Emmys 2019: Billy Porter, Jharrel Jerome, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and other first-time nominees who deserve to win
The 2019 Emmy Awards are less than a fortnight away and among the heaps and heaps of nominations that the eighth and final very disappointing season of 'Game of Thrones' got, there are certain other shows and actors whose nominations were duly earned. What's better? Most of them are also first-time nominees in the Emmys, and while the list goes on and on, here's a list of the top five first-time contenders, who we think, deserve their Emmy more than anybody else.
Amy Adams
The six-time Academy Award-nominated actress has been nominated in the 2019 Emmys for her lead role as self-harming reporter Camille Preaker in the HBO miniseries 'Sharp Objects'. But while Adams also served as an executive producer on the series based on Gillian Flynn's book of the same name, it was her embodying the self-harm addled person of Camille, and the way she finally gave her mother a cold-open insight of sorts into how deep the problems run, that won us over. In a scene from the episode called 'Closer', we see Adams as Camille, with scars spelling out words slashed across her skin like colorless tattoos that run too deep. During a family shopping trip, Adams' character bursts out of the dressing room in nothing but her undergarments, snapping "This is what you wanted, right?” to exhibit why she is reluctant to wear the sleeveless, pastel-hued dresses picked out by her mother - a polarized opposite of Camille's dark intense nature. We know it's makeup, but there's raw insanity in the way words like 'wrong' and 'f**k' are carved across her chest and hipbone, creating the perfect contrast between Adams' Camille and the world around her that claims to know her so well.
Billy Porter
Porter has received plenty of awards and accolades for his breakthrough performance in FX's 'Pose' which chronicles "the legends, icons and ferocious house mothers of New York's underground ball culture, a movement that first gained notice in the 1980s." It was however in the eighth episode of the second season, that Porter won us all over again, as we got to see his character, Pray Tell, finally get his very own, very intimate love scene, which even though proves to be a shattering development for the entire family, still managed to give viewers hope and fulfillment. Porter's loving, and very, very explicit sex scene might have called for him to bare it all, but he bared more than just that. In a very emotional sex scene, Porter gave us two gay, black, HIV positive men find all things beautiful and tender in each other, while the rest of the world deems them a monstrosity. Porter has earned a nomination for the role in the category of lead actor in a drama series.
Jody Comer
When 'Killing Eve' first hit the screens in 2018, Phoebe Waller-Bridge revolutionized the concept of spy thrillers but making a very clumsy Asian MI5 agent fall for her very unpredictable, teasing, Russian target - Villanelle - a professional assassin. In the second season, though Waller-Bridge's writing expertise was replaced by Emerald Fennell's, Comer's insidious eerieness as the sociopath Villanelle, remained intact. Equal parts amusing and mortifying, Villanelle's aura was that of a serial killer with a closet full of couture, and nobody could have delivered it better than Comer, who these days gets fan mails begging her to choke them the way Villanelle mercilessly would her victims. There was a childlike glee following every murder Villanelle committed - the way a child wants their parent to notice a not-so-artistic piece of drawing, and waits for them to hang it on the fridge regardless, and Comer exuded that dark petulance of a reckless child too, who would do anything to grab the attention they wanted. Comer earned a nomination in the outstanding lead actress in a drama series category.
Jharrel Jerome
You might remember him from the Oscar-nominated 'Moonlight', but Jerome has managed to take things a solid few notches higher in his role of Korey Wise in the breakthrough Netflix miniseries 'When They See Us'. Jerome's Wise happens to be one of the Central Park five who was wrongfully convicted in the rape a jogger. All the five convicts were young men from the black community, and as the show chronicles their years and years of pain, anguish, and battle to be exonerated, we see Jerome burst out with all of those struggles in the finale of the series. From embarking on a multi-step process to adopt his character's idiosyncrasies - such as a relatively slower speech - to being able to impeccably portray all the trauma of living in solitary confinement, getting stripped away from his mother, and so much more - Jerome has done a lot. And the real-life Korey agrees with it, just the way fans do with his lead actor nomination for the Emmys.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Her expertise as a writer of dark comedy was established with the quirks and plots of 'Killing Eve' Season 1. But Waller-Bridge managed to leave us stunned and shocked with an appreciation for her genius as a writer, and an actor, when she played the eponymous Fleabag in her dark comedy, 'Fleabag'. The story revolves around Fleabag - a woman struggling to make ends meet both in terms of her finances and relationships. She is difficult to be around, with crippling PTSD from her best friends suicide, for which she also holds herself responsible. Waller-Bridge's two nominations, for lead actress in a comedy and best writing in comedy, are both for her show that features her as a sex addict whose relationships with her only living parent - her dad - is beyond messed up, but the one with her sister is still salvageable. The most unique aspect has to be Fleabag breaking the fourth wall more often than any show ever has, and thus creating a steady interactive forum where you can't really control her actions, but they aren't all that different from what you yourself would have done in that situation.
The 71st Primetime Emmys will air live on September 22, at 8 pm, only on Fox.