Robert Downey Jr. Lands Emmy Nominations

Robert Downey Jr.'s remarkable award run in 2024 continued with this morning’s Emmy nominations, where he earned nods. 

Downey is nominated for supporting actor in a limited series for HBO’s “The Sympathizer.” Variety’s senior awards editor Clayton Davis currently lists Downey as the frontrunner to win the Emmy in his category.

Downey's Emmy nomination for this year is notable as the Marvel actor took home Oscars in March, thus setting him up for a history-making moment of winning an Oscar and an Emmy in the same calendar year. 

Downey took home the supporting actor prize for “Oppenheimer.”

The actor swept the film awards season with his performance in “Oppenehimer,” clinching rare sweeps of the pre-cursor awards. Prior to winning the Academy Award, Downey nabbed supporting win at the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice Awards, SAG Awards, and BAFTA Film Awards.

Speaking to Jodie Foster for Variety‘s “Actors on Actors” series earlier this year, Downey shared that the heavy toll of filming “Oppenheimer” led him to accept the offer for “The Sympathizer.” 

He appeared as four different characters in the show, all of whom were antagonists. 

The series was based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 novel of the same name and centers on a North Vietnamese soldier in the South Vietnamese army who is forced to flee to the United States with his general near the end of the Vietnam War. While living within a community of South Vietnamese refugees, he continues to spy on the community and struggles between his original loyalties and his new life.

“I wanted the four characters to be a little two-dimensional,” Downey said. “The congressman was probably my favorite, because it was every midcentury politico.”