people of color, which is almost half. That’s not extremely great, as it’s actually just under 42 percent, but it is better than it has been in the past.
In terms of the major acting categories, 38 percent of them went to non-white performers, up from 24 percent last year. That’s largely due to categories like Best Supporting Actor In A Comedy and Best Supporting Actor In A Limited Series, which mostly consisted of non-white actors. As The Wrap notes, some of categories like lead and supporting actress were entirely white last year, so any change here is going to be positive. This shift also seems like it was a conscious decision by the Television Academy, with chairman and CEO Frank Scherma noting that TV “connects us all” and that its job is “amplifying the voices that must be heard and telling the stories that must be told.”
That being said, the nominations still had their share of snubs, some of which were unpacked over at this link by The A.V. Club TV Editor Danette Chavez.