In March, Netflix’s Squid Game made history with its SAG Award wins for best actor and best actress, making it the first non-English-language series to take home those honors. The hugely popular South Korean drama is now an Emmy frontrunner, and it’s likely it will be the first non-English show to earn a series nom — and a victory would see it follow the trajectory of South Korean feature Parasite, the first foreign-language film to win the Oscar for best picture.
But Squid Game isn’t the only non-English series co-produced by American studios to be eligible this year. The third season of HBO’s My Brilliant Friend, based on the Neapolitan novels by Italian writer Elena Ferrante, was also submitted for the top drama prize. Similarly, multilingual series like Apple TV+’s Pachinko and HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice are strong contenders, a sign that the TV Academy voters have overcome “the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles,” as Parasite writer-director-producer Bong Joon Ho said when he accepted the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film in 2020.
This story first appeared in the June 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
