Jean Smart has won the lead comedy actress Emmy for every eligible season of HBO Max’s “Hacks,” capturing awards in 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2025. The series concludes after its fifth season, and Smart has been nominated once more. A fifth consecutive victory would mark an unprecedented achievement in Emmy history for a female performer, as no woman has previously won in an acting category for every season of a series.
A victory would enhance Smart’s legacy considerably. The win would grant her eighth career Emmy, tying her with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Cloris Leachman for the second most acting Emmys won by a female performer. Louis-Dreyfus came close to achieving a similar feat, winning six Emmys across the seven-season run of “Veep” but falling short of perfection. Supporting drama actress nominee Allison Janney for “The Diplomat” could also reach this tier with a win, currently tied with Smart and Mary Tyler Moore.
Zendaya pursues a comparable historic milestone with “Euphoria,” having won lead drama actress for the show’s first two seasons in 2020 and 2022, becoming the youngest two-time Emmy winner in history. She now seeks a third consecutive win following the show’s extended hiatus, competing against notable contenders including Rhea Seehorn for “Pluribus” and Keri Russell for “The Diplomat.”
Historically, such perfection in Emmy voting remains extraordinarily rare. Bill Cosby remains the only performer to win an acting Emmy for every season of a scripted series lasting at least three seasons, sweeping “I Spy” from 1966 through 1968. A victory by either Smart or Zendaya would end a drought spanning nearly six decades and represent the first woman to achieve this distinction. The difficulty of maintaining both a show’s quality and relevance while fending off changing competition across multiple award cycles helps explain why such streaks rarely occur.
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