My Predictions (And Hopes) For The 2024 Emmy Nominations

Week 1, Part 4: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama

Eight nominees will be in this category. But which eight is the question? Last year all eight were from either The White Lotus or Succession; the previous year Severance was a major player and such stalwarts in this field such as Better Call Saul, The Handmaid’s Tale and This is Us are all ineligible or gone from the airwaves. Only The Morning Show and The Crown, both of which have had multiple nominees in the past are eligible and in the latter case, it will be a different set of actors.

So there will be new faces in this category almost by default. The question is which actors and how many will come from the same shows, considering the Emmys long history of rewarding multiple performers from the same series in these categories. I’m going to make some educated guesses and go out on a limb on some others. Both of the Supporting categories will have a lot of room for error but I think you all know that going in.

Khalid Abdalla, The Crown

The moment we met Dodi in Season Five’s ‘Mou-Mou’ we got a sinking feeling in our stomachs: we knew how this story was going to play out and how tragically it would end. We’ve met numerous tragic characters in the history of The Crown but there have been few we felt genuine pain for: Dodi spend his entire life as an outsider and the only crime he committed was bringing the woman he loved happiness. It is a measure of Abdalla’s work that, like so many other characters we’ve met over the series, we watch him and frequently forget the tragedy fate has in story for him. Elizabeth Debicki has been dominated the Supporting actress prizes leading up to the Emmys and she has always gone out of her way to thank Abdalla for being part of it. Abdalla was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Critics Choice awards last year and he is likely to be on the podium this year.

Tadanobu Asano, Shogun

Even among all the great performances on display in Shogun Asano’s work as Yabushige quickly became one of the more beloved. Part of it is no doubt in a world where everybody kept their cards close to their vests, Asano had the job of being the easiest character to read on the series. His character was also the source of a great deal of entertainment: Yabushige was so desperate to stay alive that he would double cross anyone to save his own skin to the point that Toranaga’s endgame was in part because of his utter faith is Yabushige’s cowardice — a faith that turned out to be rewarded.

And I’ll admit there was a lot of fun to be enjoyed from Asano’s work: Yabushige was always wearing his terror and fear so openly that it became almost comic to watch him react overtime. But there was a sorrow about it to. Yabushige knew every time he did so, he was only extending his life a little longer and by the time he came back, he knew what was coming. He more than deserves a reward for providing so much fun.

Billy Crudup, The Morning Show

Of all the potential nominees in this category Crudup is the only one who has the added benefit of having been nominated — and in fact won — in this category previously. In the first season of The Morning Show, his producer Cory Ellison would win the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in 2020. Crudup is the sole member of the cast who was nominated both years the show was eligible and indeed has more nominations and awards then anyone else in the entire cast. He has been nominated for two Golden Globes for Supporting Actor, has been nominated by the SAG awards every year he has been eligible and has won two Critics Choice Awards in this category. Indeed, earlier this year his victory in a category that Matthew MacFayden had been winning everywhere else came as a shock even to him.

It’s a certainty that Crudup will be nominated this year and he ranks as the overwhelming frontrunner right now, mainly because nothing succeeds like success. Whether he will be the sole nominee in this category or he will be joined by his co-stars is an open question: right now Jon Hamm’s odds are improving and Mark Duplass has been nominated in this category before. But its hard to deny the certainty. He’ll probably break into song

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Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Found

The more I watched Gosselaar work in Found I knew this was a performance that deserved awards. Yes I know that Found is a network drama and we all know what the Emmys think of those. But don’t kid yourself if Found had debuted on a streaming or cable service, the Emmy chatter for Gosselaar’s work as Sir would have become within days of its debut.

Because the character of Sir is one for the ages. He’s already one of the great villains of the last decade, someone so deranged and monstrous that you find yourself wondering how he could ever passed as normal. Then as the flashbacks go back further and further into he and Gabi’s shared past, you see just how Gabi fell under his spell and just how he managed to make it pass in his life. When we contrast with the scenes in Gabi’s basement where we see the captor held captive, we see not only how things have changed but how they haven’t. We see as much as how Gabi feels she has taken back power from the man who took her humanity Sir never makes her forget that she as much a monster as him. She spent the entire season denying it and she can’t pretend it anymore.

And when you contrast it with Gosselaar entire previous career on TV — going all the way back to Saved by The Bell — it is impossible to argue that this is a performance for the ages. I have no illusions that the odds for Gosselaar receiving an Emmy nomination are far from possible but I don’t care. He’s earned it and he should win.

Nathan Lane, The Gilded Age

Just like everywhere else, Nathan Lane has been in television forever. As you’d expect when Peak TV became a thing, his roles increased and his range became superb. He had a brilliant mix of comedy and drama as Clarke Hayden on The Good Wife for two brilliant seasons, played F. Lee Bailey in The People V. O.J. Simpson and Pepper on Modern Family. But his track record with the Emmys was terrible in twenty years, he received six nominations for Guest Actor and didn’t win one.

Then in the past few years his luck changed. He finally earned his Emmy for playing Teddy Dimas in an extraordinary mix of comedy and drama in Only Murders in the Building. And then he took on a different kind of eccentric as Ward McCallister, the society insider who Bertha Russell has been leaning on so extensively in The Gilded Age. There are so many Broadway legends working in Gilded Age it’s hard to note whose work is the best among them, but just like McCallister himself, you can’t ignore Lane’s extraordinary work.

Lane has been moving up steadily in this category at Gold Derby. He’s now ranked sixth. I fully acknowledge that there are many great supporting acting performances deserving of recognition — Michael Cerveris work this year was a sad and redeeming performance. But Lane is the most likely and in a way the most worthy.

Jack Lowden, Slow Horses

When you’re working with some of the greatest actors today, you have to up your game. When one of your main jobs is to mix a measure of utter disgust for your boss’ table manners and admiration for his cunning, it’s even harder. And in addition to all that, you have to be the action hero in a show when everyone else is safe behind the scenes. Those are just some of the reasons I have loved watching Jack Lowden’s brilliant work as River Cartwright on Slow Horses the red-headed stepchild (both literally and figuratively) of the Park and Slough House: River is still too wet behind the ears to know what he doesn’t know and even after three seasons, still too far behind the manipulations going on around him. He has begun to trust Jackson Lamb more than he wants to admit but is still chafing at the lack of trust anyone has in him. He deeply wants respect in a unit where there is none given within or without and its not clear if he realizes he’ll ever get it.

However respect for Lowden, as with Slow Horses, is rising in the estimation of awards shows. He has been nominated twice for the BAFTA TV award in this category, and this year was the only acting nod. He’s slowly climbing in the ranks of nominees of Gold Derby, currently ranked seventh. I suspect if he gets in, he’ll be in for awhile and he’s earned it.

Jonathan Pryce, The Crown

It seemed a certainty going into the leadup for the Emmy nominations last year that Jonathan Pryce would receive a Supporting Actor nod for his brilliant work as Prince Philip. He had already been nominated for a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice Award in that category and received another nomination from the Astras. Furthermore, his predecessors in this role, Matt Smith and Tobias Menzies has each received nominations from the Emmys as well, with Menzies prevailing. And then the nominations came and like everyone who didn’t have the fortune to star in an HBO series, Pryce was left on the outside in. There were numerous egregious oversights in this category — particularly John Lithgow and Giancarlo Esposito and Jonathan Banks — but Pryce was the most inexplicable to me.

In the final year of The Crown Pryce’s chances would seem to be infinitely better (though the fact he was ignored by the Critics Choice does give me brief pause) But like West, Pryce is more than overdue recognition for any form of award, considering he has been one of the greatest actors in British history for nearly forty years. His guest work in River Cartwright’s grandfather in Slow Horses demonstrate his versatility as a performer as well. I’m not saying Pryce will end up taking the prize, but he is definitely going to be there.

Bradley Whitford, Parish

Among the eight nominees I’m pushing Whitford has less of a chance than anyone but Gosselaar. That said, I’m hoping that his past history with the Emmys going back to The West Wing might be enough to put him over the top.

Few question that Bradley Whitford is one of the most gifted television performers in history. He’s one of the few actors who have earned Emmys for playing roles in three different TV shows: most famously for The West Wing and The Handmaid’s Tale; less well known for his brilliant turn in Transparent. And those are just his most famous roles: he was by far the best thing about the disastrous show Happyish, the original Red John in The Mentalist and has done good work in so many mixtures of genres from Studio 60 to The Good Guys to Trophy Wife. So it should count for a lot to say I’ve never seen him play a role quite like Anton, the ruthless New Orleans crime lord in Parish, Gray’s former boss who is willing to hold his family hostage with a hurt tone, who outmaneuvers the crime family that Gray has been working for and who thinks he holds the upper hand over the next attorney general — until Gray destroys him.

Whitford’s track record with the Emmys is great already, so I’ll be fine if he’s passed over. But I think he deserves yet another nomination for another of the great shows he done.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Boyd Holbrook, Justified: City Primeval

There are criminals and there are villains. And then there’s Clement Mansell who Elmore Leonard christened “The Oklahoma Wildman.” For decades Leonard fans have been waiting to see Mansell recreated. Then came City Primeval and they — and TV viewers — got what they’d been looking for.

Justified has seen some of the greatest villains in the history of Peak TV but Raylan has never had to deal with one more absolutely terrifying then a man who thinks rules are just a made-up word, that people only exist in his world only to be killed or manipulated, and that the law is something that applies to everyone but him. Few scenes have been more terrifying then when Raylan walks into a hotel lobby to see his teenage daughter sitting next to the man he’s already suspects of multiple murders and who seems to want him to make his classic move of drawing — because he knows he can win.

There were great supporting performances in City Primeval and I would be fine if Vondie Curtis-Hall got a nomination. But my heart belongs to Holbrook in this series. Like all fans of Justified, we all loved getting Wild with him.

Tomorrow I wrap up this part of my recap by dealing with my picks for Supporting Actress.