Why Sci-Fi and Genre Series Like ‘The Penguin' and ‘The Last of Us' Resonate With Emmy Voters Now More Than Ever

Science fiction and horror have become forces at the Emmys, with "The Penguin," "The Last of Us," "Andor," "Severance," "Paradise" and "What We Do in the Shadows" scoring nominations in major categories - acting, writing and best series.

"The Last of Us" showrunner Craig Mazin credits "The Lord of the Rings" for the rise of the genre. "There was an application of quality and thoughtfulness to that story, and it didn't discount its genre elements. It embraced them," he says. "Genre elements have more in common with mythology and legend than anything else, and mythology and legend are the most basic kind of storytelling we have."

And the numbers show that the storytelling transcends genre.

Mazin says that in TV, everything boils down to the quality of the script. "If you can deliver something where an agent can say to an actor, ‘Hey, listen, this is a show about fungus zombies. But no, it's not. It's a show about a father and a daughter. It's a show about loss. It's a show about community, it's a show about hope, and it's a show about vengeance. Read it.'"

He points to the Nick Offerman episode of Season 1, which won him an Emmy: "I was like, ‘The script I'm sending you will not appear to be about a zombie show, will appear to be about something else entirely.' Actors get excited, I think, about just sinking their teeth into good parts."

"The Penguin" showrunner Lauren LeFranc notes that Cristin Milioti, who scored an Emmy nom for her portrayal of Sofia Falcone, asked a lot of questions about her character's backstory.

"It was a very magical thing, honestly, to work with everybody cohesively to figure out where Sofia begins and where she ends. And it's very tied to her trauma. It's tied to how she carries herself. Cristin worked with a movement coach, which was her own doing, in terms of her own process. But it was because we knew Sofia was holding in a lot of trauma, physically," LeFranc says of the character who was framed for murder and tossed by her father into the harrowing Arkham Asylum.

"I also am keenly aware of some of the things that you've seen time and again in a genre like this, and that I also wanted to actively push up against - especially as someone who's a fan of the comic book genre, the crime genre," she says.

Creating fully formed female characters was essential to her, because when she watched other crime dramas growing up, they were never as developed as the men. "It was important for me to really center a lot of complicated, flawed women in the show and try to give them richness, and try to actively fight against some of the tropes that you've seen before, too."

In Episode 6, Sofia, who has already established rather violent methods in her professional

dealings, needs to get information from Eve (Carmen Ejogo).

"I think we've seen things like this before, where you presume she's gonna die because she's a sex worker, because this is often what happens. So we leaned into that and then didn't make that choice. Sofia would not make this choice," says LaFranc. "It's not just a writer saying, ‘Oh, I don't want to do that.' It's like, let's create interesting dynamics that feel very real and human, and just not do the thing that you've seen a million times."

What science fiction does so well, according to Mazin, is hold up a fun house mirror to society. "It's still us, but we can see what happens if we continue to proliferate nuclear weapons, if we continue to allow the Earth to warm right, if we continue to overuse antibiotics, if we continue to let AI take over every day."

LeFranc takes a long view: "I do think good stories can be told in any genre. And I think right now we are in a climate where IP is king, and if that's the case, all writers will always find a way to tell human stories no matter the genre."