The day before the Emmy Award nominations came out, the Hollywood Critics Association Awards announced their nominations. Fans of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were pleased that their Netflix series, Harry & Meghan, picked up a nomination for “Best Streaming Nonfiction Series.” I said yesterday that considering the success of the Netflix series, I did expect Harry & Meghan to pick up an Emmy nomination too. The series did not. The Sussexes were “snubbed” again, cue the Salt Island schadenfreude. “The Sussex Brand will never recover,” hurr durr.
Netflix’s megahit documentary series on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle failed to earn any Emmy nominations this morning, a snub that presumably will delight critics of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
The six-part series Harry & Meghan directed by Liz Garbus was under consideration for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. The Emmy oversight is particularly glaring because the series scored extraordinary numbers for Netflix, racking up the second most viewing minutes of any documentary program on the streaming platform, behind only The Tinder Swindler.
As a consolation, Harry & Meghan did earn an honor on Tuesday when it was nominated for the Hollywood Critics Association Awards in the category of Best Streaming Nonfiction Series.
Considering the Sussexes’ Netflix show is up against The 1619 Project at the HCA Awards, I would assume that Harry & Meghan was being considered in the Emmy Awards’ version of that category: “Documentary or Nonfiction Series.” The nominees in that category are: 100 Foot Wave, The 1619 Project, Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur, Secrets of the Elephants and The U.S. and the Holocaust. Given those nominees, I would think that Harry & Meghan simply felt a bit too… tabloid-y and unserious? Yes, of course I watched the series and I know that they spoke about serious subjects, but the larger problem still remains: the Sussexes are without industry peers and they are incapable of fitting into these categories or boxes. They’re celebrities but they’re more than that, they’re humanitarians but they do other stuff, they did a docu-series about real sh-t, but it was also part of the larger tabloid narrative around them. I guess my point is, who needs the Emmy Awards if you’re Harry and Meghan? The Emmys are probably gonna be canceled anyway.
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