What Makes A Supporting Role? Meditations on How The Emmys Has Made Questionable Decisions on The Subject
Part 1: Looking at Drama, Or What Does Pedro Pascal Do Now?
On the season premiere of The Last of Us Pedro Pascal seemed to immediately shoot up to frontrunner status in the already overcrowded Best Lead Actor in a Drama category. This Sunday his character Joel Miller met his end that managed to stun even those who knew the source material.
It now raises a question for the Emmys: does that mean that Pascal is still eligible for Best Actor in a Drama? According to newly established rules by the Emmys he is not eligible in the Guest Actor category. And while Pascal is still scheduled to make appearances in the rest of Season 2, it’s no longer clear if he will still be eligible for lead or supporting.
Pascal himself has seen how this can play out. When he received his first Emmy nomination for Best Actor in 2023, three of his competitors were from Succession. One of them Kieran Culkin had been nominated twice before in the Best Supporting Actor category and had lost both times, the latter to co-star Matthew MacFayden. In what was the final season both Culkin and Sarah Snook chose to go from submitting in the supporting categories (where both had been nominated and won other awards though not the Emmys the previous year) and compete as lead. This led to the ‘mock feud’ between Pascal and Culkin that took up much of awards season in the early months of 2024. Culkin would take the Emmy, the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice Award, while Pascal would win the SAG Award and the HCA Awards.
Now the shoe’s on the other foot and Pascal has the same options. We saw this exact scenario play out in the final season of Succession. After Logan Roy’s equally stunning death in the third episode Brian Cox nevertheless chose to submit his name for consideration in the Best Actor category where he had been nominated twice before and lost both times. He might have had an easier chance had he done so in Supporting Actor but he went with Lead and lost to Culkin. (The first time he was nominated, he ended up losing to Jeremy Strong who always competed in Best Lead Actor.)
This conundrum will no doubt be playing out in the weeks and months leading up to the nominations and considering my complicated history with the Emmys I feel qualified to weigh in on the subject. But rather then relitigate some of my biggest grievances with this over the years — which include not just Succession but series like Handmaid’s Tale and Game of Thrones — I think a fairer way to do it would be with series that are among my personal favorites over the years but where I’ve found some of the nominations and even wins questionable.
This involves a lot of material so I’m going to limit it strictly to dramas during the 21st century. And I’ll start at the beginning, at least for me.
During the first two seasons of The West Wing Allison Janney was nominated for and won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama. Then in 2002 she decided to submit in the Outstanding Lead Actress category from that point forward.
This decision always puzzled me. Janney was the most prominent female character on The West Wing and it never quite gelled with me that she and Stockard Channing, who was in a guest role for the first two seasons, were competing in the same category. But that didn’t change the fact that in the 2001–2002 season Janney’s role was no more prominent than it had been the previous two. Calling her a lead actress was something of a stretch, compared to Jennifer Garner who was nominated that same year for Alias and who Janney defeated in what was a shock even to her. Janney would take a more front-and-center role in the last two seasons of the show but by that point the new showrunners had begun to focus their attention far more on the race to succeed Jed Bartlet in the White House so it didn’t change that much. And even if one was willing to call her screentime increased it was never at the level of Edie Falco in The Sopranos or future winners like Mariska Hargitay or Patricia Arquette.
And it’s worth noting none of Janney’s other co-stars, such as Bradley Whitford or John Spencer, ever chose to move into the lead category afterwards. That said the year Janney won there was another nominee in the category whose presence also seemed questionable to me.
That year Six Feet Under defeated The West Wing at the Golden Globes and Rachel Griffiths received the Best Supporting Actress prize, defeating Janney among many others. Griffiths’ work as Brenda had launched the Australian actress to prominence among American audiences and many considered her a shoo-in for an Emmy. Yet that year she submitted her name in consideration for Outstanding Lead Actress alongside Frances Conroy. Had she submitted for Supporting Actress in a Drama, she most likely would have won: three of the nominees were from The West Wing. (Channing won that year.) Griffiths would do so the following year and be nominated but by that point her character was far less of a presence and her best chance at an Emmy was gone. She has been nominated twice more since but has never won.
The next biggest puzzlement came, appropriately, with Mad Men which somehow seems to have won too many Emmys and not nearly enough. I’m not convinced it should have won all four of its Best Drama awards but I think we can all agree the Emmys really cheated it when it came to acting. Jon Hamm was the only actor who ever won an Emmy (and that was in the final season) but that is hardly the oddest part.
In 2009 Elisabeth Moss received her first Emmy nomination for Best Actress in a Drama for Peggy. It was a very crowded category that year so I didn’t object when Glenn Close won her second consecutive Emmy for Damages. In 2010 the Emmy nominations came out and it was a different, albeit stronger field for Actress in a Drama and there was a nominee from Mad Men — but it was January Jones.
For the first and only time in her career Moss chose to submit her name for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama. That meant she was competing against co-star Christina Hendricks, who like Jones had been nominated for the first time. Perhaps she thought she’d have a better chance in a weaker field except the field for Supporting Actress in a Drama was, as it had basically been for the last decade and always has been, incredibly strong. She would lose to Archie Panjabi, who deservedly won for The Good Wife.
So the next year Moss decided to submit her name for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama. Didn’t work, she lost to Juliana Margulies for The Good Wife. And her co-star Hendricks lost to Margo Martindale for Justified. Neither Moss nor Hendricks ever won in this category while they were in Mad Men. Moss lost to Margulies twice and Claire Danes for Homeland twice (no argument there) Hendricks never won at all, losing to Anna Gunn for Breaking Bad twice. (No argument there either.) And poor Jones was never nominated again at all. Really the Emmys did poorly by all three women, though honestly the field was always tough.
Now I find myself dealing with This Is Us which is one of the great shows of all time and where I generally thought the Emmys did a fair decent job nominated, if not awarding over the years. Honestly for nominations for Best Drama and four Emmys is pretty good in an era that was owned by both Game of Thrones, Succession and The Crown (I’ll be dealing with the latter). That said in hindsight some of the nominations are strange.
It made a lot of sense for Mandy Moore to be nominated for Best Actress: after all Rebecca was the only character who played by the same performer in all three timelines. And it was logical to see Chris Sullivan nominated for Supporting Actor. But it never made much sense that Sterling K. Brown received all his nominations (and win) as Lead Actor in a Drama and Chrissy Metz who was his sister was nominated as Best Supporting Actress in 2018. She was part of the Big Three as much as Brown was, why was Randall a lead and she was Supporting? (Justin Hartley was never nominated for an Emmy but he was nominated four times for Supporting Actor by the Critics Choice Awards so we can assume he did so with the Emmys as well.)
And as much as I loved Milo Ventimiglia’s work as Jack, it never really made sense that he received three consecutive Best LEAD Actor in a Drama nominations. I don’t deny his character always cast the biggest shadow over the Pearson clan but it’s a different case then Moore who was in every time period. Perhaps if he had submitted for Supporting Actor in a Drama he might have been able to win. Honestly I would have preferred more wins for This is Us anyway.
This brings me to the final series I had issues with and that’s The Crown. The Emmys to be clear got almost completely right: I can’t argue with the 24 wins which in an era dominated by Game of Thrones during the first two seasons and Succession during its second half is astonishing. And I agree with every single acting award it won during its run. (Well except Claire Foy’s Emmy for Best Guest Actress but all the rest.) John Lithgow and Gillian Anderson more than earned there’s, ditto Foy’s first Emmy and Colman’s and Debicki and Menzies more than deserved there’s. That being said, I have some issues.
When Josh O’Connor was nominated for Best Actor in a Drama in the leadup to 2021 Emmys I was somewhat bothered by this as to that point I had considered Elizabeth the focus of the show and that Prince Charles was a supporting character. In hindsight that was my error; during the second half of the series Charles began to take a more prominent role as heir to the throne and Peter Morgan was choosing to put his character more upfront as an equal to Elizabeth. In the final two seasons Dominic West’s presence as Best Actor was right.
The bigger problem, however, came with Emma Corrin during this period. And no I’m not talking about them identifying as non-binary (which, for the record, Corrin didn’t make clear until after the 2021 Emmys were given) My issue was with Corrin being nominated as a lead against Colman. At no point during the series was Diana ever considered a lead the same way that either Elizabeth or Charles was and Corrin’s winning so many awards in the Best Actress category in the lead-up to the Emmys was a huge blunder. That’s the reason I was thrilled that Colman ended up winning that year. I don’t know if that was Corrin’s decision or not but their successor in the role of Diana, Elizabeth Debicki knew where her role was: both of her Emmy nominations and her win last year were in Supporting Actress.
Over the last couple of years I’ve had my own questions about some of the potential nominated dramas. Yellowjackets, which I will be supporting for nominees in the months to come, has always put me in a quandary. Melanie Lynskey has always been nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama but now that I think about it, she faces some of the issues that really every performer in the cast does. With the show split in two timelines what counts as a lead role and what’s supporting? Other award shows have done nothing to clarify this: Christina Ricci has been nominated for Supporting Actress and Lynskey has been nominated as a lead even though they more or less have the same amount of screen time every season.
The 2023 Astras, which I relied on the most for so many things, didn’t clear things up. Juliette Lewis was nominated for Best Actress for playing Natalie as an adult but Sophie Thatcher was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing Natalie as a teenager. Christina Ricci was nominated for Best Supporting Actress even though she appeared in every episode whereas Lauren Ambrose was nominated though she only appeared in six. And Elijah Wood, who wasn’t even a regular, was nominated as Supporting Actor in a Drama. This is the opposite of helpful.
And this year’s nominations haven’t exactly illuminated things in certain categories. In 2023 Rufus Sewell was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work as Hal Wyler in The Diplomat by the Critics’ Choice Awards. This year he has been nominated as Best Actor in a Drama by the Critics’ Choice Awards. (He lost both times by the way.) Even with Pascal’s presence questionable, this is already a category filled with formidable contenders so Sewell may very well want to consider submitting for Outstanding Supporting Actor this time around.
I don’t pretend to be the final arbiter on what makes a lead performance and what makes a supporting performance. A lot of the times the series make it very clear and in many of the major nominees for drama I expect it to be (Slow Horses, Severance, The Day of the Jackal) But in some series which are truly ensembles it’s a grey area and it always causes headaches. (I suspect this is the problem the actors in Game of Thrones had to deal with and that House of the Dragon will face the same issues.)
We’ll have to wait and see to figure out what Pascal chooses to do. But this is a complex matter and I intend to revisit it again for both comedies and ensembles the closer we get to nominations. This isn’t an issue that can be resolved either easily or even at all. But it is a question that television is going to have to reckon in with more and more and it’s good that the Emmys are trying to set some guidelines, however arbitrary some may seem to be.