By Daniel D'Addario

This Emmy cycle has set a striking new standard for inclusivity.

Broad and deep in the acting categories, LGBTQIA performers have been honored by the Television Academy. Previous nominees like Bowen Yang ("Saturday Night Live"), Hannah Einbinder ("Hacks") and Ayo Edebiri ("The Bear") are joined by debutants like Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer ("Fellow Travelers"), Andrew Scott ("Ripley") and Lily Gladstone ("Under the Bridge"). Three stars of "Baby Reindeer" — Richard Gadd, a bisexual; Jessica Gunning, a lesbian; and Nava Mau, a trans woman — are nominated. And Gunning and Mau join Gladstone, who uses they/them pronouns, and "True Detective: Night Country" star Kali Reis, who identifies as two-spirit, in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series. Reis' co-star Jodie Foster is also nominated, as are real-life couple Holland Taylor ("The Morning Show") and Sarah Paulson ("Mr. and Mrs. Smith"). Variety's Clayton Davis notes that Taylor and Paulson are the first queer couple to be nominated for an acting Emmy in the same year.

The list could go on and on — and yet it’s less interesting in and of itself than the circumstances that made it possible. Several of these actors are nominated not only for being openly queer actors, but also for roles that embrace and connect with their identities and that tap into queer storytelling. Einbinder, for example, is a bisexual woman playing a bisexual woman — and her “Hacks” character, Ava, spent the third season figuring out what she wanted in love and in her career. (Her relationship with a politically conservative golfer, played by Christina Hendricks, made for one of the season’s funniest scenes, as Ava realizes there are places she won’t go for lust.)