Have we saved the best for last?
Not really. But this category is the kind I love – no frontrunners, no one with
an award to call them the favorite. Just six incredible actresses, many of whom
I've loved watched for years, if not decades, none of them with a single
previous award and all giving the performances I love.
So here we go.
Linda Cardellini, DTF St. Louis
Ever since she first graced our TV
screens in the still-mourned Freaks & Geeks Linda Cardellini has
been one of the most versatile actresses in 21st TV. It doesn't
matter whether it’s the drama of ER or Mad Men or the dark comedy
of Dead to Me, she is one of our greatest actresses and it’s a crime she
has only received three Emmy nominations to this point.
Her work as Carol Smernitch is one
of the most wonderful performances she's done. We spend much of the series
thinking that she's the femme fatale, the woman pulling the strings of the men
in her orbit, a woman who is neither a good wife or a good mother. The way she
behaves to the detectives, constantly asking them to speak up, makes her seem
like just another bullying femme. And then like her male co-leads we learn that
she's not any of those things. She does want the best for her son; she is
worried about her husband and is
sexually unsatisfied (with good reason) and she even wants to be a good
Little League umpire. All of the secrets she's appears to have are just the
kind of little things we all go about our lives. And the series finale we
realize she does love her husband and her son so much that she's willing to
throw away a financial payoff so that her son doesn't think his stepfather
hated him.
The fact she has to do all this
while doing some of the most bizarre sexual fantasies and much of it completely
deadpan adds a depth to her performance I'm in awe of. She has already been
nominated by the Astras for her work and I expect to see her fighting it like a
tiger (tiger) with the nominees below.
Dakota Fanning, All Her Fault
The Fanning sisters had an
incredible year and its worth noting Dakota started it out far stronger then
Elle. Dakota has been slowly but surely becoming one of the biggest forces in television
over the last few years: this is the third limited series in as many years that
she's appeared in that has been considered for awards and the second where she
certain to be nominated. And Jenny is a
different woman then her interpretation of Margie Greenwood in Ripley: confident
and bold in the world of work but still living in the complicated world of
mother.
Jenny's role is the most different
from Mara's original novel. In adapting it to television Jenny is made a far
bigger working mother, whose life is destroyed when she learns her nanny has
used her to get close to Milo. She reaches out to Marissa against the advice of
everybody and as the series develops the two of them form an unlikely and true
bond as Jenny does everything to get to the center of what happened to Milo.
And she is given a story that parallels Marissa as her husband goes out of the
way to put the burden of caregiving on her now their nanny is gone and then
does his own bit of lying that, while less monstrous then so many around them,
is no less a betrayal.
Her moment in the sun comes in an
incredible monologue in the sixth episode when she learns her husband has been
spending his days watching TikTok When Jenny unloads on him with the ferocity
of how horrible it is to be a both a mother and a breadwinner it is the kind of
speech that is more emotional resonant with any woman in America if not the
world. Jenny is mostly absent from the final two episodes but the fact the
series chooses to end with the two women and their children together is one of
the great things about the entire series.
Fanning finally received her first award nomination
from the Astra this past summer (I'll get to a nominee later below). I'm
beginning to think she's overdue a victory herself and I would be fine if she
took the prize.
Grace Gummer, Love Story
Grace Gummer has been one of the
quiet forces in television in the last decade. She was incredible in her stint
in the criminally under-recognized (by the Emmys) Mr. Robot as an FBI
agent who wants to expose the Dark Army and ends up doing things she never
thought she could do in order to survive. She was superb Claire in the sadly
cancelled too zone Let the Right One in as a scientist who tries to save
her brother from his affliction and becomes as big a monster as he is. Now she
takes on one of the most difficult roles in her career – one that led to
significant controversy because Caroline Kennedy is still alive and was not
happy about it.
But like her mother before her
Grace manages to inhabit the role of a famous member of a family by not trying.
She clearly cares for her brother very much but she thinks he's not being
serious enough. She clearly loves her mother (see below) but she finds it hard
to avoid the questions. When her mother dies the two of them realize that yet
again they have to bare up under tragedy because its their job. And yet during
everything John does she seems more interested in protecting her privacy and
her families and what he does as a reflection of it. She is cold both to her
brother and the few times she and Caroline interact.
But the power comes, as we know it
must, after her brother dies. Once again she finds herself dealing with tragedy
and she spends that time trying not to talk to the people involved. This leads
to one of the most powerful moments in the entire series where she and Mrs.
Bessette are in the same room perhaps for the first time since John and
Carolyn's wedding. In it she tells a story about how it truly feels to live in
a family which seems to be cursed by tragedy and yet keep coming away
surviving. She tries her hardest to reach across a divide that may have been
insurmountable and for the briefest of moments does so. With respect the
real-life Caroline Gummer did more then enough respect to her and her family.
Gummer was nominated for an Astra
Award for her work in Love Story. It's hard to know what her odds are of
winning but the big draw is to see if her acceptance speech would be as good as
her mother's.
Brittany Snow, Beast in Me
Brittany Snow had a great 2025.
First she achieved newfound sexual status for her work in The Hunting Wives and
then she followed it up with a different kind of wife in The Beast in Me. Now
I'd be fine if she was nominated for the former but I'm pretty sure that's not
going to happen so why not nominate her for a performance in which she shows a
side of her we don't see that often: her more dark and dramatic one.
Considering she spends the
overwhelming majority of her time onscreen with two of the greatest actors in
TV today it says something about Snow that her works as the most recent Mrs.
Jarvis that she can hold her own with either of them. She thinks she knows the
secrets of her husband and she's aware of his reputation when we meet her but
she doesn't seem clueless or the other woman. And we also see that she's trying
to find a way for herself beyond being Nile's wife and that ends up making her
be a pawn in so much of what is going on between them, something she chafes at
as much as anybody. There's an inner toughness to her that frequently seems
missing from Danes's Aggie at times as well a nuance and subtlety that Nile can
barely maintain. She's far from innocent in this story but you root for her
despite that.
Snow was nominated ahead of Naomi
Watts by the Astras but her work is more than worthy of the nomination. I don't
know what the odds are of her being picked but I'd be more than fine seeing her
compete.
Callie Spaeny, Beef
Of all the four leads in the
second season of Beef there's a strong argument that Spaeny's Ashley is
the one who is the root cause of everything that follows. We do want to feel
sympathy for her: she needs health insurance; she seems to be on the outs with
her father and Josh does seem to bully her when he confronts her after the
fight. But Ashley also seems to have the worst aspects of every millennial: she
wants to do things through shortcuts, she only thinks of herself ahead of
Austin and when she ends up getting her promotions its clear she has no idea what
she's doing and thinks that because she's blackmailing Josh she should get a
pass from doing the hard work and yet be given more responsibility. Josh and
Lindsey see absolutely no problem in using her to achieve their own ends and
her behavior keeps showing a cluelessness that makes her increasingly hard to
sympathize with even as things spiral. The fact that she and Austin come out
the winners of this just shows how much they are compromised – and there's an
argument that Ashley's learned nothing from this experience at the end of the
series.
In lesser hands this could be a
problem. But Spaeny who in her brief career has a pretty good track record of
playing frail seeming characters with who seem both deep and shallow makes it
sing more often then it doesn't. She'll almost certainly be the youngest
nominee in this category but she's also one of the most deserving.
Naomi Watts, Love Story
Naomi Watts has literally been
here before. Two years ago she was deservedly nominated for Best Actress for
playing an iconic famous wife whose dying of cancer most of the series"
Babe Paley in Capote Vs. The Swan. Now not two years later she's her for
playing perhaps the most famous widow in the 20th century who is
also dying of cancer. But this time it's a role that by this time has been
played by just about every other actress of note, from Katie Holmes to Natalie
Portman. What could Watts add to it, particularly being in just three episodes?
Well because she's Naomi Watts, a
lot. Watts's performance shows Jackie O in a role we never see her as: a
mother. And the thing is, she's not particularly warm to her son. She seems
more interested on what he does in life and more importantly who he's
romantically attached to, as a reflection on the family name and her. You get the feeling she was closer in life to
Caroline and that she seemed perfectly fine to treat anything her son did as
withholding affection or respect, the one thing he craved. Most of what we know
about the lies of Camelot comes from Jackie herself. In scenes with Caroline
(Grace Gummer adds to her increasingly brilliant list of performances) her
daughter asks if she ever wished she'd married another man. Jackie looks at her and tells her that she
was forced to live her mother's dream: "I was supposed to be the most
famous accessory to the most powerful men." She admits she created the
myth of her husband which she could have punctured but chose not to. In what is
a powerful but almost certainly fictionalized sequence when she is taking her
last rites she tells her confessor she wanted to die that day, that she knew of
her husband's indiscretions and a part of her has hated him ever since.
Watts role is considerably less
significant than Gummer's and indeed other female performers in the series,
most notably Constance Zimmer's work as Mrs. Bessette which many could argue
deserves recognition as much, if not more, then Watts. I myself wouldn't object
if that were to happen. But Watts has been one of our most underrated actresses
in any medium for even longer then the rest of them and while I don't per se
think she was robbed two years ago all the arguments I made for her then apply
now. I mean, why should her husband keep getting all the awards?
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Sophia Lillis, All Her Fault
When the Critics Choice Awards
nominated Lillis for her work as Josie, the nanny who abducts Milo at the start
of the series it might have seemed like an odd choice to choose her over such
prominent names as Dakota Fanning and Molly Gordon. And relatively speaking
Josie's role is smaller than the more prominent supporting nominees.
But you can't take your eyes of
Lillis whenever she's on the screen. We see her watching TV from far away, we
see her trying to take care of Milo, we know that her mother knows what she's
up to but isn't telling the truth. And when Milo is returned to the Irvine with
three episodes to go in the series we think her character's done – until she
shows up at the Irvine home with a gun. Then in the penultima episode we see
the story from her perspective and we realize she is the biggest victim
of them all, the daughter of parents who didn't love her, suffering from a
mental condition that has troubled her from birth, seeing her boyfriend go to
prison, believing her son is dead – and then finding out that he's not. To this
point we've been led to believe she's the crazy one, suffering from the worst
kinds of delusion. It's only in the final minutes of the penultimate episode –
and in the final scenes of the last one – that we realize she is the sanest one
of the bunch and horribly ends up the victim of the man who destroyed her
entire life. It is a tragic story.
It's nearly certain that Fanning
will be nominated in this category and she deserves to be. But Lillis deserves
recognition as much, if not more then her. In a sense the title refers to her
as much as anyone – and just like Marissa and Jenny, it's completely
inaccurate.
And that, as they say, is that. On
Wednesday we'll see how well I did and then get ready for the leadup to the
awards itself.
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