Golden Globes 2018: Why Alexander Skarsgard, Tobias Menzies, Kevin McKidd, Jay Ellis, Rick Hoffman deserve Supporting Actor nods
Welcome to the 2018 Golden Globes CarterMatt preview series! With the popular awards show coming to NBC in January, what better time is there then now to start to look at possible nominees and favorites? This is the third straight year in which CarterMatt has had our own dedicated preview series, and our goal here is to highlight the best of the best as voters within the Hollywood Foreign Press start to make their decisions.
On October 31, all official submissions were made to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and on November 24 ballots will begin going out for official nomination voting. The focus of this CarterMatt series is to help identify great shows and performers for the HFPA to consider. We’ll be sharing some of our personal picks in every TV-related category daily throughout the month of November at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time (4:00 p.m. Eastern), and from there, we’ll leave the voting for you to share some of your own favorites!
Voting Rules – Note that this is just for fun and for campaign purposes; you aren’t voting for the actual Golden Globes! Vote however often you want from now until November 30 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific time, when the polls close and will no longer be available. We will announce all of the poll winners at 1:00 p.m. Pacific on November 30, during the heart of campaign season, as a way to help get the word out on some shows and performers worthy of a nomination.
With all of that laid out, let’s get to the first order of business today: Discussing the CarterMatt picks for Supporting Actor. Remember, that for some silly reason the Globes choose to lump together performers from Limited Series, Comedies, and Dramas into a single category.
Jay Ellis, Insecure (HBO) – While the entirety of his work as Lawrence on the HBO series has been exemplary, just take a look at the season 2 finale to get a small slice of what Ellis brought in terms of humor, charm, and vulnerability. Lawrence is a very relatable character, someone who really wants to make their mark in the world and yet incredibly fearful. His mind and his heart continue to veer him in separate directions — he wants to be happy, but doesn’t know the right way to do. He’s refreshingly relatable — Ellis ensures that the performance is never forced and that we all know a guy like Lawrence on some level. His final scene of the finale with Issa Rae is one we could watch for hours on a loop and still feel the emotional aftershock from him.
Rick Hoffman, Suits (USA) – One of the most underrated performances by one of the most underrated actors on TV. This also happened to be one of the best overall years for Hoffman’s Louis Litt when you think about what the character has been through — the end of his relationship with Tara, the ever-changing structure of Pearson Specter Litt, and ultimately him trying to find solutions for his life in therapy. Hoffman makes sure that Louis remains both one of the series’ most-likable characters, but also one that you want to keep pushing in the right direction. He’s got an enormous heart, but at times puts his passion into the wrong thing — like his insistence that he needs to be right and be constantly validated. The Golden Globes really need to look at just how good Hoffman’s performance was this season.
Kevin McKidd, Grey’s Anatomy (ABC) – You can put McKidd in the same “constantly underrated” category as Hoffman. While at one point Grey’s Anatomy was an awards-show darling, Kevin came on board right at the tail end of that. He doesn’t reap anywhere near the rewards that we wish he would for playing Owen Hunt, and that’s a shame — he’s fantastic! You see his likability and the love that he has for his job, but also his ever-present struggles with PTSD and trying to find normalcy in his life. He at times gravitates towards people who are broken in their own way, hoping that the two can heal each other when that doesn’t always work. His work this season with Caterina Scorsone and Abigail Spencer is on another level.
Tobias Menzies, Outlander (Starz) – Menzies’ role in season 3 was limited to the first few episodes, but he still somehow managed to do more with those few hours than many actors do in a while season. We know how terrifying he can be as Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall, but this time around the celebration for Menzies is geared more around his character of Frank Randall – a reasonably good man who found himself routinely broken by some of his decisions and a conflicted relationship. He loved Claire, but over time their failures to make their marriage work broke him down. Menzies played so many wonderful dimensions to this character: There was the intellectual, the husband, the father, and the man constantly angry by his situation.
Alexander Skarsgard, Big Little Lies (HBO) – As Perry, Skarsgard played arguably the most-unlikable character on television over the past year. He was an awful, abusive man who yearned for some sort of power and dominance. It was how he chose to tackle his own demons rather than resorting to more human solutions to his problems that was harrowing. It was a difficult part to watch, but without question it was also the defining role of Skarsgard’s career. He had to be so terrible that by the end of the series, you could look towards some of the other characters in the Limited Series and understand the events that led to Perry’s demise. He brought all of us to that place as viewers.