My Predictions (And Hopes) For the 2024 Emmy Nominations, Week 1 Conclusion

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

Just as with everything regarding drama, this category will be filled almost entirely with new faces. Unlike all previous categories the end-of-year awards shows have given us a clear front-runner who is almost certain to win the Emmy this year.

As is frequently the case, the Supporting Actress category will be filled with some of the greatest character actresses working today. Most of the selections I make are already heavy favorites for nominations but there are two critical underdogs that I’m going to pull for here. Here are my choices.

Christine Baranski, The Gilded Age

Has there been a performer who has done more to stride the era of Peak TV more than Christine Baranski — and walked away with so little recognition? She was Leonard’s mother on Big Bang Theory, played Diane Lockhart for seven seasons on The Good Wife and six more on The Good Fight. And yet somehow she still only has the single Emmy she got for her work on Cybil before all that even began. She received six consecutive Emmy nominations for The Good Wife and didn’t win a single one (in fairness, she lost twice to Anna Gunn, once to Archie Panjabi and once to Margo Martindale for Justified and there were many other brilliant performers in each category, so it’s hard to blame the Emmys). Like the rest of the cast of The Good Fight she couldn’t buy an Emmy nomination and that’s another travesty.

One can’t exactly call Agnes the role of a lifetime for a performers who’s played some of the most iconic characters in TV history but it’s clearly the meatiest role. Her scowl and the way she delivers some of the most incredible putdowns I’ve heard any character say, the way she looks down on progress as if she will be driven kicking and screaming, makes her hysterical. But there is a heart beneath that exterior: we see in her interactions with Peggy at a time when most women didn’t consider those kind of people human, her affection for her nephew and the way she clearly wants the best for her family, even if she can’t show it. The moment she appeared at Ada’s wedding was one of the most moving moments of all of the 2023 and her treatment of her sister in the aftermath profound. It is clearly her time to win an Emmy, and if it doesn’t happen this year, well, this role guarantees she will.

Elizabeth Debicki, The Crown

Debicki was the outlier in the end of year TV awards, the one performer from a series that would be eligible for this year’s Emmys to dominate the remaining awards. She took the Supporting Actress in a Drama prize from the Golden Globes and The Critics Choice and was stunned when she ended up taking the Best Female Performance prize over Sarah Snook in Succession. Now she is the overwhelming front-runner for the Emmy for her work in The Crown and its hard to argue she hasn’t earned it.

Debicki was the sole actor from The Crown to earn an Emmy nomination last year and while critics were divided over whether the quality has dropped in the last two seasons, no one has argued over the caliber of Debicki’s work as Princess Diana. Her role in Season 6 was, by necessity, much briefer than last year and much of it is clouded over the fact of her final episode when she appeared as a spirit to both Elizabeth and Charles, a trick that many considered a cheat by Morgan. But few could argue that Debicki’s work is unworthy of a prize. Over the last two seasons, it has become increasingly clear that Morgan has been showing how fundamentally outmoded the institution of the monarchy is; so broken it corrupts every element within it. Diana was the clearest victim of it as early as Season 4 and in the final season we see the tragedy of it. Morgan covered this ground before, of course, but it didn’t resonate quite the same way as here.

Debicki has deserved recognition from the Emmys since her brilliant work in The Night Manager and like so many others in the cast, she more than deserves to go out with a win.

Aunjanue Ellis, Justified: City Primeval

I honestly think Ellis-Taylor would have a far better chance of earning a nomination had she not classified herself as an actress rather than a supporting actress. I can see why she would: she was nominated for a Critics Choice Award as Best Actress, but I think her chances would improve if she is included here.

Because no one who saw City Primeval can deny her work as Carolyn Wilder was the heart of the limited series. We saw early on she was in a situation she absolutely didn’t want to be in, but she was as ruthless in the courtroom as Raylan and Boyd were on the street. And it was a bold mood of the show to cast Ellis in this role, considering that Justified has never had the best record with African-American characters in the original show. Wilder serves as the counterargument to everything fans have been rooting for when she tells Raylan: “Not all of us can’t get angry the same way!” and there’s volumes in that truly makes us wonder at something that — truthfully — fans like myself didn’t think of watching the original series.

Ellis-Taylor has over the last few years become one of the most sought after actresses in TV and film and I want her to get nominated. This category might seem like a demotion, but it would give her the recognition she deserved.

Moeka Hoshi, Shogun

A revolutionary thing about Shogun was how dynamic and active so many of the female characters were. It may therefore seem counterintuitive to argue for a nomination for Hoshi, whose Fuji seemed by far the most frail in the entire series.

But Hoshi, like the character she played, was always capable of surprise. Her husband and son were forced to kill themselves in seppuku at the start of the series and she spent so much of it wanting to join them. She was persuaded to serve as Blackthorne’s consort, a role she didn’t relish even at the start. But one of the nicer elements of this series was watching the friendship build between the two: the way Blackthorne grew to gradually respect this woman and turn to her in a way he couldn’t really even turn to anybody. In the final scenes when Blackthorne tells her Fuji will be ‘good nun’ and then helps her dispose of the ashes of her son and husband, there’s a humanity to it that is missing from much of the brilliance of the final episode.

There are more brilliant performances in Shogun but Hoshi’s character had the most positive arc of all of them. You saw a woman who spent much of the series wanting only to die end it with a reason to live. That itself goes against much of what we see in Peak TV.

Lesley Manville, The Crown

Princess Margaret has been the most tragic character that The Crown has shown us over its six seasons, someone who became a victim of ‘the system’ early and has been declining ever since. It has been a measure of the series that with each incarnation Morgan has cast an actor who is more detached from it. In the first two seasons Vanessa Kirby played a vibrant Margaret who lost the man she loved and married someone unworthy of her. In the next two, Helena Bonham-Carter brilliantly played an increasingly jaded Margaret as her second marriage imploded, her problems with alcohol became harder to hide, and she began to increasingly fall apart. By the end of Season 4, she knew just how much this system destroyed the family but was unable to leave it.

Now in the final two seasons, the brilliant character actress Lesley Manville played Margaret as someone who can barely even be a figurehead. The alcohol glass is always prominent, she can barely be allowed to pose for pictures, and its clear to everyone that she’s basically a living statue. Manville has spent the last two seasons showing us go into her inevitable decline and collapse, which was more sad that Diana’s death because it comes as a tragedy of a live that has been lived in service to a system that destroyed her and gave her nothing in return.

In another year Manville would be the front-runner for the Emmy in this category. But just as in life, it has been the fate of those who portray Margaret to be overlooked for a brighter sun in the category: Vanessa Kirby lost her only Emmy nomination to Thandiwe Newton in Westworld and Bonham-Carter lost most famously to Gillian Anderson for her extraordinary performance as Margaret Thatcher. But those who watch Manville can’t forget Margaret even though so much of our world has.

Cynthia Nixon, The Gilded Age

It’s conceivable so much of the political controversy that has surrounded Nixon, particularly over the past year, may cause the Emmys to pause before they nominate her in this category. There’s no other reason she might be overlooked on the caliber of her work.

Like all the actresses on this show, Nixon is extraordinary but while all of the other female characters are so dynamic they cut a swath through the scenery, Ada has spent her life in the shadow of her sister to the point that she almost seems an afterthought. This is a testament to Nixon, who has made a history of playing dynamic characters going back to her iconic work on Sex and the City, that we completely believe her as Ada. In the second season she found love in the most unexpected of places — an Episcopal minister from Boston (perhaps Robert Sean Leonard can earn a Guest Actor nomination?) and they had a whirlwind romance that led to superb work. Ada doubted the possibility she could ever find happiness, was terrified to leave Agnes, and on her wedding day was moved when she showed up. Then of course came the tragedy that followed and she lost the man she loved before she even got to know him. And most wonderfully in the final episode we saw the wonderful possibility of a reversal of power that all fans of Ada look forward to in Season 3.

I have issues with Nixon’s politics myself but I’ve always been able to separate that from the performers and Nixon deserves a nomination.

Kristen Scott Thomas, Slow Horses

For thirty years it has been the fate of Kristen Scott-Thomas to be the bridesmaid and never the bride. Now as Diana Taverner, the ice queen of ‘The Park’ she has the kind of role made for her.

As I mentioned in an earlier review of the show, I don’t know how long its been since there’s been a character on Peak TV that ‘I Loved To Hate’. But Thomas’s work as ‘Lady Di’ clearly merits it. She is the living example of the Peter Principle, proof that meritocracy plays second fiddle to being a political animal. This is scary enough to see at a corporate level; it’s been appalling to see it done for a woman who wants to be in charge of Britain’s security almost entirely for a political point, not because she’s good at it or even cares for the nation’s security that much.

She spent much of Season 3 struggling for control of MI5 (I haven’t finished the season so I don’t know how it yet ends). I’d hope that it would end with her being made humble but given the nature of the show, she’ll probably end up being Home Secretary by the time it ends. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a huge amount of fun to watch her turn up her nose at everybody and every single encounter she has with Gary Oldman. She will get a nomination, probably the prize itself someday and she deserves it — even if Taverner doesn’t.

Sonja Sohn, Will Trent

And speaking of bad ass bosses, let’s close out my predictions with what of the baddest on the block: Sonja Sohn’s incredible work as Amanda Wagner on Will Trent. I’m grateful that the writers have softened Amanda just enough to make her likable; if her character was like the one in the book, the viewer would hate her as much everyone in Slaughter’s series does.

Through Sohn’s work this season we’ve seen softer sides of her — as well as a deeply flawed side, when we learned that she reacted to an assault on her by framing her attacker her for possession and putting him in prison for thirty years. She’s also had to deal with the fallout from her decision to hide the identity of Will’s parents from him in the first season and we’ve been watching this play out over the season. We also have watched her blunder so many times with Faith, whose relationship has always been problematic, and tried to build a relationship with Angie — only to have it explode. In the last moment of Season 2, we saw an Amanda who looked shaken in a way we haven’t before and its credit to Sohn that it was completely believable.

Ever since she burst on to the scene in her iconic role as Kima Greggs on The Wire, Sohn has deserved some kind of recognition from the Emmys. This isn’t quite as revolutionary a role but it is a brilliant one and it deserves a nomination at least.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Saskia Reeves, Slow Horses

Much of the cast of Slow Horses will deservedly earn nominations this year. But it is unlikely that Reeves’s work as Catherine Standish will do so, at least this year.

That makes a certain amount of sense: we spend so much of the show thinking that Standish is just a doddy matron there to clean up Lamb’s liquor bottles and keep the other screwups in line. But every episode or so we see just how deadly competent she is at her job compared to so many of the younger forces and indeed her own boss. This season marking a turning point in their relationship as she finally learned the truth of Parkhurst’s death, an action that helped bring her to Slough House and that she’s been carrying for decades. It was a stark moment for a character whose always seemed so frail and we’re terrified of what happens next.

Reeves has been one of the most overlooked British Actresses in history (I’ve written about her work before in a far different context) and I think its time she gets recognition.

That’s it for Drama. Next week I start on comedy, where I actually can speak with more certainty than this category.