Emmys 2021: Netflix finally grabs the one award it’s spent eight years chasing

Ever since Netflix broke into original programming eight years ago with House of Cards, there was one thing it really wanted. It finally has it.

It’s taken eight years and tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, but Netflix has finally done it – it’s won the one shiny statue it’s craved, the Outstanding Series award at the Emmys.

And it did it twice, for both Drama and Limited Series with The Crown and The Queen’s Gambit. It’s a huge moment for the company that has had mighty but unfulfilled Emmys ambitions for eight years.

When the American streamer moved from DVD mail-outs to online streaming more than a decade ago, it astutely realised that the way to change the game is with original content.

House of Cards premiered in February 2013 and that September, became the first online only (ie. streaming) series to compete in the Primetime Emmys. It was up for nine awards including Outstanding Drama Series. David Fincher picked up a gong for directing the pilot but it lost the main award to Breaking Bad.

The Queen’s Gambit won Outstanding Limited Series.

Netflix created the industry which now dominates American TV’s most coveted awards, and it didn’t take long for streamers (along with their cable network rivals) to all but push out broadcast free-to-air TV.

Run your eye up and down the nominations list and there is scant evidence that America’s broadcast networks – ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW – are making awarded shows, especially in the scripted categories. This Is Us and Black-ish remain the free-to-air stalwarts.

Netflix amassed more than 600 Emmy nominations and 100-plus wins over the years, but the biggest awards of the night has remained elusive. It’s broken records for most nominations ever – 160 in 2020 – but it’s underperformed even in the Lead acting categories.

Its first Lead acting wins came in 2018, with Claire Foy for The Crown and Regina King in Limited Series Seven Seconds. Jharrel Jerome followed up in Lead Actor for Limited Series When They See Us in 2019.

And it must have been a particularly bruising eight-year journey for Netflix that while the biggest awards of the night have remained tantalisingly out-of-reach, its younger streaming competitors beat them to it, repeatedly.

Olivia Colman now has an Emmy to go with her Oscar. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

The Handmaid’s Tale was the first to break through for US streaming platform Hulu, when it picked up Outstanding Drama in 2017. It beat out two Netflix shows that year, the first seasons of The Crown and Stranger Things.

The following year, Amazon Prime Video won Outstanding Comedy for The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Netflix had two shows up in the same category, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and GLOW. Amazon followed it up again in 2019 for Fleabag.

You could even argue that since Outstanding Comedy Series was one category earlier in the running order for this year’s ceremony, Apple even beat Netflix to the game, with Ted Lasso’s victory.

For TV fans who take casual note of Emmy winning shows, often as a shopping list for their watch queue or to validate their own favourites, the ceremonies throw up some rousing speeches, pretty gowns and a glimpse at the stars.

But for networks and streamers, they take the cachet of the Emmys (and all televised awards) very seriously. They campaign vigorously each year, putting on events, sending out freebies and rolling out the talent.

The Crown won Outstanding Drama. Picture: Netflix

If you’ve ever seen one of those roundtable videos on The Hollywood Reporter where five huge celebrities come together and bare their souls about their art – and also heap effusive praise of each other’s “brave” performances, that all part of awards campaigning.

And it costs a bundle. Forbes estimated that the price of campaigning for can be up to $US1 million per show. When you’re Netflix, you have a lot of shows. So, so many.

Whatever Netflix spent on this year’s Emmys was worth it. The Crown broke records with a clean sweep of all seven Primetime categories – never before been done in Drama (Schitt’s Creek did it last year in Comedy and Angels in America did it in 2004 in Limited Series).

The Queen’s Gambit’s two Emmys didn’t include any acting ones, but it does the one that really counts, Outstanding Limited Series.

Now, Netflix just has to crash through the one remaining awards barrier, the Best Picture Oscar.

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