‘Severance' Emmy predictions: Why the buzzy Apple TV+ series has a shot at ‘Shogun'-level nomination domination

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11 hours ago

The Severance reverence is no joke. Upon its release in 2022, the Apple TV+ show about the separation of work and home life (not to mention identity, grief, authoritarianism, abandonment, love, and mortality) became a slow-burn sensation, cultivating a rabid online fan to go with glowing reviews. Masterminded by former office drone Dan Erickson and helmed by Ben Stiller, that first season of Severance was celebrated by the TV Academy with 14 Emmy nominations, scoring wins for Main Title Design and Original Main Title Theme Song.
Not too shabby. But now, in Season 2, Severance enters Emmy season as the show to beat. Here's how we expect the sophomore series to improve upon its nominations at the 2025 Emmys, vaulting into near-record-setting territory.
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As the clear favorite for the top prize in the Gold Derby odds since we began tracking the odds for this year's Emmys, Severance is a lock to make the field of eight finalists for Best Drama when the nominations are announced on July 15. The real drama is whether Severance can go wire-to-wire. While Apple has been pulling out all the stops to promote Severance, The Pitt has been steadily building momentum and climbing in our predictions, and, with some TV Academy voters having an aversion to genre fare, we expect this race to only tighten heading into the ceremony.
READ: Close calls: The state of the 2025 Emmy drama race
Severance's premise of splitting consciousnesses into innie and outie versions should be Emmy catnip this season, with much of the show's stellar ensemble playing multiple incarnations of their characters. Adam Scott's tour-de-force performance in the season finale, in which the dual Mark Scouts confront each other in an awkward, tense negotiation via videocam, guarantees a nomination.
Apple TV+
"I was honestly dreading it. ... It sounded like something I could screw up in any number of ways," Scott told Gold Derby about his concerns going into the finale shoot. "I have to say by far the most difficult screen partner I've ever had to work with."
Scott had been the front-runner for much of our early polling, only to be passed by The Pitt's Noah Wyle last month. The real contest begins July 15 to see whether a double-shot of Scott can ultimately trump the field.
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When Emmy nominations came out for the 2022 season, Severance had a solid showing on the acting slate, with the TV Academy finding room for Scott (lead actor), Patricia Arquette (supporting actress), John Turturro, and Christopher Walken (both for supporting actor). But they were all esteemed actors with healthy IMDb credentials. This time around, expect several of the show's breakout cast members to get shine on the ballot, beginning with for lead actress. Ping-ponging between the rebellious Helly R. and the Machiavellian Helena Eagan, Lower was a revelation in Season 2.
Apple
"For me, I use a lot of analogies. They sound like different music in my head," Lower told us about her approach to playing the Helly vs. Helena. "I'm also informed by how my costars are behaving with me, how the scene is written, how it's directed. There's a lot of inspiration once you get to set by the elements around you that are shifted slightly based on where you're at."
Could she follow the path of past winners like Sally Field, who exhibited dissociative identity disorder in Sybil, Toni Collette's multiple personalities in United Shades of Tara, and Tatiana Maslany's various clones in Orphan Black? An Emmy is definitely in play; Lower has been firmly in the mix throughout the FYC season and currently ranks in fourth behind Kathy Bates (Matlock), Bella Ramsey (The Last of Us), and Keri Russell (The Diplomat).
Here is the toughest math problem for Severance — and its chief rival in the category, The White Lotus. If things shake out right, those two shows could account for all seven slots. As it stands, per the latest Gold Derby odds, six of the seven available slots will be shared between those two shows (with Slow Horses' Jack Lowden breaking up the duopoly).
Despite a reduced screen presence in Season 2, Turturro is tracking towards his second consecutive nomination for playing Irving. His visceral performance in Episode 4, "Woe's Hollow," made him a virtual sure-thing, and he is presently No. 2 in the odds behind Walton Goggins of The White Lotus — and one spot ahead of costar , who had a standout season as the new Severed Floor manager, Seth Milchick. Tillman is positioned to earn his first Emmy nomination for his complex portrayal of a man barely holding it together. Between his line delivery of the instantly meme-able "devour feculence" ("a wonderful moment where Milchick finally stood up for himself and told the man to back off," Tillman recounted to Gold Derby) and his delightfully deranged dancing accompanied by the Choreography and Merriment marching band ("that's when Milchick needs to let that flag fly," he gushed, "it was a blast!"), Tillman should be in the field come time for the awards ceremony and has a legitimate shot to become the first Black actor to win in this category.
Apple TV+
If voters fully embrace Severance, that could mean a third nominee joining Turturro and Tillman, and that would be good news for , whose struggles as the Innie and Outie Dylan, and their bizarre love triangle involving Outie Dylan's wife, Gretchen (Merritt Wever, more on her below), was one of the driving storylines "Anytime you're playing a character, there [are] pieces of you that are in there, but there are pieces of the character that aren't necessarily in you," Cherry told us. "That is a little bit how I thought about the distinction between the two. They are very much the same guy, but there are pieces that don't cross over. And for me, the innie is a version of the guy who doesn't have any of the external baggage that the outie is carrying around." At No. 12 in the Gold Derby odds, Cherry is within striking distance of the top seven and his first Emmy bid.
Close behind is Walken, whose Burt had a lesser role this season but was still impactful. He sits at 20th in the rankings and would need to make a serious move to score his second nomination for the role, but it's hard to discount an actor of his caliber who is widely admired by his peers.
While her character, Harmony Cobel, spent much of the season sidelined, Arquette, at No. 6 in our odds, is still in great shape to lock down her second Emmy nomination for Severance with the supporting actress field capped at seven this year. Her showpiece episode, "Sweet Vitriol," was essentially the origin story for Cobel, and in the climactic moments we learn she was responsible for the severance technology that was stolen by the Eagans. 'There is a synchronicity between the severance chip and her interior landscape,' Arquette told us.
Meanwhile, Dichen Lachman, whose Gemma/Ms. Casey was the focal point of Season 2, ranks at No. 11. In the Gemma-centric episode "Chikhai Bardo," we discover that she has 24 different innies, which required the actress to different external cues. 'I used the costumes and the sets to inform how her body might feel in that situation,' Lachman explained to us. 'I purposefully carried tension in different places in my body so that it was quite fragmented. It was subtle."
Apple TV+
Jen Tullock as Mark's sister, Devon, and Sarah Bock as Milchick's mentee, Miss Huang, also submitted in supporting but they have far longer odds at making the nominatons ballot.
Here's the one acting category that Severance is on the outside looking in. There are a half-dozen slots available and the three Severance performers who submitted — Robby Benson as Dr. Mauer, the Lumon lackey experimenting on Lachman's Gemma; John Noble as Fields Goodman, Burt's husband who's jealous of his innie's relationship with Irving; and Michael Siberry as Helena's egg-loving father, Jame Eagan — are currently ranked at, respectively, Nos. 10, 13, and 19. However, guest acting can be a volatile category, and performers with long odds have gotten swept up in a series' momentum, so don't be shocked if, say, Benson or Noble, finds their way onto the ballot.
While Severance will struggle to land a guest actor bid, the show could see multiple nominees in guest actress. With six nominees total in the field, Gwendoline Christie as the scene-stealing goatherd Lorne ("I was happy to do anything, but I really wanted to do something involving the goats," Christie told Gold Derby, "I was over the moon about it") and Wever as the wife caught between innie and outie versions of her husband ("I enjoyed the scenes with Innie Dylan so much that I kind of missed them," Wever admitted to us, "I preferred them to the Outie Dylan scenes') both appear to be on their way to nominations. Christie, a one-time Emmy nominee for Game of Thrones, ranks No. 3 in our odds, while Wever, a two-time Emmy winner for Nurse Jackie and Godless, is No. 4. Two other actresses are close behind: Jane Alexander (Sissy Cobel) sits at No. 7, and Sydney Cole Alexander (Lumon loyalist Natalie Kalen) is at No. 8.
Apple TV+
With series creator Erickson handling the writing chores, Severance didn't have to worry about spreading the wealth (more on that below) and was able to submit a single exemplary teleplay from a season of excellence. The chosen one: "Cold Harbor," the jaw-dropping season finale that includes the Mark vs. Mark showdown, Milchick's unhinged Choreography and Merriment moment, and that oh-so-heartbreaking climax to the Mark-Gemma-Helly love triangle. For most of the shooting (except for on location in upstate New York for "Woe's Hollow," which was too cold for his liking), Erickson set himself up on set, refining scenes until they were perfected. "In some of the shots," he told us, "you can actually hear me typing rewrites."
Apple TV+
In addition to being one of the key creative drivers of Severance, Stiller serves as the chief director, helming 11 of the 19 episodes over two seasons. He was nominated for Season 1 and is a no-brainer for a second straight bid for the "Cold Harbor" episode, whose ending, he told us, was inspired by "movies growing up, '60s and '70s French New Wave, early '70s movies."
But the Season 2 directed workload was divided among three others, two of whom are also on the ballot: Uta Briesewitz for Episode 6, "Attila" (Helly and Mark finally hook up on the severed floor; Irving goest to dinner at Burt's house in the outie world) and Jessica Lee Gagné, the show's longtime cinematographer in her directing debut, for Episode 7, "Chikhai Bardo. (Samuel Donovan, who helmed Episodes 2 and 5, was not submitted.)
Apple
With seven slots available and Stiller a shoo-in for one of those, is there a chance Briesewitz or Gagné will make the final field or could they split votes and be shut out amid stiff competition from shows like The White Lotus, The Pitt, Slow Horses, and Andor? Of the two Severance episodes, we think Gagné has the edge for the impressionistic "Chikhai Bardo," one of this year's best episodes of television, full stop.
'I definitely had a lot of doubts going into it. I've doubted myself for a long time,' Gagné told Gold Derby. 'But then it seemed so obvious that this episode was meant for me to direct, just because of the themes and the possibility of style and language that it could have, and also what the writer wanted from it. So I was like, 'Well, if anyone's going to do this, I have to do it.'' Her episode had enthusiastic endorsements from her bosses, with Erickson telling us that "she nailed it," and Stiller adding, "What she did with it visually was just so impressive."
Severance's 2022 Emmy nominations included casting, main title theme music, main title design, music composition, picture editing (two bids), and production design. Because the theme music didn't change, the series won't compete there, but it is likely to repeat in every other craft category. Expect dual nods again in picture editing for "Chikhai Bardo" and "Cold Harbor," and there's an outside shot the third submitted episode, "Attila," could also sneak in.
The list of below-the-line races in which Season 1 was not nominated is head-scratching. With fierce competition from dramas like Succession, Squid Game, and Ozark that year, Severance missed bids for cinematography, costumes, hairstyling, makeup (non-prosthetic), makeup (prosthetic), music supervision, sound editing, sound mixing, stunts, and visual effects. Expect that slight to be rectified, with the big-budgeted show reaping nominations in all those categories, save for perhaps makeup (prosthetic) and stunts.
Apple/ILM
Should that come to pass, Severance will be in the same rarefied air as last year's Emmy-dominant Shōgun, which led all shows with 25 nominations. However, unless all the acting races tilt Severance's way, the show will fall short of matching the all-time record of 32 bids in a single year, notched by Game of Thrones in 2019.
Gold Derby talked to several of the artists and artisans behind Severance who should be Emmy-competitive, including:
Eric Leven, the VFX supervisor, who conceived new techniques to craft Lumon's endless hallways for Mark's season-opening one-shot sprint.
Theodore Shapiro, the series composer, who is submitting for "Cold Harbor," which includes his music for the marching band. "My task was to write these marching band versions of these Eagan hymns, and I just put the pieces together. The drumline had to be cool and funky and fun, and then we put these big tunes on top of them, and that's what we got."
Sarah Edwards, the costumer, who is submitting for "Chikhai Bardo," the episode where Dichen Lachman's severed Gemma cycles through two dozen outfits, one per personality. "When she gets into the rooms, she's dressed appropriately for the test they're doing on her. So, we had the Christmas room and we made that Christmas bathrobe. And again, everything is weirdly retro, but it isn't a specific period. ... "She had so many changes in that episode. That was more changes than she'd had in the entire series, for that one episode."
Nominations for the 77th Emmy Awards will be announced July 15; the ceremony will take place Sept. 14.
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