Are White Latine Emmy Nominations Really That Historic?

On Wednesday, the 75th Emmy Awards nominations were announced — and while Latine history could be made this year, it wouldn’t be the kind of historic event that breaks ground by widening representation for Latines or anything. 

Pedro Pascal scored three different nominations for three different performances. The Chilean American actor who became everyone's favourite middle-aged heartthrob this year was nominated in the Lead Actor in a Drama Series category for his role as Joel Miller on The Last of Us. He is the second Latino to be nominated in the category, after Jimmy Smits, who was nominated five consecutive times from 1995 to 1999 for his role as Detective Bobby Simone on NYPD Blue. And Pascal, who is the most-nominated Latino actor this year, also picked up nominations for Guest Actor in a Comedy Series category for hosting Saturday Night Live and Outstanding Narrator for Patagonia: Life On The Edge Of The World.

Jenna Ortega is the third Latina to ever be nominated for an Emmy as a Lead Actress in a Comedy for her portrayal of Wednesday Addams in the Netflix hit series Wednesday — following Rita Moreno’s nomination in 1983 for 9 to 5 and America Ferrera for Ugly Betty in 2007, when she won, and 2008. Aubrey Plaza was nominated for Best Actress in a Drama series for White Lotus, becoming the third Latina nominated in the category after Morena Baccarin for Homeland, and Argentine American Camila Morrone was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series for her work in Daisy Jones & the Six.

The number of Latine nominees at this year’s Emmys is low as usual, despite the fact that Latine creatives and actors are constantly making outstanding, nuanced, and essential TV series and films for all kinds of audiences. For instance, ​​while Star Wars shows like Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and The Mandalorian all picked up multiple Emmy nominations, Diego Luna, who plays Andor, did not receive a Best Lead Actor nomination. Similarly, while Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building scored a Best Comedy Series nomination, lead actor Selena Gomez, who plays Mabel, was snubbed for a second year. 

While the number of Latines to be nominated are abysmally low, Pascal could make history if he wins the Emmy for The Last of Us. He is only the second Latino to ever be nominated in the drama category and would be the first to ever win the award. And while I, like most of us, would love for our Chilean king to win, it’s hard not to miss which Latine actors get to make history in Hollywood, particularly during a writers’ strike and a looming actors’ strike: white Latines.  

Pascal, Plaza, and Morrone are all white Latines who can easily separate themselves from their ethnicity and Latine heritage when playing highly visible TV roles. While these actors' ethnicity might be mentioned by their characters, it isn’t a visible or central part of who they are, which makes them more palatable to a general (read: white) audience. To be clear, I’m not arguing that Latine actors have to play roles that relate to their ethnicity but rather that their whiteness makes them more agreeable to the implicit and explicit racial biases of U.S. audiences. 

In the case of Pascal’s Joel, the actor’s heritage is completely erased. As for the other Latine nominees this year, Ortega’s Wednesday is canonically Latina, but her ethnicity feels more like a quirk than a cultural heritage. Morrone’s character Camila Dunne speaks Spanish with her Latine parents and friends on Daisy Jones & the Six, but her culture isn’t explored outside of that. And while the Puerto Rican roots of Plaza’s character Harper are mentioned in The White Lotus, and is even used as a signifier that she’s new to the world of the richest 1%, her character’s whiteness is what allows her to be vacationing in Italy in the first place. 

Amid a Hollywood that remains anti-Black and racist, Black and Brown Latines can’t get rid of their racial and ethnic identities so conveniently and, thus, aren’t able to take on such roles.

Part of the problem is the lack of Latine actors in TV and film more generally. Samba TV’s state of diversity on TV report determined that despite making up almost 20% of the U.S. population, only 10% of lead actors across the top 50 TV shows of 2023 were Latine. The report also determined that none of the top 50 shows featured a majority Latine cast. There are very limited roles for Latine actors in the first place, and in a white supremacist Hollywood, the few Latines who will make it will be the ones that blend into whiteness the easiest. 

Meanwhile, 80% of Latines consider diverse content important when choosing what to watch. There is a huge market for well-written, inclusive TV series and films that draw on the diversity of the Latine community, and this has to accommodate shade diversity. There are excellent Black and Brown Latine actors who need their time in the spotlight and deserve to be given complex roles that result in Emmy nominations — the problem is that casting directors still don’t give them the chance. Shows like With Love are proof of what Latine actors of all shades and sexualities can do when given the space to do their best work. 

As a huge Pedro Pascal fan, I am over the moon about his three nominations, and I hope he bags all three Emmys. Similarly, Ortega’s portrayal of Wednesday Addams is brilliant and was literally the talk of 2022, making a win so deserved. Both of these actors have opened up about the discrimination and typecasting they’ve faced in Hollywood, and I don’t doubt that all of the Latine nominees have experienced some level of “othering” because of their ethnicity. Even still, it can’t be ignored that each of their roles are palatable to Hollywood because of their proximity to whiteness. They’re Latine enough to imply some spice, and white enough not to threaten the white status quo of Hollywood and entertainment award shows.