Maya Rudolph (‘Big Mouth’) poised to make Emmy history in voice-over performance race

For a while, Maya Rudolph was criminally underappreciated by the TV academy; by 2019 she had only been nominated for three Emmys. But then it’s like a switch was flipped and suddenly it was raining Emmys. She won five times over the next four years: Best Comedy Guest Actress twice for “Saturday Night Live” (2020-2021) and Best Character Voice-Over Performance three times for “Big Mouth” (2020-2021, 2023). She’s nominated in both categories again this year, as well as in Best Comedy Actress for her Apple TV+ series “Loot.” Of those, she’s projected to win the voice-over award, which would put her in elite company.

To date only three actors have collected four trophies for character voice-over performances: “The Simpsons” stars Hank Azaria and Dan Castellaneta and “Family Guy” mastermind Seth MacFarlane. That includes years when Best Voice-Over Performance was a juried award and combined character voice-overs with narrators. Character and narration performances were split up in 2014, and lately Rudolph has been indomitable for her “Big Mouth” turn as Connie the Hormone Monstress. The only time she has lost for this role was in 2022 when the academy awarded a posthumous trophy to Chadwick Boseman for Marvel’s “What If…?” animated series.

Rudolph is the overwhelming favorite for the award again this year, predicted to win by seven out of eight Expert journalists from major media outlets, 10 out of 11 Gold Derby Editors, 22 of our Top 24 Users and 22 of our All-Star Top 24. There is some support for other nominees, though. Ranked second in our odds is the aforementioned Azaria, who would stand alone as the most awarded character voice actor if he prevails; one of our Editors thinks he’ll eke out a win.

Then there’s academy darling Sterling K. Brown for “Invincible.” He’s a three-time Emmy champ, including one in 2021 for narrating the nonfiction series “Lincoln: Divided We Stand“; one Expert and one Top User is betting on him to prevail. And one Top User and one All-Star think 2018 victor Alex Borstein (“Family Guy”) will do it again. Rounding out the category is “Ted Lasso” Emmy champ Hannah Waddingham for “Krapopolis,” so there’s no one in this category who doesn’t have at least one trophy on their mantel. Voters have liked all of them before, but our users say they’ll like Rudolph the best this time around.