Emmy voter admits to not watching House of the Dragon, says he'll vote against it

The 75th Annual Emmy Awards go down this weekend, and HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon is up for the top award of the night: Best Drama. Its fellow competitors include The Crown, The Last of Us, Succession, Better Call Saul, The White Lotus, Yellowjackets and Star Wars: Andor. You may be wondering why House of the Dragon is up for an award now when the first season aired way back in 2022; well, the Emmys were supposed to air much earlier but got delayed due to the writers and actors strikes in 2023. They air on Fox this Monday.

Anyway, good a show as it is, House of the Dragon isn't expected to win Best Drama; that honor will very likely go to Succession, which ended for good last year with its strongest season yet. The Hollywood Reporter published a piece written by an anonymous Emmy voter from the TV Academy’s Producers Peer Group, and he says he's voting for Succession.

Actually, this anonymous guy says a lot of stuff, and some of it is slightly maddening. For instance, he cheerfully admits to not watching House of the Dragon. He even seems to have some kind of grudge against it. "You couldn’t pay me to watch House of the Dragon," this person writes. "I was a Game of Thrones person, but I watched 10 minutes of this and read the reviews and it just seemed like a money grab." He hasn't watched the latest season of The Crown, either, for the record. "I had zero interest inThe Crown— I watched the first season because my wife asked me to, then I was done."

The obvious question here is: if you're supposed to vote on a category that includes eight shows, and you haven't watched all eight shows, how can you cast an informed vote? Should you really vote if you don't have all the information? And the obvious answer is: who cares? Just vote whatever you like. That's the way award shows have always worked. Almost no one watches everything that's been nominated; they watch what they feel like and vote based on vibes.

So that's the way Emmy voting (and Oscar voting, and every other kind of awards show voting) actually works. But I don't know if most people stop to think about that. A lot of people probably figure there's at least some objectivity involved; otherwise there wouldn't be endless talk every year about what got snubbed, as if the voting was based on settled fact rather than the subjective whims of the voters. The THR article is weird to me because it shatters this illusion; the guy admits he hasn't watched all the nominees, but feels confident enough to dismiss them anyway. This isn't a rigorous selection process.

And it doesn't help that this particular person comes off as awfully smarmy. Here he is talking about The Last of Us, which is based on Naughty Dog's video game series:

"Right after Chernobyl, I had lunch with [The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin] and asked what he was doing next. He goes, “HBO gave me this video game.” I went, “You’re going from Chernobyl to a video game?!” He goes, “Yeah. Even worse, it’s about zombies.” I was like, “What are you doing?!”"

The guy ended up loving The Last of Us show, but it's bold to be so open about your contempt for video games. Then again, he's not really being open, because this is anonymous, which is probably why he feels comfortable saying this stuff.

Anyway, this is all food for thought ahead of the 75th Annual Emmy Awards, which air this Monday, January 15 at 8:00 p.m. EST on Fox. If you watch, have fun, but I don't think they're worth taking too seriously.

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