The Emmy Awards happen this Sunday, although I’m not sure how they’re going to pull it off… at all. The VMAs still happened in a pandemic and I actually have to give MTV a lot of credit for what they did. But the Emmys are a different beast altogether. Plus… the Emmys, as an awards show, have really sucked for YEARS. I can’t even remember the last time there was a good, noteworthy Emmy Awards telecast. People will probably tune in this year just to see what producers managed to do in a pandemic.

Because the Emmy season has been kind of scattered, it’s easy to forget that Jennifer Aniston was one of a handful of actors really campaigning for an Emmy. Aniston did multiple interviews in trade papers and media outlets, and she was already seen as one of the favorites for the Best Actress in a Drama Emmy for her role in The Morning Show. She won the SAG Award earlier this year too, and the Emmy Awards are now being voted on by “peers” – so basically the same voting bloc as the SAGs. She’s up against Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Olivia Colman, Zendaya and Laura Linney. I think Aniston will win her second Emmy (she won her first one for Friends), although the Emmys love British ladies and so I could totally see Colman sneaking away with it. Anyway, the NY Post had a weirdly sugary piece on why Aniston is going to win:

Jennifer Aniston has sustained a lot of friendly fire in the 25 years since she became America’s ageless Breck Girl next door — but this now-veteran actress is nobody’s victim. Sure, the beloved former “Friends” star was typecast after a decade (1994-2004) as spoiled rich chick Rachel Green on NBC’s “must-see TV” sitcom, followed by another decade-plus of retread movie rom-coms — some smash hits, others total stinkers, often co-starring fellow slummers Adam Sandler and Jason Bateman.

Despite six previous Emmy noms (and one 2002 win) for comedy, armchair critics reveled in flooding social media with shady praise of Aniston’s flawless hair — and snide critiques of her supposedly one-note range as a lightweight actress. Suck it up, haters: Gold Derby gurus now rank the 51-year-old as a front-runner to win Best Actress in a Drama Sunday at the 2020 Emmys for her revelatory, against-type performance as Alex Levy, an aging TV hostess on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the hit Apple TV+ series “The Morning Show.”

“Don’t underestimate Aniston just because many prognosticators pick Laura Linney or Olivia Colman to win,” Gold Derby founder Tom O’Neill told The Post. “Don’t forget that Aniston won the SAG Award earlier this year and that has virtually the same voting system as the Emmys — only actors voting for actors.”

Plus, “Aniston is having a triumphant career comeback that’s especially alluring to TV industry insiders,” O’Neill added. “She portrays a reigning TV celebrity struggling to survive a crumbling, cruel world around her — the threat of younger, rising stars and her shock to discover the awful secrets and betrayals of the old regime.”

[From The NY Post]

I doubt the Gold Derby guy is getting paid to hype Aniston or any actor, but this still reads as a bizarre hype piece. The whole vibe is weird, right? No one is even talking about the Emmys and prognosticators are mostly just throwing up their hands at this year’s award season, and yet there’s also so much concentrated energy about Aniston? I suspect Aniston hired some awards-campaign people and they’re just doing their work. (Also: it would be so funny to me if Olivia Colman really did “Dame Maggie Smith” her way to the Emmy, come on. They kept giving Emmys to Maggie Smith for Downton Abbey and she NEVER cared or even showed up.)

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red.