2015 Emmys: Why Katey Sagal, Sophia Bush, Gillian Anderson, Taylor Schilling deserve Best Actress nods

So far this week our 2015 Emmy Spotlight series have been a wonderful form of discussion about some of your favorite shows and stars! We’ve seen tens of thousands of votes cast across just two categories, and we’re excited today to preview what should be another extremely competitive race this year: Actress in a Drama Series. There are about 15-20 women you could make a strong case for this year, and with that the challenge comes to just narrowing it down to six to put on our personal ballot, along with a few honorable mentions to throw in there.

As always, we will have a poll attached at the bottom of this article, so feel free to chime in with some of your own personal thoughts as to who is worthy of a little love this year.

Our nominees

Gillian Anderson, “The Fall” (Netflix) – Anderson is amazing. We’ve nominated both her and Jamie Dornan each for the sole reason that “The Fall” is a master class of wonderful performances. She breathes life into Stella Gibson, a tortured woman intent on justice. Despite her and Dornan barely spending any actual time together on screen, it is almost like these two developed intensity and chemistry based on the buildup alone.

Sophia Bush, “Chicago PD” (NBC) – Season 2 was Bush’s finest work yet, delivering on some challenging material. Over the course of this season we saw Erin Lindsay deal with career changes, victories, loss, heartbreak, and ultimately falling back into some of her old ways. It was a lot of material to tackle in a single year, and she deserved all of the credit for keeping this consistent over the course of a 23-episode season.

Taraji P. Henson, “Empire” (Fox) – Any list without Cookie Lyon this year doesn’t feel like a list at all. Her performance was earth-shattering, funny, intense, and basically perfect for the show. Cookie is the anchor of “Empire,” and we really cannot imagine the show being the commercial smash that it is if she was not a part of it.

Tatiana Maslany, “Orphan Black” (BBC America) – The same goes for Maslany, who is not just responsible for one of the biggest roles, but many of them as Sarah, Cosima, and so many more. How she was snubbed by the Emmys two years running is a bigger mystery than anything on “Orphan Black” itself.

Katey Sagal, “Sons of Anarchy” (FX) – Remember when Sagal won a Golden Globe for playing Gemma? It’s about time that the Emmys followed up on that, given that season 7 of “Sons” was the finest work of Sagal’s very-long and very-impressive career. Her final scene with Charlie Hunnam was brimming with energy and intensity, and the most impressive part of it was that the two conveyed the heartbreak they did without even facing each other.

Taylor Schilling, “Orange is the New Black” (Netflix) – While the series may face more competition now in the drama category than it would as a comedy, that doesn’t change the status of Schilling in our mind at all. The more that we find out about Piper, the more complex, cunning, and fascinating we find her. We’re still discovering more of what she is capable of, and Schilling is expertly guiding us through that.

Honorable mentions – Viola Davis (“How to Get Away with Murder”), Michelle Dockery (“Downton Abbey”), and Keri Russell (“The Americans”).