My Predictions (And Hopes) For the 2024 Emmy Nominations, Conclusion

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES

As I wrap this up I would like to give a shout out to the many more than qualified eligible candidates that will likely be ignored. These include both Calista Flockhart and Demi Moore for Capote Vs. The Swans, Sandra Oh for The Sympathizer and Amanda Peet for his balanced work in Fellow Travelers. I hope that the Astras has room for some of you next week and part of me would be fine if any of you were listed by chance.

As with before I’m going to go to seven nominations in this category. They include some of the most undervalued character actresses in recent years as well as some of the better performances in all of the last year. Here are my choices.

Dakota Fanning, Ripley

Having seen Talented Mr. Ripley I think one of the biggest improvements is how Marge has grown out in the Netflix adaptations. For all of Gwynneth Paltrow’s talent, the film didn’t utilize her to her best ability. Steven Zaillian has found a better way to use Marge.

Fanning takes on an intriguing portrayal: she cares for Dickie’s wellbeing probably more than he does and is the warning sign for Tom’s problems before he gets there. Marge is clearly more suspicious almost from the start to Tom’s actions and it’s clear over the next few episodes that she’s spending as much time fawning over him as she is lying to herself in the letters she writes that show a far different reality. Paltrow’s Marge seemed horrified by both men; in Fanning’s portrayal you get a sense of devotion to Dickie that was clearly never returned. In this sense we see the tragedy of Tom’s actions far more visibly in Marge than any previous version.

I had little use for Elle Fanning’s nominations for The Great the past few years even though I admired her work in other films. Her sister clearly has a much darker role to play in her first major TV role and it’s more than worthy of a nomination.

Jessica Gunning, Baby Reindeer

Gunning had one of the most difficult roles to play of all the nominees in this category. As Martha, the overweight, emotionally disturbed and psychotic woman who makes Donny’s life an intractable hell she had to not only play every aspect of this character but also play someone who could appear harmless when necessary, appear psychotically disturbed on a moments moment, be by far a dangerous threat and ultimately turn out to be as broken as Donny was. And had she made a single misstep in her work, there’s a very good chance the entire series could have failed. Gunning handled all of this with remarkable aplomb and continued to show an incredible pathos in so much of the time she was onscreen. And considering that whenever she was off, Martha might very well be more danger when she wasn’t, her presence was always looming over it. Much of Gunning’s best work was done in recordings and voiceovers, particularly in the critical final episode.

It’s the sad nature of how social media worked that despite all of Gadd’s best intentions, not only did the world that Donny’s side but track down the real Martha and publicly vilify her the way that they have always taken the most complex stories across the world and turned them into purely binary. This is unfair both to the fiction and the real Martha, who Gadd makes very clear in the final episodes was just as much a tragic figure as she was a monster and a victim of the same system the way he was. It may not be viewed as a tragic performance but no one will deny it was a master class.

Aja Naomi King, Lessons in Chemistry

Aja Naomi King was a very known quantity to me for her work in How to Get Away With Murder and I was inclined to hold that against her before watching Lessons in Chemistry. Needless to say she was the biggest revelation of the entire series.

Harriet Sloane is initially more important to the story because of what she means to Calvin then the main action. Then in the aftermath of his tragic death she slowly becomes essential to Elizabeth’s life and two women who would otherwise never become a friend or even relate form a bond that takes them both through an incredible tragedy. Harriet is even more of an outsider than Elizabeth is and as we see, just as much determined to disrupt though even louder. This is particularly significant in the era she lives: if white women were invisible, African-American women weren’t — but they no doubt longed for it at times. Harriet never considers being invisible and her boldness is an inspiration.

King is one of the only names in this category who has any success in the end of year awards: she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress by both the Critics’ Choice Awards and the Image Awards. She more than deserves a corresponding Emmy nomination.

Diane Lane, Capote Vs. The Swans

Like almost all the actresses in the series, Diane Lane has been one of the more undervalued actresses for more than four decades. In addition to a peerless film career, she has been involved in some of the most remarkable television, from Lonesome Dove to a constant career in TV movies to the controversial final season of House of Cards to Y:The Last Man. Her work as Slim Keith wasn’t even the only Limited Series she was a part of this year: she also played Martha in the Netflix Adaptation of A Man In Full.

But her work as Slim Keith featured by far some of the best work she has done in any medium since her role in Trumbo nearly a decade ago. As the wife who takes the offensive to ‘starve’ Truman after the excerpt of Answered Prayers appears in Esquire she remains the most determined to destroy him over the years. Her righteousness, like all the other characters, is revealed to be hypocrisy, both in her affair with Babe’s husband even as he dies from cancer and after we learn of her own horrid behavior towards so many of the women she was defending. It’s a riveting performance.

Lane has been nominated twice for Emmys before, for both Lonesome Dove and her work in the HBO film Cinema Verite but just as with the Oscars, she has never one. There are countless great performances by her co-stars in this category but hers is one of the most deserving. It’s unclear where she’ll finish in the Emmys this year, but she would be a more than deserving winner.

Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fargo

The mother of critical darlings. Leigh has been winning critics awards for her entire career from the moment she walked on to the national consciousness in Miami Blues. She is the queen of character actresses and independent films. But for now let’s focus on her career in television, which is if anything, nearly as impressive. She’s been involved in Weeds, Revenge and Twin Peaks. Her work as Patrick Melrose’s mother deserved an Emmy nomination. She had one of the lead roles in atypical, played Julianne Moore’s sister in Lisey’s Story and starred in the second season of Hunters. And now the mother of all character actresses plays the mother of all mothers in Fargo.

Leigh, when the occasion calls for it can chew the scenery as well as anybody — it’s sometimes been a thing that works against her. As Lorraine, the gun-toting billionaire whose made a fortune on the debts of other people she clearly is having the time of her life in a way that none of the other characters are. She is hysterical every moment she’s on screen, whether she’s ordering her family to pose with AK’s in a Christmas Card picture (taken in October) telling her attorney to slap her son, proud of not only her white privilege but disdainful of those who say she should be softer. Season 5 of Fargo would be brilliant just for Leigh’s character alone.

There are a lot of great performers but I’m not going to lie. I want to Leigh win. Despite all of the incredible performances in her long career with have won her so many critics groups awards she has one Oscar nomination to her credit. It might seem ridiculous to consider her the sentimental favorite in this category (considering the character she plays would consider sentiment something for the weak!) but I want to see her up there. I really would.

Kali Reis, True Detective: Night Country

Kali Reis was unique to any of the partners investigating a crime in True Detective: it wasn’t just that Danvers’s was Navarro’s superior officer, a power imbalance we’ve yet to see on the show; it was that she had to spend all of her time performing along side one of the greatest actresses in history and not only be as good as her onscreen but be more dominant at times. It is a credit to the skill of Reis that she was able to do all of that in Night Country.

I’ll be honest: there were aspects of both female characters that I found lacking; both Navarro and Danvers’s were, for all intents and purposes, just the female equivalent of so many of the male detectives we’ve seen over the last three years; sleeping with whoever they want, having a very different philosophical difference. And the fact is, much of Reis’s work involved the woo-woo aspect of the show that I have always found the most lacking for the entire anthology series. But taken purely as a standard of acting, it was as powerful as some of the best and bigger names that have been a part of the series over the years and at least as worthy of Emmy nominations as any of the previous ones. I’ll debate whether either she or Foster deserve to win when the nominations come out, but I’m not going to pretend neither deserves to be there.

Chloe Sevigny, Capote Vs. The Swans

Chloe Sevigny has spent nearly as much of her career in TV as she has in movies. Her work in Big Love was one of the best performances in an underrated show, and while she didn’t receive even an Emmy nomination, she did receive a Golden Globe. She has been working more in TV than movies ever since in a wide range, from a recurring role on Portlandia and The Mindy Project a lead role in the thriller Those Who Kill, constantly working in American Horror Story, such prestige series as Bloodline, Russian Doll and The Act. And yet despite that, she has yet to earn a single Emmy nomination. It will be very hard to justify excluding her for her work as Slim Keith on Capote Vs. the Swans though it would hardly stun be if the Emmys found a way.

Watching Sevigny play the restrained society wife I was reminded — as if I ever needed reminding — how versatile a performer Sevigny is. This is the same actress who in recent years played the drugged out mother of Nadia in a flashback in Season 2 of Russian Doll and played the head of a one-hit wonder rock band in Poker Face with the same aplomb. Here a slightly older Slim has the same frailties as all the other characters but is also aware of her beauty and trying to recapture both her youth as well as the dying fall of New York society around her. She remains the closest to Truman after his exile, the only one to stay in contact with him, the one who tells him that Babe is dead, who hears the eulogy to her he’ll never deliver. It’s perhaps the most supporting performance in the show and its brilliant. I don’t know if Sevigny can get a nomination but as with all her work she has earned it.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Allison Brie, Apples Never Fall

If it were up to be I would have listed Brie above some of the more likely candidates: I honestly believe her work deserves recognition more than Fanning or even Reis. But the sad truth is, it has been the fate of this brilliant performer to have worked in some of the best television of the last fifteen years, from Community to GLOW, and see her show or her colleagues be nominated and herself ignored. Considering how much GLOW was loved and the Emmys shutout of her personally, I see little chance of her getting recognized for a limited series that is almost certain to be ignored by the Emmys.

But it’s one of the highlights of the show all the same. Brie has managed to play much of her career portraying characters who are professionally put together if personally flawed. Amy is the Delaney child who has been the biggest mess her entire life, pitied by her siblings, unable to find a path. In that sense Brie was the biggest revelation of Apples not just in showing someone completely broken but as someone who has a hidden strength that none of her family expected and a belief in herself that she didn’t know she had until the series was nearly over. It was a funny and moving performance, both of which are Brie’s sweet spots.

Paradoxically while I’ve listed other performers from Apples as my favorites among nominees then some of the more likely candidates, I think Brie’s work is the most worthy of a trophy of the cast. But I’m realistic enough to know it is likely the Emmys will never recognize her for anything she does, though like Amy herself, I keep hoping for the best.

Well, that’s it. Next week, I will be dealing with the final parts of Phase 3 of the Emmy watching, including the Astra 2024 nominations which will be coming out Tuesday. Those of you who follow my blog know that this is by far my favorite awards show of the year when it comes to both nominations and awards. I look forward to that even more than the Emmy nominations themselves.