‘New Girl’ season 2: Jake Johnson to submit as lead for the 2013 Emmys

If you’re an Emmy geek on the same level that we are, you may very well find the following “New Girl” story to be rather interesting. After submitting last year in the Supporting Actor in a Comedy field, Jake Johnson is now going up against some of the competition in the lead category. The actor behind the wonderful Nick Miller confirmed the news in a chat with TVLine, and his reasoning behind it is actually rather simple: With all of the Nick / Jess storytelling this time around, he is actually much more of a leading man than he was in the first season.

Now, you can also argue that this move is in part strategic. It leaves Max Greenfield as the likely contender in the show’s Supporting Actor field, and the lead category may be an easier one to get a nomination in (though we should also say that we campaigned heavily for Jake last season in supporting). After all, the “Modern Family” stars all collectively submit as supporting since it is a show really without a lead, while most of the comedies out there with real “leads” and chances at nominations are women. Look at Tina Fey, Lena Dunham, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Melissa McCarthy, Kat Dennings, Zooey Deschanel from “New Girl,” and of course Amy Poehler.

Some of the competition for Johnson this time around will include Louis C.K. (“Louie”), Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory”), Matt LeBlanc (“Episodes”), and reigning champ Jon Cryer (“Two and a Half Men”). Who else is there? Don Cheadle (“House of Lies”) has an outside chance, and “Community’s” not really a strong-enough show anymore to really say that Joel McHale has a shot.

We’ll be campaigning again for Jake again this year, mostly because he’s done so much work in making Nick this sort of misfit hero that is almost impossible to not want to root for.

Do you think that Johnson should take home an Emmy sometime soon? If you want to read some “New Girl” scoop on Winston’s birthday, you can do so over here.

Photo: Fox