Fans of “The White Lotus” are looking forward to the season finale of Mike White’s twisted HBO series on Sunday night – but for actors from other series hoping to be recognized in the supporting categories at this year’s Emmy Awards, it could be a sobering night.
That’s because Season 3 of the series has already spent seven hours spinning out juicy storylines for a wide array of actors, including Walton Goggins, Aimee Lou Wood, Parker Posey, Jason Isaacs, Carrie Coon, Natasha Rothwell and Sam Rockwell. If the finale does justice to the craziness that filled the first seven episodes, it’s going to be very hard to keep Emmy voters from doing what they did after Season 1 and Season 2 of the series, when the supporting categories were clogged with “White Lotus” performers to the exclusion of almost everybody else.
For its first season in 2022, when the show was classified as a limited series, “The White Lotus” placed three actors among the seven nominees in the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie category, and a remarkable five of the seven in the supporting actress category.
Ten performers, almost the entire main cast, were submitted for Emmy consideration that year; all were entered in the supporting categories and eight of them were nominated: Murray Bartlett, Jake Lacy, Steve Zahn, Connie Britton, Jennifer Coolidge, Alexandra Daddario, Natasha Rothwell and Sydney Sweeney, with Bartlett and Coolidge winning. (Fred Hechinger and Brittany O’Grady were the only “White Lotus” actors to be submitted but not nominated.)
The following year, after the show had moved to the seemingly more competitive drama series categories, it did even better. With 15 actors submitted, nine were nominated. F. Murray Abraham, Michael Imperioli, Theo James and Will Sharpe grabbed half of the eight slots for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category, with “Succession” taking the other four. Coolidge, Meghann Fahy, Sabrina Impacciatore, Aubrey Plaza and Simona Tabasco gave “The White Lotus” five of the eight supporting actress nominees, and Coolidge won again.
That track record puts “The White Lotus” alongside “The West Wing,” “Hill Street Blues,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Game of Thrones” among a small group of shows that repeatedly hogged the nominations in the supporting categories. And the program’s success in both the limited series and drama categories suggests that despite the competition from shows like “Severance,” “The Last of Us,” “Slow Horses,” “The Diplomat” and others, it’s foolish to bet against anybody who hung out with Mike White in Thailand.
But who will make the cut and who will be left out? There are almost 20 “White Lotus” actors with at least an outside chance of a nomination, and they can’t all fit. Categories at the Emmys are determined by the number of eligible entries, and it’s likely that the supporting drama series categories will hit the maximum eight nominees, as they have done in four of the last five years. (The one exception was last year, when production delays caused by the pandemic and the strikes reduced the number of eligible shows and led to seven nominees in each category.)
Assuming that the categories will be at eight, two “White Lotus” actors and four actresses seem to be clear favorites for nominations: Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood as a haunted, antisocial man and his younger, cheerier girlfriend; Carrie Coon as a divorced lawyer on a girls’ trip; Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey the Ratliffs, as a rich North Carolina couple facing financial collapse; and Natasha Rothwell reprising her role as a spa manager from Season 1. Sam Rockwell didn’t even show up until Episode 5 in his role as a reformed wild man, but he had the season’s most viral monologue, which is probably enough to get him in as well.
But nominations for Goggins, Isaacs and Rockwell in the supporting actor category and Coon, Posey, Rothwell and Wood in supporting actress would be fewer noms than “The White Lotus” received for Season 2. To hit that season’s total of nine supporting nominees, you’d probably have to add Leslie Bibb (one of Coon’s vacation pals) and Patrick Schwarzenegger (the eldest, cockiest Ratliff son), both of whom seem to be on the bubble.
And then there are a wide array of dark horse candidates who could well pull off a surprise, starting with Michelle Monaghan as a TV star, Sarah Catherine Hook as a Ratliff daughter on a spiritual quest, Sam Nivola as her younger brother and Tayme Thapthimthong as a timid security guard. A killer final episode could provide a boost for Jon Gries, another veteran of earlier seasons who was under the radar for much of the season but is positioned to boost his profile in the finale. Ditto for Scott Glenn as the mysterious Jim Hollinger, who could become a strong guest actor candidate if his and Goggins’ characters have another widely anticipated showdown.
Then there’s Lalisa Manobal, a huge Thai pop star making her acting debut as a spa employee; Charlotte Le Bon, who stepped into the role of an ex-model at the last minute; and Christian Friedel, who wins points for moving from his starring role as a Nazi concentration camp warden in “The Zone of Interest” to his part as a nebbishy resort manager in “The White Lotus.”
It’s enough to make life difficult for Allison Janney, Kaitlyn Dever, Patricia Arquette, Julianne Nicholson, Kristin Scott Thomas, John Turturro, Jack Lowden, Tramell Tillman, Jeffrey Wright, Jonathan Pryce, James Marsden and other contenders from shows that aren’t “The White Lotus.” Many of them will no doubt be fine, but it’s a given that you don’t go into a battle against a Mike White cast without emerging a little bruised and battered.
