Harrison Ford, Sally Field & Martin Short Are Chasing Emmy History at the 2026 Primetime Emmy Awards

Awards season always loves a fresh face, but this one is falling hard for the weathered ones. When the Television Academy announced nominations for the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards back in July, the story wasn’t the ingenues breaking through. It was the lifers, the character actors, the perennial “that guy” performers, and the beloved figures the industry lost along the way. Voters have set up a September ceremony where nearly every envelope could contain a piece of television history.

Whether Harrison Ford finally wins his first major acting trophy, Martin Short breaks a decades-long dry spell, or Sally Field becomes an oldest-winner, several actors in their 60s, 70s, and 80s are chasing records that have stood for years. Here’s a rundown of the veteran class poised to make Emmy history on Sept. 14.

Harrison Ford and the Men of Comedy

Harrison Ford turns 84 on Emmy night, and he’s back in the race for Apple TV’s warm, funny shrink comedy Shrinking — still chasing the first major acting award of a 60-year screen career that built the modern blockbuster. Here’s the record on the line: the oldest winner in the supporting comedy actor category’s history is Henry Winkler, who was 72 when he won for the first season of Barry in 2018. Ford would shatter that mark by more than a decade. He’d also supplant Bob Newhart — 84 when he finally won for The Big Bang Theory in 2013 — as the oldest man ever to win a comedy acting Emmy, by a matter of weeks.

If Ford somehow doesn’t get there, Stephen Root might. The 74-year-old, nominated for the freshman horror-comedy Widow’s Bay after some 250 credits and zero wins, would top Winkler’s standing record. Two men older than the current mark, in the same category, in the same year, is a genuinely rare sight.

Over in the lead comedy actor race, Martin Short, 76, lands his fifth consecutive nomination for the Hulu mystery romp Only Murders in the Building — his eighth acting nod overall, but still without an acting win. A victory would make him the oldest lead comedy actor champion ever, sailing past Eugene Levy, who was 73 when Schitt’s Creek swept in 2020. His competition includes a fellow member of the never-won club: Steve Carell, 64, whose pivot to the dark comedy Rooster brings his career acting ledger to 0-for-7 — six straight losses for The Office and one for The Morning Show.

The Women Rewriting the Record Books

Sally Field, 79, returns to the limited series and TV movie field with Netflix’s acclaimed adaptation of Remarkably Bright Creatures, playing a widow who forms an unlikely bond with a giant Pacific octopus at a small-town aquarium. Her last Emmy came in 2007 for the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters, and a win here would make her, by a matter of months, the oldest winner in the category’s history — a record Kathy Bates just missed with Matlock last year. Jessica Tandy was also 79 when she won for Foxfire way back in 1988.

Youn Yuh-jung, 79, may have the best narrative of the entire field. Five years after becoming the first Korean performer to win an Oscar for Minari, she earned her first Emmy nomination as the imperious Chairman Park in the second season of the anthology Beef. A win would make her the first Korean actress to take a Primetime acting Emmy — Lee Jung-jae broke that barrier for the men with Squid Game in 2022 — and the first Korean performer to own both an Oscar and an Emmy for acting. She’d also join Eva Le Gallienne and Ellen Burstyn as only the third woman 79 or older to win the award.

Michelle Pfeiffer, 68, finally has the kind of juicy television role her talent always deserved in Apple TV’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, earning her second career nomination and positioning herself for a first Emmy that would double as a coronation for her small-screen era.

And spare a cheer for Dale Dickey, 64, whose first nomination ever — supporting comedy actress for Widow’s Bay — arrives after four decades of being the best thing in everything from Winter’s Bone onward.

Two Emmys Ballots at Once

Jeff Kober, 72, is having the kind of season character actors dream about. He’s nominated for a guest drama Emmy for his quietly devastating turn as the patient Duke on HBO Max’s The Pitt, and he’s also in the running for a Daytime Emmy this year for revisiting General Hospital, the show that won him a Daytime trophy in 2022. Forty years after China Beach and Sons of Anarchy made him television’s most reliable menace, he finds himself on both Emmy ballots at once.

Richard Jenkins, 79, nominated in supporting limited for DTF St. Louis, would become the second-oldest winner in his category’s history — behind only Paul Newman, who was 80 when he won for Empire Falls in 2005.

The Posthumous Nomination Everyone Will Feel

Then there’s the one that will have the tear ducts full in the room. Rob Reiner, who was taken from us alongside his wife, Michele, in December at age 78, received a posthumous nod as guest comedy actor for his warm, funny arc as Albert, the franchising mentor in the fourth season of The Bear.

Here’s the history that makes it almost unbearable: Reiner’s two Emmys came as Michael “Meathead” Stivic on the classic sitcom All in the Family, the last of which was in 1978. A win now would arrive 48 years later — the longest gap between acting victories in Emmy history. The man whose record he’d break would be his own father, Carl Reiner, who famously waited 38 years between wins, from Caesar’s Hour in 1957 to Mad About You in 1995. A posthumous win would also be the Emmys’ first for an on-camera performance since Raúl Julia in 1995 (Chadwick Boseman’s 2022 win was for voice work).

The Bottom Line

None of these wins are guaranteed. Emmy voters are not a sentimental bunch, and the categories are stacked and fiercely competitive. But with a veteran class that includes Ford and Field, Short and Root, Youn and Jenkins, Kober and Dickey — and Reiner above them all — an industry that spent decades treating its veterans as scenery seems eager to hand them their due on the biggest stage.

On Sept. 14, somebody’s going to make history just by standing up.