The contenders are announced next week, and these names should be on both lists.
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It’s only been a trick-or-treat and a turkey since the Emmys were doled out, but this year’s TV awards game isn’t over just yet. Next week, the Screen Actors Guild and Hollywood Foreign Press Association announce the nominees for the Golden Globes (Monday) and SAG Awards (Wednesday), respectively, and their pool of potential honorees includes the burst of new series that landed this fall. With so much competition for just a few slots, it’s inevitable that some of the most worthy work will miss the mark. So, with fingers crossed, here are six of my favorite female performances from the past few months that deserve to have their names called.
Merritt Wever, Unbelievable (Netflix)
First, if you haven’t seen this—yes, unbelievable—limited series based on a real-life serial rape case and the detectives who worked it, get yourself together and start streaming. Either of her co-stars Toni Collette and Kaitlyn Dever could have easily been named an award-worthy MVP (they were both excellent), but what sets Merritt Wever’s performance apart as one of the cops is that it never stops. Playing a person of faith whose work tests it every day, there isn’t a moment when you don’t see Weaver’s wheels turning—investigative, emotional, often both—and understand the character’s deep complexity and authenticity.
Jennifer Aniston, The Morning Show (Apple TV+)
Short of her devastating work as a woman suffering from chronic pain in the 2015 independent, Cake, Jennifer Aniston’s performance in The Morning Show is the best of her career. She seamlessly plays so many notes in every scene (the monologues!) that she sucks you into whatever is happening onscreen and doesn’t shake you off until the credits roll. Reese Witherspoon is also pitch-perfect, but Jen rises to the top.
Kathryn Hahn, Mrs. Fletcher (HBO)
Another example of an actress who finally found a lead role that plays to all of her strengths, Kathryn Hahn is giving one of the bravest performances on TV as a divorced woman having a sexual awakening after her only kid leaves for college. The show is as raw and bold as it sounds (while also being touching and funny), and requires its star to really go there in every episode, often in long solo scenes that feel so real you want to look away. That’s how hard Hahn nails it.
Daisy Haggard, Back to Life (Showtime)
This gem of a British import quietly popped up on Showtime without much fanfare, but it’s worth the watch if only for Daisy Haggard (she’s also the show’s creator/writer), whose dead-on performance as a newly released convict who returns to her hometown after 18 years behind bars for killing her best friend is low-key quirky perfection.
Hailee Steinfeld, Dickinson (Apple TV+)
Having spent some of my younger glory days in Amherst getting my degree in English (go UMass!), I was pre-destined to dig Dickinson. But the biggest surprise of the new comedy (among many) was Hailee Steinfeld’s revelatory turn as the brilliant Miss Emily as she navigates love, heartbreak, injustice and everything that comes along with being a before-her-time, soon-to-be-legendary lady poet in a man’s world. Steinfeld blends timeless coming-of-age emotion with historic nuance and a soft modern edge to utterly entertaining effect.
Gwyneth Paltrow, The Politician (Netflix)
Ryan Murphy’s latest was a little touch-and-go, but the one reliable constant was Gwyneth Paltrow’s beautifully tender—and scathingly funny—portrait of a repressed artist and devoted mother who finally puts herself first just to get knocked down again. With every line reading, Paltrow brought the weight of the character’s story to bear with such clarity that you understood so much more about her than words could ever say.