EW – Though its yearly crop of nominees tends to skew more commercial than the Oscars’ or Golden Globes’, MTV’s annual Hollywood awards show has proven, once again, its finger is pressed firmly on the pulse of pop culture, recognizing a wealth of diversity across both film and television categories among its 2017 class.
For the first time in its 25-year history, the MTV Movie & TV Awards — previously known simply as the MTV Movie Awards — has expanded the scope of its categories to include titles like Netflix’s Stranger Things, NBC’s This Is Us, FX’s Atlanta, and VH1’s RuPaul’s Drag Race — each of which scored major notices among the ceremony’s inaugural set of TV honorees.
While television performers have been integrated into pre-existing categories like Best Villain (where the likes of — spoiler alert — Get Out star Allison Williams goes head-to-head with Demogorgon from Stranger Things), Best Comedic Performance, and Best Kiss, among others, several new brackets make their debut this year, including Show of the Year (Atlanta and Insecure square off against This Is Us, Game of Thrones, Pretty Little Liars, and Stranger Things), Best Host (LGBT icons RuPaul and Ellen DeGeneres vs. Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, and John Oliver), and an individual television acting set that includes Donald Glover (Atlanta), Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin), Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Walking Dead), Mandy Moore (This Is Us), and Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things).
Also new for 2017 is the Next Generation award, which will be given to a breakout media star. Nominees include actress Chrissy Metz (This Is Us), actor Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Insecure writer-actress-creator Issa Rae, The Night Of star Riz Ahmed, and Blackish performer Yara Shahidi.
