Every year, plenty of Emmy hopefuls get snubbed while a small few do earn the nomination they've been working hard for all year. However, while snubs are common, it's way less common to actually be disqualified from the Emmys once a person has been nominated. Unfortunately, that's exactly what is happening to Peter MacNicol, a Veep actor whose nomination just got rescinded. The reason? His "guest stint" apparently did not qualify as a guest stint.
Here's what happened. During Season 5 of HBO's comedy series, Peter MacNicol was signed on to play a character with a small role on the series. At the time his performance was sent in for Emmy voters' consideration, he actually did qualify for a guest stint position according to Emmy stipulations. However, Veep ended up using Peter MacNicol for an additional episode during Season 5, which actually bumped him out of guest starring contention.
Every year, plenty of Emmy hopefuls get snubbed while a small few do earn the nomination they've been working hard for all year. However, while snubs are common, it's way less common to actually be disqualified from the Emmys once a person has been nominated. Unfortunately, that's exactly what is happening to Peter MacNicol, a Veep actor whose nomination just got rescinded. The reason? His "guest stint" apparently did not qualify as a guest stint.
Here's what happened. During Season 5 of HBO's comedy series, Peter MacNicol was signed on to play a character with a small role on the series. At the time his performance was sent in for Emmy voters' consideration, he actually did qualify for a guest stint position according to Emmy stipulations. However, Veep ended up using Peter MacNicol for an additional episode during Season 5, which actually bumped him out of guest starring contention.
If you aren't familiar with all of the Emmy voting rules---and who is, really?---the Guest Actor in a Comedy series only requires that a person who could potentially be nominated appears in less than 50% of a given season. Veep only produced 10 episodes per season, so in Peter MacNicol's case, the actor could appear in up to four episodes and still be considered for the category. According to THR, it was when the actor was signed on for five episodes during Season 5 that the TV Academy took notice and ultimately opted to rescind his nomination.
What really sucks is how Mr. MacNicol was actually included in the fifth episode. In previous episodes, the actor was signed on to play Jonah's politically important family member Jeff Kane, who helped Jonah to get into office. During the four main episodes he was on, he actually had a pretty decent and entertaining amount of speaking time--thus the Emmy nod--but in the fifth episode he actually only appears in a short clip as part of the video footage Catherine shot during the campaign.
So, yes, it was a bunch of back footage that proved to be the actor's downfall in terms of an Emmy nomination. I think I speak for most people when I say this really sucks. The TV Academy made a statement related to the disqualification noting that this should not "diminish" the actor's quality of work on Veep, but it's still likely to be a huge bummer for the actor, and it's easy to see why the network filled out the paperwork that it did to try to get the actor into the category. The network had to get the paperwork in before the episodes were fully edited and ready to go and before credits had been attributed to the actors on the show.
In Peter MacNicol's place, the next actor in terms of votes will get a nomination.
At the end of the day, Veep is usually a favorite at the Emmys. This year, Veep got a comedy nod. Anna Chlumsky, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tony Hale, Matt Walsh and Martin Mull also got Emmy nods. You can check out the full list of nominations here.
