This year's Primetime Emmy nominees for outstanding documentary or nonfiction special are dominated by celebrity profiles, prompting Variety's awards columnist to question why the category has become so star-studded and how it relates to competing documentary honours across the Television Academy and News & Documentary Emmys. Of the five nominees, only "Ocean With David Attenborough" does not centre on a celebrity subject, continuing a trend that has seen every winner since 2022 be a biographical documentary.

The nominees include dual profiles of Canadian comedy duo John Candy and Martin Short ("John Candy, I Like Me" and "Marty, Life Is Short"), Mariska Hargitay's documentary about her mother, "My Mom Jayne", and two films about centenarians: "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!" and Attenborough's ocean documentary. The article also highlights confusion between the Television Academy's two separate documentary categories – the celebrity-heavy "outstanding documentary or nonfiction special" and the more socially focused "exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking" – as well as overlap with the New York-based National Academy of TV Arts & Sciences' 24-category News & Documentary Emmys, with TV Academy VP of awards Julie Shore explaining how filmmakers decide where to submit.