Why Do Sketch Comedians Keep Getting Snubbed by the Emmys?

Why Do Sketch Comedians Keep Getting Snubbed by the Emmys?

I am here to talk to you today about an injustice in the world of television comedy.

No, not the cancellation of Stephen Colbert, or the fact that Cat Cohen’s Netflix special The Twist …? She’s Gorgeous should be a lot better known, or even that South Park hasn’t won an Emmy in 12 years.

I’m here to say that sketch performers have been given the shaft. The shade, the stiff, the old stickeroo.

I know, this sounds like I’m trying to score a free set of classes at Upright Citizens Brigade. But hear me out. Sketch comedy is one of television’s great gifts to humanity, from Milton Berle to Monty Python to Saturday Night Live, which this year celebrated its 50th anniversary in fine style.

And in the first few years of the Emmys, sketch performers won all the time: Loretta Young and Barbara Stanwyck, Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner and Tom Poston and Jack Benny. Five of the first six supporting actor-comedy Emmys went to sketch performers — and the sixth went to The Honeymooners’ Art Carney, who’d won the previous two years for his sketch work on The Jackie Gleason Show.

Yet how many sketch-comedy men have won lead or supporting acting Emmys in the past 65 years? That would be … zero. The last one was Poston in 1959. In fact, until 2012, only one was even nominated — Eddie Murphy from SNL in 1983. If you want the Television Academy to recognize sketch comedy, you’re wookin in all the wrong places.

Sitcoms and other comedy forms, of course, emerged since those midcentury salad days, but then, so did Saturday Night Live and MADtv and SCTV and Key & Peele and Inside Amy Schumer and In Living Color.

The women haven’t fared much better, getting exactly one lead or supporting comedy nom, Andrea Martin from SCTV Network, in the 45 years between 1962 and 2007. At least they’ve had a performer win in the modern era — Kate McKinnon, who in early Trump days nabbed two supporting Emmys for making everything go down funnier as Kellyanne Conway.

Sure, there was an individual performance in a variety or music program category during some of those fallow 20th century years, but sketch performers hardly won that, either, and besides, who even remembers that award? SNL hosts sometimes also win in guest actor categories, but that’s not really honoring the professional sketch comedians who shape-shift week in and week out.

In recent years, comics are at least getting some flowers. Starting in 2008, after individual performance was phased out, some voters decided that, hey, maybe these guys are actually good actors and started nominating them in lead and supporting categories. SNL‘s Amy Poehler got a supporting nom (“Ghosts are spooky”) followed by Bill Hader (“I like ghosts”) and a steadily increasing group of others.

That’s the good news. But sketch comedians almost never, ever win, which I think makes all those noms even more cringe-worthy. How do you hand a group of performers that includes Keegan-Michael Key, Amy Schumer, Fred Armisen, Poehler, Hader, McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, Kenan Thompson, Aidy Bryant and Vanessa Bayer 35 noms and let them go home empty-handed 33 of those times? To add insult to injury, SNL itself in 2023 had John Oliver move into its variety producing category, so it didn’t win that either.

Sketch comedy is one of the hardest sorts of comedy to pull off — you have to connect with an audience anew each time, and you have a few quick minutes to do it, and you have to live inside an absurd world, and you’re acting against others who are also going big. Yet somehow those performers have crafted dozens — hundreds — of sketches that stay with us, these online days especially. It’s just that Emmy never sticks to them.

There are logical reasons for these September disappointments. A role doesn’t resonate with voters when it’s replaced a week (or hour) later by a new role — actors playing a running character hold a distinct advantage. Also, because of the way submissions work, voters only see a limited number of episodes — a fact that works against sketch performers whose skill lies in their broad range across many installments. Logical, but still unfair.

And here we are this year again. Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang has been nominated for his fourth supporting-actor Emmy in five years — joining a list of just three dozen men with at least that many Emmy noms. Yang is genius not just for playing the easy pickins of George Santos but high-concept lunacy like a gay oompaloompa and the iceberg that sunk the Titanic.

But up against two-time defending winner Ebon Moss-Bachrach and such other favorites as Harrison Ford and Ike Barinholtz, he’s likely to lose again.

The TV Academy can change this math by creating a separate single (non-gendered) sketch comedy award. Yes, some years it will be the “best performer on SNL Award,” but is that such a bad thing? At the very least, the Academy could expand the number of supporting nominees, which might make room for more sketch performers — or even lead to scripted performances splitting the vote and finally give a win to Yang or Thompson.

But maybe it’s not all bad. Maybe Barinholtz will win this year, and he at least got his start on MADtv. Sketch comedy is always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Which you know these guys would turn into a killer bit.

This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.