‘The Bear’ Stars Didn’t Even Bother to Show Up to Lose Their Comedy Emmys
The Bear has long suffered under Emmys miscategorization. For years, they’ve been winning hardware under the comedy designation. After 49 nominations and 21 wins, the accusations of category thieving were reaching fever pitch this year, especially after the latest season of the show didn’t receive the same critical acclaim as previous seasons.
Everywhere you look, you’ll find the words “The Bear is not a comedy.” It’s all over Twitter. It’s on the Cracked website. It was one of the primary jokes in Nate Bargatze’s cold open for the 2025 Emmys. It was a running joke at the 2024 Emmys. By volume, jokes about The Bear not being a comedy far exceed the number of actual jokes in The Bear.
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Even that joke was a recycled joke from a previous joke about The Bear not being a comedy. See here:
And it seems all that joking around, plus an incredibly crowded field for comedy TV this year, pushed the cast of The Bear to opt out of the Emmys. Ayo Edebiri was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in A Comedy Series and Jeremy Allen White was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in A Comedy Series, but both actors weren’t in attendance. Which is fair, neither won in their category. Jean Smart won Best Actress for Hacks and Seth Rogen won for The Studio. Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who was also nominated, was in attendance but lost Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series to Jeff Hiller in Somebody Somewhere. Same for Liza Colón-Zayas, who was nominated for supporting actress, but lost to Hacks’ Hannah Einbinder.
There’s still a few more awards the show could win tonight, but the biggest star’s notable absence from the show has some speculating that all the jokes about the lack of jokes in The Bear might have finally gotten to the actors. And that the show’s reign over the Emmys might be coming to a close.
It sucks, because The Bear is truly a great television show that is deserving of awards season recognition. But you know, maybe just not in the comedy category.