Note: According to submission guidelines by the
Emmys there will only be room for five nominees this year. However, given the immense
quality of so many of the actors I've going to argue that there might very well
be some times and expand to six.
Ever since Kyle Chandler won for Friday Night
Lights in 2011, no performer has manage to win consecutive Emmys in this
category. This trend will continue this year as Hiroyuki Sanada is ineligible.
Furthermore there is only one performer from last year who is eligible to be
nominated again in this category, though it is very likely many of the slots
will deservedly be filled from actors from further back in the decade. With that
in mind here are my contenders.
OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Sterling K. Brown, Paradise
Ever since he won Outstanding Supporting Actor in
a Limited Series for his work in The People Vs. O.J. Simpson, Sterling
K. Brown has been one of the most prolific and honored actors this decade. He
has been nominated in almost every major category a male actor can be by the
Emmys and for more different projects than any actor during this same period.
Now he has returned to work with Dan Fogler, the man for which he has earned four
of his Emmy nominations and one Outstanding Lead Actor Emmy when he appeared on
This is Us.
At first glance Xavier Collins, the secret
service who finds that his charge has been murdered might seem to have little
in common with Randall Pierson. And indeed Xavier is more inclined to slow rage
that Randall ever was. But Xavier has that same sense of family, caring for his
two children and mourning the lost of his wife. He has that same sense of integrity
and righteousness that Randall always had and he believes in justice. And there
is that famous line about what parents will do for their children and we see
that Xavier is more than willing to do that and more.
Brown has already been nominated for multiple
awards for his work in Paradise and is deservedly an early front runner.
Could he become the first actor to repeat in this category since Bryan Cranston
managed to do so in 2014 (albeit for a different show) It's going to be hard to
deny it.
Gary Oldman, Slow Horses
It's astonishing that it's taken one of the
greatest actors of all time to finally enter the world of Peak TV, only
slightly less astonishing it took until last year for the Emmys to acknowledge
him for it. But much like Jackson Lamb himself you ignore both him and Slow
Horses at your own peril.
We've spent so much time in the age of the antihero
and villain over the last quarter of a century that's it rare to see an
original character these days. Jackson Lamb has done enough horrible things to
be an antihero but he's tired of doing them and he's also too exhausted to be a
traditional hero. But behind the sloppy, cynical, flatulent, messy exterior
there is a good man there – though he would be the first – and second – to deny
it. Indeed in a world where its more than clear the worst people are running
the agency that's supposed to be England safe, he and his Slow Horses are the
only ones who have a sliver of integrity left as well as the only people who
still give a damn.
Even as the sins of so many of the agents come
back to haunt them Oldman remains impervious to the idea of even bothering to
tell them so. And its such a pleasure to watch the (recently knighted) Oldman
go through life realizing yet again, he has to save the lives of people and
save the city of London even though it's cutting into his time of eating
noodles messily. Oldman will win in this category eventually, if not this year.
But it's going to be fun watching him at the awards circuit again.
Pedro Pascal, The Last of Us
It might be stretching credulity for Pascal to
submit himself as a lead actor this year and not to try and go the safer route
as Best Supporting Actor. After all, his character did get killed in the
second episode of Season 2 and while he was in three episodes and Joel's shadow
was hanging over the entire second season, it may be asking too much. Brian Cox
managed to get away with this same trick in the final season of Succession but
it's didn't result in him winning an Emmy.
Still if you saw the three episodes he was in
this season you know that Pascal absolutely deserves consideration for his
incredible work as Joel. Hell that scene when he was talking to his therapist when
he asked what he did to Ellie and that long pause before he said: "I saved
her" is exactly the kind of thing that Emmys would normally recognize. And
let's not kid ourselves 'Futures Past when we flashed back to Joel and Ellie's relationship at one point
over five different years showed his power just as much and that final scene
between him and Ellie, when he admitted the truth of what he had done – and we
saw the long journey between him and his own father decades ago – was one of
the most powerful episodes of 2025, full stop.
And let's not kid ourselves: this will be the last
time Pascal will be eligible to compete for The Last of Us. The Emmys
has a habit of giving the grand prize to actors either when their show has
ended or their character has died. (Elizabeth Debicki was able to win Best
Supporting Actress for The Crown last year for that very same reason.) Hell,
given how much fun it was to watch him and his mock feud with Kieran Culkin
last year, I'd love to see him go through the same thing with Adam Scott.
Eddie Redmayne, The Day of the Jackal
Redmayne was one of the constant presences in the
end-of-year awards show for his incredible work as the title character in
Peacock's The Day of the Jackal. The show itself was nominated for Best
Drama by the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards and the SAG Awards.
However as so many of the great series of 2025 returned and in fine fettle, the
chances of the show being nominated for Best Drama have faded as well.
It will be much more difficult for the Emmys to
do the same to Redmayne. One of the most gifted actors of the last twenty years
Redmayne has never played a character like this in his career. A chameleon who is
so invisible his very existence has never been found until now, an assassin so
pragmatic he doesn't care why a cabal of industrialists want a powerful tech billionaire
cared as long as he gets paid, a husband and father who has been keeping his
life secret from his family - until the cover
he's told has been irrevocably peeled back.
His work was one of the best TV performances of
2024 and it makes one year for the second season come quickly enough. Day of
the Jackal put Peacock on the map when it came to producing top tier dramas;
Redmayne deserves the nomination as well.
Adam Scott, Severance
A bigger mystery than anything that is going on
at Lumen: why it took the Emmys this long to finally give Adam Scott a
nomination for anything he's done. The brilliant comic mind who played
Ben on Parks & Rec, the genius behind the undervalued comedy Party
Down, the subdued husband of Madeline who has a temper waiting to boil on Big
Little Lies – he should have been nominated or won an Emmy at least once or
twice by now.
Finally in the role of Mark he has managed to
land the role that for any other actor would be the one they'd be remembered
for the most but for Scott just continues to show how versatile he is. As he
tries to deal with the increasing mysteries behind Lumen, as he tries to learn
about what is the difference between his severed life and this one, as he
learns the wife he thought was long dead is not just alive but working at his
very company – and as he seems to choose Hetty over her in the season
finale - Scott reveals why he is and has
always been one of the greatest actors on television this century.
It's likely that he will double dip this year for
his incredible guest spot in another Apple TV show The Studio. As of
this writing he is the current front-runner to win in this category and while there
are others whose performances I think merit it more, I won't deny Scott's
triumph would be a balm to my soul.
Noah Wyle, The Pitt
Nearly as astonishing as Scott being almost
completely skunked by the Emmys until his nomination for Severance is
the fact that Noah Wyle has somehow never won an Emmy either. He was nominated
for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama five times for his most famous role
as John Carter in ER but during the 1990s this was a category that
historically honored veteran character actors rather than relatively young
ones. (With the critical exception of Aaron Paul's three wins for Breaking
Bad that has essentially held true during the 21st century as well.)
Wyle spent much of the 2000s and 2010s working on TNT in Falling Skies and
The Librarian series and now he has returned to the medical drama.
It's tempting to see his character as just Dr.
Carter in an underfunded ER in Pittsburgh rather than Chicago but this time Wyle
is essentially in the same kind of role that Kiefer Sutherland had on 24, trying
to show character development in a series that moves one hour and an episode.
And Wyle is more than willing to show that he is capable of the darker material
that so many of the best actors during this century have had to deal with that
he basically foreswore in favor of more openly heroic characters. He's been
rising in the Emmy odds steadily since The Pitt debuted and he would be
more than worthy of a statue.
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Zahn McLahron, Dark Winds
Even a few years ago when AMC regularly dominated
the drama awards for Mad Men and Better Call Saul, McLahron would
have been a front runner in this category every year. It's tempting to blame
his exclusion on systemic racism but the last decade the Emmys have gotten much
better in this regard, so I'm inclined to believe it has more to do with their
gravitating towards streaming programming in drama than an old standard.
And no one who watched McLahron's work in the
third season of Dark Winds (and there were at least four million of us)
can pretend that his performance isn't the kind of thing worthy of an Emmy. As Leaphorn
spent the season unraveling from the trauma of his actions at the end of Season
2 and faced the possibility of facing punishment for his crimes, McLahron's
usually superb work became extraordinary. The episode where he had been dosed
with a tranquilizer and spent it flashing between a horrible moment from his
past where his sins came to meet him is exactly the kind of episodes that were
nominated and won awards when you saw them on The Sopranos or Lost and
his acting carried it.
I know it is highly unlikely that the Emmys will
recognize him, if for no other reason then there are so many other valid contenders
alongside him. (I could have just as easily mentioned Jeff Bridges for The
Old Man or Ramon Rodriguez for Will Trent.) But AMC is trying its
hardest to submit McLahron for Emmy consideration this year and I'm inclined to
agree that we should give him his Emmy already.
Tomorrow I deal with Outstanding Lead Actress in
A Drama.
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