My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year’s Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Part 4

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES/TV MOVIE

As I said, much as I admire some of the actors in it, I refuse to acknowledge any performers from The Regime in this category. It is very likely that there will be at least one nominee from Fargo and True Detective in this category but there is no guarantee my choice will be the one that the Emmys choose. Considering the level of talent in the Supporting cast of each, I won’t be irritated if they are ignored for another choice. The remainder of my selections with one exception will stick close the heavy favorites in this category. I’m going to go for seven nominees because that’s how many there were in this category the last two years.

Jonathan Bailey, Fellow Travelers

Of all the potential nominees Bailey is the only one who already has an award to his credit, having taken the Supporting Actor prize from the Critics Choice Awards earlier this year. Aside from the fact that technically speaking Bailey is a co-lead rather than supporting performer there is absolutely no reason why he should not be the frontrunner in this category

Bailey’s work as Tim had by far the biggest arc in the entire series. Starting out as a Catholic and true believer in McCarthyism as well as a complete innocent, we see his character fall under the influence of Hawk’s cynicism early on but somehow manage to remain true to himself in a way Hawk can’t. As he moves away from McCarthy’s spell, he remains an increased activist, first as the counterculture and then becoming fully devoted to gay rights. When the series begins Tim is suffering from the final stages of AIDS but he is more alive than Hawk ever was throughout his career. The most moving moment for Bailey occurs at the end of the series when he acknowledges to Hawk: “I have loved you my whole life” and is a bolder declaration than any of the many erotic scenes we’ve seen between them during the series. I really would love if Bailey were the winner in this category, despite the bigger names.

Robert Downey, Jr. The Sympathizer

There’s an excellent chance that Robert Downey will become the first actor to win an Oscar and an Emmy in the same year and there are few combinations of work that show his versatility then the subtle nuances of Levi Strauss in Oppenheimer and the four different performances he gives throughout The Sympathizer. Not since the work of Alec Guiness and Peter Sellers has anyone tried something akin to Downey’s work in this film, playing a CIA agent, a leftist professor, a hard-right congressman and a Hollywood auteur, all of whom the Captain encounters at various times (and in one brilliant scene, all at once) and all of whom represent different phases of what Vietnam meant to Americans as opposed to the Vietnamese.

Of course as we see all four portrayals regard the Captain with variations of the same kind of bigotry, all trying to use him for his own end, all unaware (and in most cases, uncaring) of the lies he is telling the world and himself. But it isn’t until the final episode that Downey takes on a fifth role and in it we understand that everything Downey has done is not just an excuse to show off his acting chops but has a far darker meaning.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago Downey was a heavy favorite for an Emmy for his one-season stint in Ally McBeal before he was upset by his co-star. I have a strong feeling Hollywood will rectify this mistake this year and it is both the right time and for absolutely the right kind of work.

John Hawkes, True Detective: Night Country

Even if John Hawkes had never appeared on Peak TV, he’d definitely be one of the greatest character actors who ever lived. As part of Peak TV, he’s been one of the greatest forces and that was true even before he launched to the front of our perception as Sol Star in Deadwood in 2003, one of the few characters in the entire series with a pure moral compass. So great a performer is he that in the aftermath of Season 6 co-creator Damon Lindelof mourned that the Temple story line had ‘wasted John Hawkes.” Hawkes has continued to show his range in the brilliant comedy Eastbound & Down and a stint on one of the best episodes of Inside Amy Schumer. But not since recreating his role in Deadwood: The Movie has he been back on television. And as Hank Prior, it was worth the wait.

There were many problems I had with Night Country but the bullying former husband of Sheriff Danvers, trying to put his foot on everything that happened including the behavior of his son, was far from one of them. Hawkes is well known for playing malevolence in so many of his best films but he’s never gotten a chance to do so on TV before and he did so the same way he does everything: perfectly and understated.

I don’t know what I find more appalling that in Hawkes’s career he has only one Oscar nomination to his credit or that he’s never been nominated for an Emmy. At the very least the Emmys owes him a nomination for this show.

Jake Lacy, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial/Apples Never Fall

Of the nominees I’ve listed here, Lacy is by far one of the longest shots of the entire group. That strikes me as very odd, not only because he was nominated two years ago for his work in The White Lotus but he gave two very different performances that showed how far he was from the spoiled millionaire who dueled with Armand for supremacy in the first season.

In The Caine Mutiny, he took on the role of Lt. Maryk on trial for his actions and the impetus for what happens. Spending much of the first half essentially in the background and silent, Lacy moment comes in the second act when he describes in detail every action Queeg took that made him believe he was crazy. Far more telling his work in the cross-examination where the viewer sees just how over his head he was intellectually and is cut down to size, doggedly sticking to his principles but looking like he’s been wrecked when he leaves the stand.

His work as Troy seemed closer to his work in The White Lotus, an arrogant elder son who looks down at so many people. But like everyone else in the series, we quickly see how much trauma is buried beneath it and how that has led him to be self-destructive throughout his life and how it plays out in the series. There is a clear redemptive arc to him we haven’t seen before and honestly his previous work hadn’t let us see.

Either of these performances would have been enough to win him a nomination and perhaps he will get recognition for both from the Astras next week. He is an extreme dark horse for a nomination but both performances showcase why he is a superb actor.

Lewis Pullman, Lessons in Chemistry

For all of the subtle brilliance of Lewis Pullman as Calvin, I only recently learned that he is the son of one of my favorite character actors of all time, Bill Pullman. Given everything we saw in his stint this past year, it’s clear that he’s already got the abilities his father did.

Calvin is a basically a savant who has great mental genius and horrible personal behavior. He is tolerated at Hastings because of the former but not much more than Elizabeth because of her gender. The relationship they form is one first of necessity, then minds, and finally hearts. When he kisses her it comes as first a shock, then a delight. Calvin is willing to put himself before the woman he loves at all time and clearly sees her as his superior — and when he dies tragically in the second episode, it is a blow to the audience who hadn’t read the book. I had a sense it was coming but I hoped against hope.

Pullman has been nominated for a Critics Choice Award in this category, though he lost to Bailey in January. He’s almost certain to be nominated but will likely lose to Robert Downey, Jr. This is, sadly, the fate his father has endured in his longer career when it comes to awards and I hope that Lewis will have as long and productive career as Bill already has. This performance demonstrates the strong likelihood of that.

Sam Spruell, Fargo

It is the nature of Fargo that it always has an extraordinary supporting cast of background players in every incarnation. In the first three seasons, it managed at least one nominee in this category and in its fourth, it should have had at least one as well. And we have a multitude of brilliant supporting performances to recognize, from Joe Keery’s incompetent son of Roy Tillman to Lamone Morris’s noble deputy to Dave Foley’s dryly hysterical attorney. All are worthy of nominations and I would be more than fine if one or more were.

But I’m going to advocate for one of the less well-known actors who played arguably the most critical supporting role in the entire series. We’ve frequently had mystical elements in Fargo but we’ve never had a character who embodied all the strange elements the same way that Sam Spruell’s Mr. Wrench did. Starting out as just the kind of thug sent to get Dot, he became as much of an adversary to both sides as anyone else — and then we learned that he was a conceivably immortal soul-eater who seems to have spent centuries searching out recompense. It says a lot about Hawley’s work that not only does the viewer not question this, but it never comes up in any interaction of the characters.

Spruell didn’t have as much emotional range as many of his co-stars on this series, which makes the power of his work all the more remarkable. And there’s something profound about this show that the final moments showed his fate and ended not in darkness — as almost every season has — but something resembling happiness. It’s the kind of thing deserving of a nomination.

Treat Williams, Capote Vs. The Swans

One of the great tragedies unfolded when Treat Williams passed away in a tragic motorcycle accident earlier this year. There is a strong possibility that he would have earned an Emmy nomination for what will be his final television performance as Bill Paley the head of CBS and the cheating husband of Babe in Capote. But now, just as Ray Liotta’s work in Black Bird last year was ensure of a nomination in this category because of his untimely death, Williams’ work is a lock.

And indeed his work reminded us what a great performer we lost as he plays Bill, the husband who feels the most betrayed by Truman’s actions in Feud, who goes out of his way to tend to his wife when she is diagnosed with cancer — but still has an affair with one of her closest friends — and who in her final days engages in a knockdown argument with his wife about all the failures in their marriage and as parents. He stands firm in making sure Truman can’t attend the funeral, but at the wake women are circling him.

Just as Liotta was, Williams was by far one of our most underappreciated character actors almost never getting recognition for the incredible work he did in film and television in his more than four decade career. His role is somewhat larger than the one Liotta had, but it is no less as dominating and a fitting tribute to one of our great performers.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Eliot Sumner, Ripley

I suppose I should be advocating for Johnny Flynn here but I’m not going to lie. Of the incredible cast in this show, Sumner stole every scene they were in during his brief stint on Ripley.

Sumner, I should probably mention is non-binary according to his imdb.com page. That is fairly clear in their work as Freddie Miles, where for much of their performance I honestly wondered if the writers had swapped genders for this character. In all honesty, this ambiguity perfectly fits the nature of Ripley where so much of the sexuality of many of the characters is in flux. Sumner had relatively few scenes (if you’ve read the original book or seen the film, you know why) but every moment he was onscreen I couldn’t take my eyes of them. And considering almost all of those scenes were with Andrew Scott, that should tell you of how good a performer he is.

Sumner is taking on big shoes of their own: on the silver screen, this character was played by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman. In a different film review, a critic said that it was from that film on Hoffman had demonstrated his ability to steal a film from any actor or actress, no matter how great a performer onscreen. Sumner is known more for music than performing — this is one of the first significant roles they’ve had in movies or TV — but they demonstrates the gift that Hoffman had in the movies and I think it deserves recognition here.

Tomorrow I will wrap everything up with Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series/TV Movie.