Egyptian-American actor Ramy Youssef on Tuesday was nominated for the Best Actor in a Comedy category of the 72nd Emmy Awards for his role in his TV series Ramy.
Youssef will be competing with veterans Michael Douglas from The Kominsky Method, Eugene Levy from Schitt's Creek and Don Cheadle from Black Monday.
The coronavirus pandemic has altered the awards season, pushing the campaigns and events online.
Comedian Leslie Jones hosted the nomination announcement with help from Laverne Cox, Josh Gad and Tatiana Maslany, all of whom appeared on webcast.
Jimmy Kimmel will host this year’s Emmy awards ceremony, set to air on ABC on September 20.
It is not yet clear what the format will be, given the limits on large gatherings imposed by Covid-19.
Netflix earned the most Emmy nominations of any network, beating HBO for the second time in three years and signaling the growing power of streaming in the TV industry.
Watchmen, the HBO drama inspired by Alan Moore's comic-book series about ageing superheroes, had the most nominations among individual shows, with 26, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences said.
The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, a comedy on Amazon's Prime Video, had 20.
The other shows that picked up the most nominations were the second season of HBO's hit drama Succession and the Dan and Eugene Levy-created sitcom Schitt's Creek.
A diversity of programs buoyed Netflix, which set an Emmy record with 160 nominations.
Ozark, a gritty crime drama, earned the most nominations of any Netflix show with 18. It was one of 10 programmes that captured at least five nominations for the streamer.
The nominations for TV’s best programming have become an annual race between the fast-growing Netflix and AT&T’s HBO network, which is regarded as the network for serious drama.
The academy has given Netflix hundreds of nominations over the past few years, but it has yet to win the top prizes, including Best Drama, Comedy or Miniseries.
While the Emmys are not as popular as the Oscars or Grammys, the annual awards show still provides excellent promotion for nominees and winners.
The nominations have also reflected the longer-term shift from broadcast networks to cable and now to streaming.
Six of the 16 most-nominated networks were streaming services, led by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Walt Disney’s Hulu.
Newer entrants Disney+, Apple TV+ and Quibi all earned their first nominations, including 15 for The Mandalorian, the Star Wars series from Disney+ that has been the biggest hit from any of the new streaming services.
Walt Disney earned the second-most nominations of any corporation thanks to its ownership of Disney+, Hulu, ABC, FX Networks, NatGeo, ESPN and the Disney Channel. It came second only to Netflix.
Streaming services over the past few years have spent tens of millions of dollars in pursuit of awards that can entice new customers to subscribe.
No one has chased Emmys quite like Netflix, which sends elaborate and expensive mail-outs of DVDs to academy members, and hosts weeks of screenings and promotional events to charm the voters.