There is no denying that James Spader has played one of the most iconic TV characters in history on The Blacklist. However, here is where things get crazy. For some reason, he has never been nominated as Reddington Reddington at the Emmys. He has won Emmys for The Practice and Boston Legal, but those were over a decade and a half ago! He’s been nominated twice for The Blacklist, but has not taken home a trophy there, either.
So why all the snubs over the years? It’s complicated. Because he has already won for a network TV show, that does likely raise the challenge level in the eyes of voters. Also, in general awards-shows are slowly moving away from honoring network shows in general. The vast majority of honorees these days are from premium cable and streaming; every now and then you get a show that breaks through like Abbott Elementary or This Is Us, but it is rare.
For those of you who do follow James’ awards-show nominations and chances, here’s what we can tell you: The actor has at least submitted for Actor in a Drama series at the Emmys this year. We will find out if he gets a nod on July 12, but for now we consider it a longshot. That is nothing against his excepti onal performance on the show; rather, it has to do with everything we’ve said above about how the Emmys work.
We should note that actors often have a lot of control over whether or not they are submitted for awards shows like this, so the submissions can be rather random. Insofar as other actors go, the only other two on the ballot for The Blacklist are Alex Brightman (Herbie) as Supporting Actor and Laverne Cox (Laken Perillos) as Guest Actress. Like with Spader, they should be considered darkhorse candidates at this point.
