The 2025 Daytime Emmy Award nominations have been announced, and the What to Watch team has been counting down to the big ceremony on October 17.
Be sure you sign up for our official newsletter, What to Watch Soapbox. We talk spoilers, get into some of our favorite (and least favorite moments from the week) and share some of our honest opinions.
As I personally wait to see who will walk away with some gold hardware when the time comes, I’ve gone through several of the Emmy categories to offer my take on who should win. Previously, I made my arguments for why The Young and the Restless’ Eileen Davidson and Courtney Hope should respectively win for Outstanding Lead Actress and Outstanding Supporting Actress. Now it’s time to tackle the Outstanding Supporting Actor category.
This year’s nominees for Outstanding Supporting Actor are no surprise, as they all delivered an amazing body of work in 2024. Take The Young and the Restless’ Michael Graziadei, for example. Graziadei did a bang-up job portraying a grieving Daniel Romalotti, who was wrestling with difficult emotions after losing the love of his life in Heather Stevens (Vail Bloom). Not only that, the Daniel character had to fight for his freedom after being framed for Heather's murder, and be a supportive father to a daughter who lost her mother.
Days of Our Lives’ Blake Berris was also a standout portraying Everett/Bobby. The dissociative identity disorder storyline usually pushes an actor to dive deep into their reservoir of talent to effectively play different people in the same soap, and Berris didn’t disappoint.
The rest of the supporting actor category this year is rounded out by General Hospital actors, all of whom are no longer present on the canvas of the show yet are incredibly deserving of a win.
First, there’s longtime General Hospital star Jonathan Jackson. Many fans welcomed Jackson’s return to the soap as Lucky Spencer, and he was tied into a few life-or-death scenarios. He popped back on the canvas trying to escape a deadly hostage situation with Sidwell (Carlo Rota), was devastated he couldn’t be the one to save his sister’s life and he became the first person to learn that Kristina (Kate Mansi) tried to kill the love of his life Elizabeth (Rebecca Hearst), who it was also nice to see him reconnect with after all these years.
Gregory Harrison was also exceptional as Gregory Chase in General Hospital. Although his time on the show was brief, I can’t deny how impactful it was watching Harrison’s Gregory Chase struggle with ALS, while making a profound impact on the lives of his family members and friends. His last moments as Gregory Chase, in particular, were tearjerkers.
And as many heartstrings as Harrison pulled on among viewers, I think it will be Tajh Bellow who walks away with the Daytime Emmy this year for his portrayal of TJ Ashford.
Though the powers that be inexplicably phased out the character in the current landscape, the scenes Bellow delivered in 2024 were some of the best of the year as a grieving parent. Not only did he have to show the sadness that comes with losing a child, but he also was forced to show the anger and frustration that comes with learning that had the child survived, his pseudo sister-in-law/surrogate had every intention of keeping the baby.
Adding to Bellow’s remarkable year was the subsequent storyline of having to pick up the pieces of his shattered dream without his partner, Molly (Kristen Vaganos). Bellow gave viewers two versions of heartbreak simultaneously, as Molly essentially was incapable of helping TJ mourn their daughter or being a common-law wife to him.
On a final note, while I would again surmise that Bellow has this locked in the bag, I won’t rule out the small chance that Harrison comes up victorious.
