Ariana Madix found out she’d landed her first Emmy nomination the way most people dread getting news at 4:30 a.m.: a ringing hotel phone. The “Love Island USA” host was asleep in Fiji, where she’s filming the show’s eighth season, when her team called to tell her the Television Academy had nominated her for outstanding host for a reality or reality competition program. She hung up, drifted back to sleep and briefly wondered if she’d dreamed it.
She hadn’t. Madix now competes for the trophy against a field stacked with genre royalty: RuPaul Charles of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Alan Cumming of “The Traitors,” Kristen Kish of “Top Chef” and Jeff Probst of “Survivor.” Cumming has won the category the past two years running. Before him, RuPaul held it for eight consecutive years. Probst claimed the award’s first four editions after the category launched in 2008.
Madix took over “Love Island USA” in 2023 for season six, replacing Sarah Hyland, and the show’s audience has climbed with her at the podium. Season six logged 6.58 billion streaming minutes for Peacock; season seven jumped to 11.4 billion and became the platform’s most-watched original series. Season eight, now airing, opened even bigger, pulling in 824 million minutes across its first three days and 2.3 billion across two weeks, a 50 percent increase over the prior season’s pace, according to Nielsen figures.
Madix built her fan base years earlier on Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules,” where the 2023 “Scandoval” affair storyline turned her into a household name before that show was overhauled with a new cast. She’s said she considers her hosting role part of the machinery behind “Love Island’s” rise rather than its sole engine, crediting a “perfect storm” of factors.
Kish and Madix are both openly queer, meaning four of the five nominees in the category identify as LGBTQ+. The nomination also lands as reality contenders more broadly crowd this year’s Emmy ballot, with “Dancing With the Stars” newly bumping “The Amazing Race” from the competition-series race and Bravo’s “Summer House” breaking into the unstructured reality category.
Madix said seeing her name alongside hosts she considers idols felt surreal. She plans to mark the nomination with sunset drinks at a beach bar near the Fijian villa, and has promised staff there a dance to Zara Larsson’s “Lush Life.”
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The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards will air live on NBC and stream on Peacock September 14. The Creative Arts Emmys precede the ceremony on September 5 and 6.
