Teen Choice Awards 2015: Will Lucy Hale, Maia Mitchell, or Shay Mitchell win Choice TV Actress: Drama

The Teen Choice Awards are coming to Fox on August 16. So why are the nominations coming out so early? The simple answer to that is strictly that there are more waves of nominations to come, and the show is making certain that everyone gets their own time in the spotlight / plenty of attention so that viewers know to start casting some votes in their direction.

Today, we’re talking more about the Choice TV Actress: Drama category, which to us is going to be a pretty competitive one. We actually don’t think that any of the network shows nominated here ironically have much of a chance, even with “Empire” currently tearing up the airwaves. To us, this is strictly a battle of three shows with an enormous teen audience.

The nominees

Hayden Panettiere, “Nashville” (ABC)

Kerry Washington, “Scandal” (ABC)

Lucy Hale, “Pretty Little Liars” (ABC Family)

Maia Mitchell, “The Fosters” (ABC Family)

Shay Mitchell, “Pretty Little Liars” (ABC Family)

Taraji P. Henson, “Empire” (Fox)

Who should win – We like to think that the Teen Choice Awards should be the perfect intersection of a great performance and the target demographic, and to us Maia meets the criteria and then some. She tackled some tough material over the past year with a full range of emotions, and we still feel that despite the love here, “The Fosters” is an underrated show.

Who will win – The “Pretty Little Liars” stars are obviously going to be the favorite because of the voting demographic, and just because both Lucy and Shay are nominated does not necessarily mean that they will cancel each other out. We’re going to give Lucy the edge slightly this time, but we really could see it swinging either way here without any hesitation.