2018 Emmys: Should Keri Russell, Sandra Oh, Claire Foy win Drama Actress?
The 2018 Primetime Emmys are airing on NBC come Monday, September 17, and we’re starting to take a look ahead at the categories! We want to do our best here to not only analyze the field, but also figure out just what shows will and should emerge as the champion.
For this particular article, we’re putting the focus on Actress in a Drama Series! Much like the Drama Actor field this year, we do think that this is one dominated mostly by a single performer. It’s fairly easy to predict what’s going to happen this year, though maybe you make the case that everyone feels so locked in to one choice that there ends up being a big surprise instead.
At the end of this article, there is a poll for who you think should take home the trophy — after we get through our own analysis, of course.
Voting Rules – Vote however often you like! We’ll announce all reader predictions at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time on September 17, leading up to the start of the awards.
The nominees
Claire Foy, The Crown
Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black
Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid’s Tale
Sandra Oh, Killing Eve
Keri Russell, The Americans
Evan Rachel Wood, Westworld
Who should win
We’re going with the new blood this year in Sandra Oh for a sensational performance — though it’s almost weird to call Oh new blood given the entire breadth of her career. Still, her nomination is significant as she is the first Asian actress every nominated in this category. Her winning here is a wonderful historical moment, but we’re taking that out of the equation and thinking that she deserves this based just on Killing Eve alone.
Who will win
While we think there is a small chance for an upset with Oh, it’s still hard to predict against Elisabeth Moss given the sheer amount of attention she’s gotten for the past twelve months of The Handmaid’s Tale. If there is going to be an upset, the evidence for Sandra having a chance is that Killing Eve hasn’t had a chance to cycle through many of the major awards yet. With that, we can’t truly gauge its popularity at present.
For the record, we love every one of these nominees and we’re not trying to minimize it to just two women; the problem here is mostly that all history and patterns dictate a limited field this year.