2024 Emmys: How much screen time does each Best Comedy Guest Actress nominee have?
Heading into the 2023 Creative Arts Emmys, Gold Derby predicted that Taraji P. Henson would easily win Best Comedy Guest Actress for “Abbott Elementary.” However, the award ended up going to the perceived runner-up, Judith Light (“Poker Face”), who happened to deliver a performance over twice the size of Henson’s. As voters set out to select Light’s successor, they may either stay on track by honoring another actress with more than 20 minutes of screen time or take one of multiple opportunities to go in the opposite direction.
The six current comedy guest actress contenders asked the TV academy to consider their work in episodes in which they appear for an average of 14 minutes and 34 seconds (or 27.50% of the total running time). This data was calculated using a simple definition of stand-alone screen time, which is any time a given performer can be seen on screen or heard off screen. Although the TV academy now counts them in this category, contiguous moments of silent and non-visible scene time were not factored in here since every nominee meets the new 5% minimum without them.
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Unsurprisingly, the two longest performances in the new lineup are those of April 6 and May 11 “Saturday Night Live” hosts Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph, each of whom is on her fourth guest bid for the sketch series. While the largest chunks of Wiig’s screen time (22:59; 33.68%) were devoted to her monologue and “Weekend Update” appearance as Aunt Linda, Rudolph spent less of her time (23:33; 33.93%) opening the show than she did playing “Hot Ones” guest Beyoncé and coffee spokeswoman Dawn Farraway.
Directly behind Wiig in terms of physical screen time is Jamie Lee Curtis, who appears in 16 minutes and 34 seconds (or 25.00%) of “Fishes,” the lengthiest episode of “The Bear” to date by a margin of 18 minutes. She is followed by returning nominee Kaitlin Olson, whose 14-minute and 23-second performance in the “Hacks” episode “The Roast of Deborah Vance” gives her the highest running time share in the lineup: 45.56%.
Rounding out this roster with less than 10 minutes of combined screen time are “Only Murders in the Building” and “The Bear” actresses Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Olivia Colman. Randolph, who won an Oscar this March for appearing in 19.10% of “The Holdovers,” spends five minutes and 43 seconds (or 14.96%) of her show’s “Sitzprobe” episode reprising her role of Detective Donna Williams. By clocking in at 4:09 (or 11.89%) in “Forks,” Colman delivers the shortest of this year’s nominated comedic performances and stands as the only such contender recognized for her work in a single scene.
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