The actor was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.
This is forkin' awesome!
Ted Danson earned a surprise nomination on Thursday for his stellar performance as Michael on NBC's beloved comedy, The Good Place, in the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series category.
This marks Danson's 13th career Emmy nomination, but his first for The Good Place. It is also his first Emmy nomination for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 25 years. (He is a two-time Emmy winner for Cheers.)
As one of the vital parts of the critically acclaimed The Good Place, Danson's Emmy nomination is a nice surprise. He has earned rave reviews for the first two seasons of the NBC comedy, but many felt that he should have been recognized earlier for his work on the series.
Danson has previously been recognized by critics for his portrayal of Michael, the bowtie-loving architect of the Good Place, where Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and her fellow humans resided. He earned the series' first major award in 2017, when he won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series.
Joining Danson with an Emmy nomination of her own is Maya Rudolph for her guest arc on The Good Place as Judge Hydrogen, an impartial inter-dimensional judge who rules on matters involving the Good Place and the Bad Place.
The Good Place is known for throwing curveballs at its audience, famously shaking things up in the freshman finale, when it was revealed that Eleanor and company actually weren't in the Good Place at all, but the dreaded Bad Place.
"In the writers’ room when we brainstorm, especially when we’re plotting out an overarching plan for the season, we like to say, ‘If I were just a viewer watching, what are the first 10 things that I would think was going to happen?' and we list out what seems obvious," The Good Place supervising producer and writer Megan Amram, who is a first-time Emmy nominee for her short-form series An Emmy for Megan, told ET in February. "Then you can go, ‘OK, so we’re not going to do any of those. We’re going to keep moving the plot as quickly as possible,’ something that is a very difficult part of writing the show but also very satisfying. We burn through plot very quickly, so we’re constantly thinking of new ways to mess with the worlds and new ways to surprise people."
The 70th Emmy Awards, co-hosted by Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost and Michael Che, will air live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Monday, Sept. 17, starting at 5 p.m. PT on NBC.
Check out the full list of nominees and follow ET’s ongoing Emmy coverage here.
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