Diego Luna, Squid Game, Handmaid’s, More

The 2025 Emmy Awards failed to recognize a number of longtime favorites with nominations, with past winners Squid Game, Elisabeth Moss, Jon Hamm, Ted Danson and past nominees Yellowjackets and Selena Gomez not nominated this year.

Squid Game, which won six Emmys including the top prize of best drama actor for Lee Jung-jae for its first season in 2022, saw its second season completely absent from this year’s nominations. The hit Netflix series’ third and final season will be eligible for next year’s awards.

Similarly, The Handmaid’s Tale was once so adored by Emmy voters that it received multiple nominations in 2019 solely off of hanging episodes. The adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s bestselling novel of the same name, which won best drama series for its first season in 2017, only scored one nomination for Cherry Jones, leaving out the rest of its acclaimed cast, including star Moss, who also could have also scored a directing nod.

Yellowjackets landed 10 nominations for its first two seasons but zero for its third, recently wrapped season. And Jon Hamm, a perennial nominee for Mad Men before his long-awaited victory in 2015, didn’t make it back into the nominations fold for his first series starring role in Your Friends & Neighbors, which was only nominated for its theme song.

Also shut out this year were A Man on the Inside (including its star and past Emmy winner Ted Danson); Ellen Pompeo for her starring role in Good American Family, which failed to receive any nominations; and acclaimed series Running Point, St. Denis Medical and Taylor Sheridan’s Landman.

Surprising omissions from the acting categories included Andor star Diego Luna, not included among the show’s 14 nominations; Selena Gomez, not nominated for her starring role in Only Murders in the Building after making the cut in the acting category last year; the Mountainhead actors, who were not nominated despite the Emmys’ past support of Succession writer-director Jesse Armstrong (the film itself was nominated for best TV movie); the handful of White Lotus actors not nominated including Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sam Nivola, Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb; The Studio standout Chase Sui Wonders, not nominated despite the show’s 23 nominations; The Penguin‘s Rhenzy Feliz; Interview With the Vampire actor Jacob Anderson; and Monsters‘ Nicholas Alexander Chavez.

In terms of specific categories, the talk series category’s reduction to only three nomination slots left out hopefuls like Late Night With Seth Meyers, Hot Ones and Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney. And Meyers and Jamie Foxx missed out on nods for their stand-up specials, Dad Man Walking and What Had Happened Was, with Foxx’s medical emergency serving as the subject of his Netflix special.

In terms of surprises, Meghann Fahy was a somewhat unexpected inclusion in the best actress in a limited series category for her role in Sirens, which was left out of the series and other acting categories, as was Uzo Aduba‘s best actress in a comedy series nod. While Aduba’s performance was acclaimed the show’s cancellation after just one season makes her nomination somewhat surprising.

Meanwhile, Hulu’s Paradise may have landed more nominations in top categories than awards experts predicted. And Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino’s Étoile landed two nominations despite distributor Prime Video revealing before the end of this year’s nominations window that it wouldn’t proceed with the previously ordered second season.