If I Had An Emmy Ballot 2014: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series 

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If I Had An Emmy Ballot 2014: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

A great year for the women of 'Breaking Bad,' 'Game of Thrones' and more

By Alan Sepinwall   Monday, Jun 16, 2014 8:49 PM

The Television Academy of Arts & Sciences released this year\'s Emmy ballots on Monday. Now that the ballots are out, it\'s time for our annual two-pronged experiment, in which Dan tries to predict the likeliest nominees in each major category, while I pretend that I\'m an actually TV Academy member and pick the six nominees that would make me the happiest.

We are, as always, playing by the Emmy rules, which means we can\'t argue for someone who didn\'t submit themselves (say, Donald Glover for "Community"), can\'t move someone from lead to supporting or vice versa, and can\'t declare that "True Detective" is a miniseries and therefore clear more room in the drama categories. I\'m also obviously limited by what I watched and what I haven\'t. I think I saw maybe three episodes of "It\'s Always Sunny in Philadelphia" this season, for instance, and while I like the show a lot, the sample size wasn\'t enough.

Today\'s category is Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Dan\'s analysis is here, and mine is coming right up.

Anna Gunn finally broke through and won an Emmy for her harrowing work as Skyler White on "Breaking Bad," relying on a dynamite submission episode in "Fifty-One" (aka "Skyler Goes Swimming"). She has an equally great option from the final run of eight episodes in "Buried," in which Skyler has to deal with her sister and brother-in-law\'s questions about her husband\'s business. For that matter, she could submit "Granite State," which aired the night she won her first Emmy, or "Ozymandias" (which is more of a Walt episode but has Skyler at the center of the series\' single most devastating scene) and still likely walk away with a second one. Some of the fans didn\'t like Skyler, but the show\'s writers very clearly did, and they teamed up with Gunn for a slew of incredible moments before closing the curtain.

I spent much of the first season of "The Americans" fearing that Nina would be killed off, both because she was a sympathetic character in an impossible situation and because

Annet Mahendru was giving such a fascinating, nuanced performance as this woman lying to everyone to try to save herself. Fortunately, Nina survived into the second season, and Mahendru\'s work only grew more riveting and mysterious, to the point where even people who work on the show get into arguments about the character\'s true loyalties at any given moment in time.

There have been years when it seemed like

Christine Baranski got nominated less for her work on "The Good Wife" (in seasons when she didn\'t have a lot to do) than because she was Emmy Darling Christine Baranski. That would definitely not be the case this year, with the show coming off its best season and Baranski coming off her own. Whether dealing with Alicia and Cary\'s betrayal, the death of a close friend or a series of dismaying professional twists of fate, Baranski was a delight: cutting and funny at times, heartbreaking at others. 

You could fill five of the six spots in this category with "Game of Thrones" actresses without any of them seeming undeserving. But the best of the bunch this season was

Lena Headey. She continually finds the humanity hidden underneath Cersei\'s haughty, evil exterior, to the point where you can appreciate the depths of her feelings for her monstrous son, and even on some level her hatred for the otherwise hugely sympathetic Tyrion. It\'s been a great performance throughout the series, but she was particularly good this year.

I can roll my eyes a lot at the seemingly inexhaustible life of "The Killing" (season 4 coming soon to a Netflix queue near you!), but the show has always been good on the performance end, and the third season introduced me to the previously-unknown

Bex Taylor-Klaus, who became the secret ingredient the show never really had with the Rosie Larsen: a very human, complicated, sympathetic face for the crime. It was a standout performance that has understandably led to a bunch of other work for Taylor-Klaus, including a recurring role on a show featuring my last selection.

For this final spot, I thought long and hard about the various women of "Parenthood" (though I wasn\'t always crazy about the writing of the Joel/Julia arc this season, for instance, Erika Christensen was excellent in it), about Bellamy Young from "Scandal" and a few others. But I decided to go another way and pick

Emily Bett Rickards from "Arrow," who was so appealing from her first appearance as nervous hacker Felicity Smoak that the show essentially reconfigured itself around her, turning a brooding solo hero story into a somewhat lighter series about a team of crimefighters where Felicity is the eyes, ears and brains. Rickards isn\'t asked to emote on the scale of somebody like Gunn or Baranski or Headey, but it\'s the perfect performance on the show she\'s on, and when she has to do something complicated (like, say, Felicity\'s reaction to the truth of Oliver\'s plan in the season 2 finale), she nails it.

What does everybody else think? What would be your ideal top 6?

Previously: Outstanding Drama Series | Outstanding Comedy Series | Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series | Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

Emmy Nomination Preview 2014 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama

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Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

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I Love these ladies and can\'t vote for actresses from GOT and Arrow because I don\'t watch it.

Good luck to these outstanding actresses that made our time pass watching them.

Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad) - probably unstoppable for the win. I knew that as soon as I saw her big scene in "Ozymandias".

Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones) - Turner has always been impressive on the show, and this year the writers finally stopped cutting all the character\'s best material and actually allowed her to have her own story.

Annet Mahendru (The Americans) - A tricky role to play, and she plays it very well.

Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men) - She\'s had bigger seasons than this, in some ways, but her story with Don in the second episode was one of the most emotional moments on the show, and she had an interesting bit in the finale as well.

Betsy Brandt (Breaking Bad) - Marie is a character who often seemed to have no real reason to be on the show, but in the final season she really delivered the goods in a series of key scenes that you were wanting the whole time (basically the exact opposite of what "Dexter" did with its supporting cast).

I don\'t watch The Americans but it seems like I\'m going to have to start!

Question: Could Tatiana Maslany be submitted for Best Actress for Sarah and Best Supporting actress for say, Allison?

Allison Janney is a guest star in Masters of Sex?

Above 4 are definite , than it becomes really hard

Alison Wright/Annette Mahendru (somehow both are much better than it appears )

Does Emily Bett Rickards tip in the scale in favour of watching Arrow?

I will never understand the deep love you and Dan share for Rickards of "Arrow." I find her to be the most grating and overused part of the show, and someone who takes me out of the moment with her quirk.

Love that you\'ve both given Mahendru praise, though. Such a fantastic performance.

Thank you for mentioning Bex Taylor Klaus, I was really hoping you would.

1. Anna Gunn, "Breaking Bad" - Give or take Julia Louis-Dreyfus, she\'s probably the biggest lock among the acting categories. Skylar wasn\'t necessarily center stage for all of Breaking Bad\'s final run, but whenever she got her moments, she was devastating. Any number of episodes could earn her the win.

2. Annet Mahendru, "The Americans" - Through two seasons, Mahendru has been a secret weapon for The Americans, and as Nina was pulled in two very different directions, she was at her best. I\'m hopeful that she\'ll still be around next year.

3. Lena Headey, "Game of Thrones" - Cersei is one of my favorite characters on my favorite show on TV, and Headey is a big part of the reason why. Whether she\'s grieving, scheming, or spitting venomous one-liners, Headey always makes the Queen Regent feel human and elicits empathy, no matter how apparently heinous her actions might seem.

4. Michelle Monaghan, "True Detective" - True Detective took a lot of shots during its run for its lack of complex female characters, some (but not all) of which was deserved. But none of that was Monaghan\'s fault, and I thought that she did a great job with a character that could easily be characterized as thankless. Her performance in "Haunted Houses" was a worth showcase for what she brought to the role.

5. Sophie Turner, "Game of Thrones" - Sansa Stark has been through hell on the show and prior to this season, some members of the audience have had little regard for her because she was forced to be so meek and passive in order to survive. But this season, Sansa got her chance to emerge from the darkness and starting learning how to play the game. Turner was at her best. You could say that Turner was the "Most Improved" actress on the show this year, but for my money, she has always been great. This year, she finally got the right material to showcase her talents.

6. Betsey Brandt, "Breaking Bad" - When you think about all of the much-deserved love and celebration that surrounded Breaking Bad\'s final run, you could be forgiven for not including Brandt at the top of the marquee because Marie never quite took center stage the way that Hank and Skylar did at certain points. But Brandt\'s performance, particularly during the latter part of the season was extremely affecting, and I think that she deserves her recognition before the show finally fades away.

I can\'t easily explain why it makes me so happy to see Emily Bett Rickards on your list, Alan, but it does! For my own picks, note that I haven\'t seen The Killing or The Good Wife:

Lena Headey is good, too, but Williams, always a stand out, had a lot of great things to do this season, as she continues down her murder/revenge path. Shipka wasn\'t in a ton of episodes of Mad Men this year, but everything she did was fantastic. And Taylor to fill it out because I like her performance a lot, and I like that show a lot, and even just making me interested in her storyline and character development and not itching to get back to the spy stuff is a feat.

Melissa McBride\'s portrayal of Carol in the Walking Dead this season - especially in "The Grove" episode - was heartbreaking and amazing to watch. I definitely think she deserves the Emmy nod for supporting actress.

Totally agree with everyone who picked Betsy Brandt. People always sleep on her for some reason.

Any of the actors in Broadchurch... FYI, i\'ve seen the longform ballot and BBC America did not see fit to even submit the *show* let alone any of the amazing performances. Not a single submission. I think Chris Chibnall should sue for breach of contract...

It\'s not eligible as a wholly foreign production that was then imported by an American channel. (Ditto "The Returned.")

I\'d love to see Melissa McBride score a nomination for her exquisite turn in "The Grove" episode...

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