OUTSTANDING LEAD
ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES/TV MOVIE
I’m not sure how
many actors will be nominated in this category. I’m told the limits five but I
know that was last year and I’m inclined to think given the level of candidates
they might go as high as six. So that’s how high I’m going to go. The first
five are not going to come as a shock to anybody, the sixth might be able to
get in on the boom for a TV movie. I’ll explain why when I get there.
Matt Bomer, Fellow
Travelers
Matt Bomer has
been one of the great actors of Peak TV for more than twenty years, as good in
light roles such as White Collar and heavier fare such as The Sinner.
But his work in Fellow Travelers is at an entirely different level
and has been acknowledged as much since the awards season began: Bomer has been
nominated for a Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award and a SAG award in this
category and it has been one of the top performances in all of 2023.
In his work as
Hawk, a closeted gay man working in McCarthy era DC, Bomer’s performance was described
as that of a ‘gay Don Draper’. And that was dead on. (Interesting that he will
almost certainly be competing against the real Don Draper as we will see
below.) Hawk was in a sexual predator, hiding in the shadows, constantly having
clandestine affairs (albeit with men) and always proud to be the alpha male.
The affair he had with Tim was clearly one he considering more for his benefits
than Tim’s but as the show continued it was clearly much deeper. Hawk spent his
entire life in the shadows, marrying, fathering children and is a grandfather
when the series begins. He believes in the front so much he thinks it fools
everybody but by the end of the series, it’s clear that the only person he
fooled was himself. At the end of the series when he stands by the patch on the
AIDS quilt that has Tim’s name on it and says to his daughter: “This was the
man I loved” it is a moment of great sorrow and triumph.
Almost all of
the favorites in this category are either openly gay or spend the show dealing
with their sexuality. Bomer’s arc is by far the most tragic and always the more
life-affirming.
Richard Gadd, Baby
Reindeer
Gadd bares a
heavier burden than almost everyone in this category: not only did he write the
story that this series is based on, he lived a version of every detail of it. I
can’t begin to think how painful this must have been for him to tell his story
for all to see, but based solely what we see from Donny in this series it must
have been horrible.
In a sense Gadd
is playing himself, or at least a version of it, in Baby Reindeer and
while you’d think this would be too easy, it’s clear every moment onscreen and
every detail he reveals to us both in dialogue and narration how absolutely hard
this was for him. We watch every detail of Donny’s life unfold so painfully
that the viewer forgets (and given certain aspects that have happened
afterward) how traumatic this must have been for him to go through. This is
clear as the sequences with Martha unfold, but it takes on a new level when we
learn what happened to him with Foley. By the time he unravels in the monologue
he delivers as a comedy special in the penultimate episode, the viewer has
forgotten he’ll emerge from this alive, if not unscathed: he believes so thoroughly
in what will happen next that we do too.
Gadd has been
rising in the odds for this category since Baby Reindeer debuted and he
may very well end up the winner. In a category filled with some of the
strongest performance of the entire season, that is a tribute to his work.
Jon Hamm, Fargo
Mad Men ended in 2015
but Jon Hamm has never really gone away from television: we’ve seen him play
critical roles in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, he keeps reappearing on SNL
and Curb Your Enthusiasm and he showed up on Good Omens. But in
2023 he made a spectacular return. He is a heavy favorite for a Supporting
Actor nomination for his work in The Morning Show and has basically been
the frontrunner for his work in Season 5 of Fargo since it debuted this
past November.
His work as Roy
Tillman is in a sense the greatest performance we’ve seen him give: his entire career
in Peak TV has been playing characters who are morally ambiguous at best but he’s
never gotten a chance to play a character so unequivocally evil as Roy Tillman.
This would have been a chance for Hamm to chew the scenery (many of the best performances on Fargo from
Billy Bob Thornton to Timothy Olyphant have done so) but if anything Hamm
chooses to underplay his character’s evil with a subtlety in his dialogue which
is so quiet that when he reacts in violence (as he frequently does) it comes with
such shock as to totally unnerve the most hardened viewer of the show after
nearly a decade of watching in.
Considering the
series was set as close to the present day as we have seen it, we could see so
much of the MAGA movement in every aspect of Tillman’s character: his believe
in what is right and what is wrong, as opposed to legal and illegal, the right
of the Biblical and family governing his doctrine, control of a militia. The
fact that all of this was taking place during his run for reelection could have
been a bridge too far but it wasn’t. And like so many characters in Fargo there
was no justice meted out for his character at the end: he’ll pay for his crimes
but not the way we hope.
All of the
nominees more than deserve to win in this category and it’s hard to justifiably
pick Hamm over any of the others. I may change my mind by the time the
nominations come out, but I would be fine if he ended up taking another Emmy.
Tom Hollander, Feud:
Capote Vs. The Swans
Tom Hollander played
perhaps the only major character in all of the second season of The White
Lotus who didn’t get an Emmy nomination last year. (Despite being
the main reason ‘the gays were going to murder Jennifer Coolidge’) It would be easy
to draw a line between his character there and Truman Capote in the second
installment of Feud – indeed, most of the action follows based on the
idea he ‘murdered’ one of the Swans he wrote about and at one point he is told
that it is his job to finish Answered Prayers to finish off destroying
the world his Swans lived in.
But of course
that would undersell everything Hollander does as Capote, one of the most
famous writers and characters in history. He’s been portrayed on film numerous
times, most famously by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role that won him his
Academy Award so you would think there’s be nothing to say about him or new to
be learned. It is a tribute to Hollander that we find ourselves constantly in a
state of contradiction. In the first half of the series, we consider him the
villain of the story, the deceiver, the drunkard, the manipulator of all that
happens around him. And then in the second half, our sympathies are reversed as
we see another side of Capote, the failed writer, the aging man in a changing
society and most of all a gay man in a world that doesn’t welcome him. We see
Capote die twice in this series, and each time we are reminded of horrible it
is. Hollander is the center of one of the best shows of 2024 and fully deserves
a nomination.
Andrew Scott, Ripley
Scott, if
anything, is stepping into bigger shoes than Hollander is the character of Tom
Ripley has been played by some of the greatest actors in history, including
John Malkovich and most famously Matt Damon. Considering all we know about the
roles Scott played in his past and his own connection to it, many (including
myself) thought he was born to play one of the first villains to head his own
series of mystery novels as well as one who has a clear homosexual undertone.
To be clear
Scott’s work is magnificent particularly as he has chosen to play it in a way
unlike previous portrayers have and the way we have come to know Scott’s best
work. So much of Tom is done is silence, studying himself, trying to imitate behavior,
acting in self-restrain, always watching everything he does and around him.
Like the entire series, it is a triumph in minimalism, not usually the kind of
thing the Emmys recognize but in the case of Scott, it is absolutely impossible
to look away from.
Kiefer
Sutherland, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial
I didn’t delve
into the TV Movie category because it’s not one I generally do. It is likely
that The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial will be among the contenders, along
with Mr. Monks Last Case and The Great Lillian Hall. However with
the coming of Peak Limited Series the TV movie has increasingly become less
important in the nominations for acting and it is likely that it will happen
here.
Sutherland may
very well prove the exception to the rule: he was nominated for Best Actor in
this category by the Critics Choice Awards and his previous history with the
Emmys due to his work as Jack Bauer might be enough to get him invited. But
watching his work in a role that has been played most famously by Humphrey
Bogart (though not in the same context) I was reminded of how brilliant a
performer Sutherland is. He has taken one of the most iconic roles in Hollywood
history played by perhaps its most iconic actor and turned it into something
entirely new. Like so much about the adaptation, Sutherland’s work has nuances
and layers that have been lost in so many versions over the years and in what
is a filmed stage play Sutherland finds a way to command so much action as he
did on 24.
I don’t know
what the chances are of Caine Mutiny winning this award or even being
nominated. But Sutherland deserves a nomination, I kid you not.
FOR YOUR
CONSIDERATION
Sam Neill, Apples
Never Fall
There are many
names I could have chosen for this – Ho Xaunde for The Sympathizer and Clive
Owen for Monsieur Spade were major contenders – but I settled on Sam
Neill for many reasons (and just to be clear, the state of his health is not
one of them)
Neill’s work as
Stan Delaney, the patriarch of the clan who becomes the chief suspect in the
disappearance of his wife, is one of the more difficult roles I saw in one of
the more brilliant series I saw all last year. He had to play a character whose
public perception was one thing, a different thing to each of his children and
someone whose behavior could be ambiguous enough to be guilty in the eyes of
the viewer but still leave room for the doubt. By the penultimate episode of
the show, even having read the book and known the truth about it, I will still
not certain of Stan’s guilt. Part of that may have been because I wasn’t sure
what changes the writers had in mind, but much of that was due to the work of
Neill. He has always been one of our most underappreciated actors despite being
in some of our most famous films and he deserves recognition here.
Tomorrow I’ll handle
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series/TV Movie. There might be a
slight deviation from the likely nominees here.
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