Winning an Emmy is hard. Winning one for every eligible season of a television series is almost impossible, and has never happened for a woman … until now?
Jean Smart has won lead comedy actress for every eligible season of HBO Max’s “Hacks,” taking home trophies in 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2025. With the acclaimed comedy ending after its fifth season, Smart is nominated one final time. A fifth consecutive win would complete a flawless run across the series’ entire life span, something no woman has ever achieved in the acting categories. The victory would carry added significance for Smart’s own legacy. It would be her eighth career Emmy, moving her into a tie with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Cloris Leachman for the second most acting Emmys won by a female performer.
Noteworthy, Allison Janney, a supporting drama actress nominee for “The Diplomat,” can also join Zendaya, who has won two Emmys for playing Rue on “Euphoria.” 08.10.2026 3 Variety the elite list if she wins as she’s tied with Smart and Mary Tyler Moore. Should Smart fall short, however, she would finish with the same agonizing near miss that befell Louis-Dreyfus, who won six Emmys across the seven-season run of “Veep.”
So, who can stop Smart in her tracks? Her HBO Max counterpart, Lisa Kudrow, who has the most remarkable streak of all, earning noms for every season of cringe-comedy “The Comeback” in 2006, 2015 and now 2026 — a perfect run stretched across two decades. A previous winner for “Friends,” and also a nominee with cowriter Michael Patrick King, there could be a groundswell of support to give her a trophy, similar to the performer that beat Louis-Dreyfus in 2019: Phoebe Waller-Bridge for “Fleabag.”
