“Is this the year that a ‘Game of Thrones’ actress can finally win an Emmy?” asks Gold Derby’s fearless leader Tom O’Neil in an Emmy slugfest with senior editors Joyce Eng, Daniel Montgomery and Susan Wloszczyna dedicated to the women of HBO’s epic fantasy series. To date, Peter Dinklage is the only one of the vast cast to take home an Emmy (he has two and could win a third this year). Watch our slugfest above as we consider the prospects of the “Game of Thrones” actresses.
This should have been an ideal year for Lena Headey as the evil Queen Cersei. She’s overdue after four previous nominations for Best Drama Supporting Actress, and she’s the only contender from 2018 who’s eligible to return this year. As Eng points out, “I think a lot of people were prepared before this final season … to finally get her an Emmy.” However, “they still underwrote her … She was still standing on a balcony, sipping wine, staring out into the distance. The most she ever spoke was when she requested elephants.”
So does that open the door for Maisie Williams as the heroic Arya Stark? At age 22, she would be an uncharacteristically young Emmy winner, but she was nominated in 2016 when she was just 19, and she “has the benefit of the fact that she had a good story arc in the last season, and she had plenty of screen time,” says Montgomery. “She’s not the most emotive character,” but “she has that strong rooting factor … Honestly, she might be the strongest of the ‘Game of Thrones’ contenders just based on the material from the season.”
But Best Drama Supporting Actress isn’t the only place where a “Thrones” actress might prevail. Three-time supporting nominee Emilia Clarke is looking to reap her first bid as a leading lady. “She had certainly the most controversial story arc,” Montgomery notes about Daenerys’s abrupt turn from avenging hero to genocidal madwoman. Perhaps that won’t hurt Clarke with Emmy voters, though. “Some people might just feel like she was done dirty by the writing,” Eng adds. “But she did the best she could with the material. There might be some actors commiserating like, ‘I’ve been through that. You did good, Emilia.’”
So is it time at last for a “Game of Thrones” Emmy matriarchy? Or will the show end just as it began, with Dinklage and only Dinklage coming away with a statue?
Be sure to make your Emmy predictions today so that Hollywood insiders can see how their TV shows and performers are faring in our odds. You can keep changing your predictions as often as you like until just before nominations are announced on July 16. And join in the fun debate over the 2019 Emmy taking place right now with Hollywood insiders in our television forums. Read more Gold Derby entertainment news.
