Jean Smart and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are among this year's class of TV Academy Hall of Fame honorees, an unusual situation given that all three are also active Emmy frontrunners in 2026.
Smart is nominated again for her role as Deborah Vance on Hacks, which is airing its fifth and final season. If she wins, she will have taken the comedy actress Emmy every single year the show aired. According to Variety, Smart has already won the award in 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2025. A fifth win would put her one behind Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who holds six Emmys for playing the same character on the same show, Veep. With five wins as Deborah Vance, Smart would tie Don Knotts from The Andy Griffith Show and Candice Bergen from Murphy Brown for second place on that list.
TV Academy President and CEO Maury McIntyre told IndieWire that the Hall of Fame's selection committee was specifically set up to maintain some distance from the annual Emmy race. "We didn't want them necessarily thinking about, 'Oh, well, Jean's going to win the Emmy this year,' or, 'The 'South Park' guys had a great year,'" McIntyre said. "I'm sure the committee may think some of those things, and we certainly make them aware of as much history as we can. They know how many nominations somebody has had. But part of the aspect of this committee is to make sure that they aren't being swayed necessarily by what's going on in any given year around the Emmys."
The Hall of Fame presentation is part of the TV Academy's Televerse festival, now in its second year. The event brings Emmy nominees and voters together in Los Angeles ahead of the Primetime Emmy telecast, which is scheduled for September 14. Last year's inaugural class included Conan O'Brien, Ryan Murphy, and Viola Davis.
Much of the conversation around Smart in 2026 has been framed by what Hacks has done for her character, Deborah Vance, over five seasons. The final season opens with Deborah pursuing an EGOT, the term for someone who wins an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony at some point in their career. In the episode, Deborah claims she is halfway there, pointing to a Daytime Emmy for hosting a game show called Begongle on the USA Network in 1992, and a Tony as a producer, which came after, as the show explains, Eric Idle convinced her to invest in Spamalot, which actually won the Tony for best musical in 2005.
Variety notes there are approximately 22 EGOT holders currently, with the total climbing to 28 when honorary awards from the Big Four are counted. Some holders, including Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Hudson, and Alan Menken, reached the milestone through a Daytime Emmy rather than a Primetime one, a distinction that carries ongoing debate about what qualifies. This year, Steven Spielberg quietly joined the group after it was disclosed he had won a Tony in 2022 as an uncredited producer on A Strange Loop, completing his EGOT with a Grammy win.
Smart herself has seven Emmys across her career, including two as a guest comedy actress on Frasier in 2000 and 2001, and one as supporting comedy actress for Samantha Who? in 2008.
The Primetime Emmy Awards will air September 14.
