The 50th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards will be held on Friday, Dec. 15, with the ceremony airing live on CBS starting at 9 p.m. ET. Soap Opera Digest chatted with the nominees to get the scoop on how they found out, what episodes they submitted, and more as we count down to daytime’s biggest night!
Outstanding Lead Actor
Jason Thompson (Billy, THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS)
CBS
How did you find out that you’re nominated? “I wasn’t sitting and waiting for it or anything like that. I find more comfort in kind of going about my day and if I get the phone call, cool, and if I don’t, it’s all right and on to the next year. I didn’t know the Lead nominations had come out early, so I wasn’t expecting it. I was sitting at home, looking on Instagram and there was like, ‘Congratulations’ or something like that. I was like, ‘What’s this for?’ and 30 seconds later, the show called me and told me. It always feels good. Sometimes you have a piece of work that you’re proud of across the board and you don’t really feel competitive about it. It’s just about celebrating what we do best in this genre and I feel like this storyline for me just felt like this is what we do.”
What do you make of your competition in this category? “They’re pretty amazing. It’s great that I know so many people pretty well nowadays, so I’m going to be very happy for whoever wins. I don’t know Billy [Flynn, Chad, DAYS], but I know people who know him really well and they say he’s a great guy, and obviously I’ve seen his work. He’s an awesome actor and he seems like a really good person. I know Maurice [Benard, Sonny, GH], Thorsten [Kaye, Ridge, B&B] and Peter [Bergman, Jack, Y&R] and they’re great guys. From where I’m sitting, I’ll be happy for whoever wins.”
Which scenes did you submit? “It was 12 minutes of a storyline with Billy and Chelsea, and it kind of opens up with him finding her on the roof [ready to jump] and getting her down off of the roof, and then subsequently going to her hotel room to get her safe and sound and following up with Sharon when she comes to the door. It was really nice, actually, because I hadn’t really seen those scenes all together since we shot them. We shot the hotel room stuff first just because that’s what had to happen from a scheduling standpoint and then we shot the roof stuff the next day. So it was nice to look at those tapes and follow it from the sequence of the actual story.”
When you won in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, all the nominees had to prerecord their acceptance speeches and watch from home. Was was that like for you? “It was definitely a little bit surreal. When I filmed it, obviously there was no way to do it without my family [wife Paloma, son Bowie and daughter Rome] because they’re just as much a part of it and there was no way the kids weren’t going to climb all over us during the acceptance speech. I’m not going to lie, it’s a dream to win an Emmy, I just never in a million years imagined that I would be sitting in my living room in the middle of a global pandemic, hearing my name being called over the Internet, when I had always imagined being there in a room of people that I aspire to be like and want to thank publicly — and then party. So, I learned a lot by that because it’s something you strive for and the end result is not necessarily how it’s going happen. But it is about the journey and that’s what I learned from that.”
What do you think it would feel like to if you heard your name called in person? “I don’t know! I haven’t experienced that yet. You have an idea of how it might feel but I don’t know yet — and who knows if I will ever get that opportunity? But it doesn’t change the fact that I want to show up every day, trying to earn that. And it’s not just about the award or the recognition of it. It’s about representing the show, the writers, our production teams, the overall work that we do and the opportunity to tell a story that resonates with people. That’s what I strive for as the end result. If you get a nomination, it’s great.”
Who will be going with you to the awards ceremony? “My wife. She and the kids have a little ‘family besides Daddy’ photo shoot to do that day and then she’ll bounce from there and come to the Emmys with me.”
Will you prepare an acceptance speech or wing it? “I don’t know, but I do have an idea. Bryton [James, Devon] asked me a couple days ago if I had something prepared and when I said I didn’t, he said, ‘You should.’ I tend to trust Bryton on a lot of things [but] I also like the idea of just feeling the room and figuring out what I want to say. Right now, the short answer is ‘No.’ ”
