According to Gold Derby readers, Best Comedy Supporting Actress is the toughest category to predict at the 2026 Emmys. That’s because a strong case could be made for many of the nominees.
The experts from leading media outlets pick Kate O’Flynn (Widow’s Bay), the breakout star of the horror comedy that’s peaking at the right time. And the overall user base believes Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) will claim her second consecutive trophy for the show’s tearful final season.
However, 14% of our staff editors are going rogue and predicting that Dale Dickey (Widow’s Bay) will stage a come-from-behind victory on Emmy night. This is the veteran actress’ first nomination.
Primetime Emmy Awards 2026
Dickey recently told Gold Derby that she has “played so many skanky roles” in her career that her husband just naturally assumed she’d be the Sea Hag on Widow’s Bay. “That’s our marriage,” she deadpanned. Instead, she plays Rosemary, a grouchy employee in the mayor’s office who works alongside Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), Patricia Moyer (O’Flynn), and Dale (Jeff Hiller).
Near the end of Season 1, Dickey went viral with a hilarious moment in which Rosemary explained the genealogy of some of the island’s cursed inhabitants while using an overhead projector. “Dead baby, dead baby, lesbian,” Rosemary stated matter-of-factly as she went through the various slides.
After prepping for that monologue at home, Dickey learned when she got back to set that the slides would be presented upside-down and reversed. “Rosemary would do it with a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of Fireball,” she told us. “We got through it, and it was ultimately fun.”
Because that scene aired after the May 31 eligibility cutoff date, Dickey wasn’t able to submit it for the Emmys. Instead, she submitted the “Beach Reads” episode, in which Rosemary witnesses Patricia unintentionally put a hex on attendees at the island’s Sunset Cocktails party. But will that technicality even matter?
Emmy voters often reward performances that aired outside the eligibility window — not intentionally, but because those episodes were freshest in their minds when they marked their ballots. Case in point: Liza Colón-Zayas won for The Bear‘s second season, but her standout showcase was Season 3’s “Napkins,” which voters watched in the summer while casting ballots for Season 2. And when Ben Mendelsohn won for the second season of Bloodline, he was hardly in it by that point. Many pundits believed voters were playing catch-up and thought they were honoring his Season 1 work instead.
Despite being underestimated in our Emmy odds, Dickey is definitely one to watch out for. In fact, she could follow the same path as other recent female character-actress winners.
Just last year, Katherine LaNasa broke through in Best Drama Supporting Actress for the debut season of The Pitt. The longtime scene-stealer had appeared in everything from Seinfeld to ER to Two and a Half Men, but it wasn’t until her role of Charge Nurse Dana Evans that Emmy voters took notice. Her victory demonstrated how a working actress can surge late in the race when a standout performance aligns with a buzzy series.
In 2022, Sheryl Lee Ralph memorably sang her Emmy speech after pulling off a shocker in Best Comedy Supporting Actress. Despite working steadily for decades, Ralph had never been recognized by the Television Academy until her role as kindergarten teacher Barbara Howard on Abbott Elementary. Ralph prevailed over a pair of Emmy front-runners: defending champion Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso) and Abbott co-star Janelle James.
Ann Dowd earned her Best Drama Supporting Actress trophy in 2017 for The Handmaid’s Tale, taking down co-star Samira Wiley, plus former winner Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black) and breakout stars Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things), Chrissy Metz (This Is Us), and Thandiwe Newton (Westworld). Dowd’s victory proved that an actress who’s worked forever in Hollywood could finally persevere thanks to the right performance at the right time.
“I certainly didn’t plan on being up here,” Margo Martindale confessed in 2015 after winning Best Drama Guest Actress for playing KGB handler Claudia on The Americans. Well, nobody did. The seasoned actress only appeared for about 90 seconds as the fan-favorite character, making it one of the shortest performances to ever win an Emmy. Notably, Martindale also won the following year for an equally short role on The Americans, with her first Emmy coming in 2011 for her supporting turn on Justified. When voters like you, they really like you.
It remains to be seen whether Dickey can turn her underdog momentum into an Emmy, but she has all the ingredients of a classic late-breaking contender. We’ll find out when the Primetime ceremony takes place Sept. 14 on NBC.
