Cate Blanchett leads the Australian contingent in this year’s Emmy nominations, with a leading actress nod for her role in the AppleTV+ thriller Disclaimer.

Also nominated in the same category are Meghann Fahy (Sirens), Rashida Jones (Black Mirror), Cristin Milioti (The Penguin), and Michelle Williams (Dying For Sex).

Crime drama The Penguin and psychological thriller Severance stacked up the most nominations when TV’s Emmy Award nominations were released early on Wednesday (Australian time), outpacing strong showings for The Studio and The White Lotus.

Apple TV+’s Severance got 27 nominations, including for the top prize of best drama alongside shows such as Andor, The Pitt and The White Lotus.

HBO’s The Penguin, set in the DC Comics universe and starring Colin Farrell, has 24. It will compete for best limited series against Netflix hit Adolescence, among others.

Hollywood satire The Studio, an Apple TV+ show featuring Seth Rogen as a nervous film executive, and HBO’s The White Lotus, about murder and misdeeds at a luxury resort, received 23 each.

“What the heck?!! We never thought this would happen,” Rogen said on Tuesday (US time).

Other Australians in the running for an Emmy when they are announced in Los Angeles in September are director Shannon Murphy for an episode of Dying for Sex, Zoë White for her work on documentary Will & Harper (Netflix) and Cian O’Clery for an episode of Love on the Spectrum US (Netflix).

Comedy nominees included defending champion Hacks, previous winner The Bear, Nobody Wants This and Abbott Elementary.

The 23 nominations for The Studio tied the record for a comedy in a single season, set last year by Chicago restaurant tale The Bear.

The television industry is undergoing a contraction as media companies curtail the sky-high spending as they tried to compete in the shift to streaming platforms led by Netflix.

Long-time Emmy favourite HBO and the HBO Max streaming service topped all programmers with 142 nominations, a record for the network.

Walt Disney collected 137 nominations, including six for Abbott Elementary, one of the few broadcast shows in the Emmy mix. Andor, on Disney+, received 14.

Netflix garnered 120 nods and Apple scored 81, its highest total since launching its streaming service in 2019.

Severance tells the story of office workers who undergo a procedure to make them forget their home life at work, and vice versa.

Star Adam Scott, a best actor nominee, said the cast was unsure how viewers would respond.

“The fact that it’s resonated at all has been just such an incredible feeling,” he said.

“We thought it was something that might be too weird.”

Noah Wyle received his first Emmy nomination since 1999 for his role as an emergency room doctor on The Pitt. Wyle was nominated five times for ER but never won.

“I’m humbled and grateful,” Wyle said of the recognition for The Pitt, which has 13 nominations in all.

Harrison Ford, 83, earned his first Emmy nod, for playing a grumpy therapist on Shrinking.

Ron Howard, the former Happy Days star turned Oscar-winning director, also landed his first acting nomination, a guest actor nod for playing himself on The Studio. He will compete with fellow director Martin Scorsese, also a guest star on the show.

Other notable acting nominees included Farrell and Cristin Milioti for The Penguin, The Bear actors Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, Hacks stars Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, Kathy Bates for Matlock and Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey for The Last of Us.

Eight White Lotus actors were recognised.

“This is a bunch of cherries on the icing on the cake that was the gift of playing such a tortured and lonely human,” said Jason Isaacs, who portrayed a suicidal father facing financial ruin on the show.

Beyonce also made the Emmys list. Her half-time performance during a National Football League game on Netflix was nominated for best live variety special.

Missing from the field was Netflix’s popular Korean drama Squid Game, while the final season of previous drama winner The Handmaid’s Tale received just one nod.

Winners will be chosen by the roughly 26,000 performers, directors, producers and other members of the Television Academy.

-with AAP