Apple has landed 89 nominations for the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards, a company record, and the press release announcing it is a small masterpiece of selective framing. It tells you Apple leads the field in the top comedy and drama categories. It tells you the haul is historic. It does not tell you, at any point, that Apple finished third.
The Number They Left Out
HBO Max led all networks with 122 nominations. Netflix took second with 111. Apple came third with 89. The top individual programs of the year were HBO Max’s The Pitt, with 25, and the final season of Hacks, with 24.
But here is the thing. Once you have the honest scoreboard in hand, Apple’s performance looks more impressive, not less.
The Achievement Nobody Bragged About Correctly
Apple did this without Severance. It did this without The Studio.
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Neither of last year’s juggernauts was eligible this cycle, and those two shows accounted for a staggering chunk of the record-breaking 2025 haul that made Apple the toast of the Television Academy. Losing both and still climbing from 79 nominations to 89 is not a maintenance year. That is a service proving that its previous triumph was not a two-show fluke.
The freshman class did the heavy lifting, and did it emphatically. Widow’s Bay took 19 nominations and Pluribus took 18, which makes them the third and fourth most-nominated programs in all of television this year. Two first-year shows. That is the real headline, and it is a considerably better one than “we led a category.”
“Pluribus” Has the Best Logline of the Year
I want to pause on Vince Gilligan’s drama, because the premise deserves a standing ovation on its own: the most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness.
That is a magnificent sentence. It is also, on the evidence of 18 nominations including Outstanding Drama Series and both writing and directing nods for Gilligan, a show that delivers on it. Rhea Seehorn, who spent years quietly assembling one of the great supporting performances in Better Call Saul, is nominated for Lead Actress, which is the sort of overdue promotion that makes an awards morning worth watching. Gilligan handed her the lead and the Academy immediately agreed he was right to.
Widow’s Bay Is the Weirdest Comedy Nominee in Ages
The other freshman is even stranger. Widow’s Bay is a horror-comedy about a spineless mayor trying to revive a cursed New England island town, and the Television Academy nominated it for Outstanding Comedy Series alongside six acting nods, including Matthew Rhys for Lead Actor and Stephen Root and Dale Dickey in supporting.
A genre-blending scare comedy landing 19 nominations tells you something is shifting in what the comedy category is willing to reward. Hiro Murai directing and Katie Dippold writing does not hurt. As someone who has spent a lot of ink around here arguing that genre work is where the interesting swings happen, watching a horror-comedy pull the third-most nominations of the year is a genuinely encouraging development.
The Nicest Nomination on the List
Michael J. Fox is nominated for Outstanding Guest Actor for Shrinking, his first acting nomination in more than a decade.
There is nothing to add to that. It is simply lovely, and I hope he wins.
Shrinking took 10 nominations in all, including Jason Segel for Lead Actor and Harrison Ford in supporting, which continues to be one of the great late-career surprises in television. Elsewhere, Slow Horses picked up its third straight Outstanding Drama Series nod, with Gary Oldman nominated once again as the magnificently repellent Jackson Lamb, and Margo’s Got Money Troubles arrived with eight, including Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Nick Offerman.
For the Film Crowd
Two items on the list will interest anyone who reads this site. Mr. Scorsese, Rebecca Miller’s documentary series built on unrestricted access to Martin Scorsese’s private archives and interviews with De Niro, DiCaprio, Schoonmaker, Spielberg, Schrader, and a small army of collaborators, picked up nominations for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series, Directing, and Picture Editing. If you care about how the movies got made, that one is not optional.
Murderbot also made its Emmy debut with three nominations, which is a nice showing for an adaptation that had every opportunity to botch Martha Wells’ beloved books and did not.
What It Actually Means
Apple TV has no library. It has no back catalog of decades-old sitcoms to pad a lineup, no acquired films, nothing but what it has made since 2019. Every single one of these 89 nominations is for something the service commissioned from scratch. HBO Max and Netflix out-nominated it, and both of them are working with vastly deeper benches and vastly larger subscriber bases.
That is a genuinely remarkable position for a streamer that most people still describe as the one they forgot they were paying for. The lesson is boring and true: make good things, and the rest sorts itself out.
The ceremony airs September 14, hosted by Mariska Hargitay. Apple will not win the night on volume. But if you were wondering whether the company could survive losing Severance and The Studio in the same year, you have your answer, and it comes with 18 nominations and the best logline on television.
