The 69th Primetime Emmy Awards go down this Sunday, and for the first time, Game of Thrones isn’t eligible to win anything. (Season 7 aired after the cut-off date — it’ll be eligible for the 2018 Emmys.) But if it was eligible, what does it deserve, either at the main ceremony or at the more technically focused Creative Arts Emmys? Let’s hand out our own awards.
DAN: Enough is enough. Why in the hell doesn’t Lena Headey have an Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy for her work as Cersei Lannister yet?
The Emmys habitually shower Game of Thrones with statues, but outside of Peter Dinklage, who’s won two Outstanding Supporting Actor awards for his performance as Tyrion Lannister (for seasons 1 and 5), none of the individual performers have ever taken home the gold, although a handful are repeat nominees. Headey is one of them. She’s been nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actress statue for her work in seasons 4, 5 and 6, but has never won. And if they didn’t give it to her after her Walk of Shame in season 5, I don’t know if they ever will.
But honestly, I think she deserves it now more than ever. I found myself looking forward to Cersei scenes this year just to see what Headey would pull off next. Now that Cersei is queen, Headey brought a new confidence to her performance, whether Cersei was commanding a room full of lords in “Stormborn” or sharing an intimate moment with her brother (still gross after all these years) in “The Queen’s Justice.” Then there was her star turn in “The Dragon and the Wolf.” Dany’s entrance on her dragon was dramatic, but Headey stole the scene with the look of annoyance and begrudging wonder on Cersei’s face. “We’ve been here for quite some time,” Cersei says. Only Cersei could be petty in the face of a live dragon, and only Headey could mine that line for all the suspense — and the comedy — it was worth.
Cersei was lying to everyone in that scene, and continued lying when talking to Tyrion in the Tower of the Hand. And yet, I don’t think Cersei was faking it when she called Tyrion out for making Myrcella and Tommen vulnerable to the “vultures” that swooped in after he killed Tywin; she was just “making honest feelings do dishonest work,” something Tyrion once pointed out was a talent of hers. By this point, Headey knows the character so well, and has such wonderful command of her gifts as an actor, that she can bring all this complexity to the surface without breaking a sweat. She packs monologues worth of emotion into every facial expression.
And when she actually gets a monologue, as in her scene in the dungeons beneath the Red Keep in “The Queen’s Justice,” it inevitably becomes an episode highlight. Once again, Headey goes all in, embracing the contradictions of a character who is sympathetic one second (the moment where Cersei asks Ellaria Sand why she killed Myrcella is heartbreakingly vulnerable) and a demonic ice queen the next. Cersei is that complex a character, and Headey is soaking it up.
So yes, I’d say she’s earned an Emmy.
RICHARD: I totally second Dan’s recommendation of Lena Headey for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series; she was fantastic this year. For my part, I nominate Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy) for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.
Theon is not a major character on Game of Thrones, but his story is powerful. The young Theon has been well-intentioned from the start, but his emotional immaturity, character flaws and bad luck led him to physical and mental destruction. The road back has been difficult, and as an actor, Allen has played Theon’s ups and downs superbly.
In season 7, Allen was asked to fling his character into the depths once again, and then claw his way back up towards redemption. He began the season apparently recovered from his experiences at the hands of Ramsay Bolton and in the company of his protective sister Yara (Gemma Whelan). Together, they oversaw the Ironborn element of Daenerys Targaryen’s armada. Later, when their fleet was on its way to Sunspear, they were attacked by Euron Greyjoy, whose forces overwhelmed them. Theon fought courageously until Euron took Yara hostage. At that point, Theon reverted to being the submissive Reek and, unable to confront Euron, threw himself into the sea. Allen sold Theon’s regression lock, stock and barrel, and we had sympathy for his retreat, which we saw as an unconscious instinct rather than cowardice. Once Theon is fished out of the sea, he seeks nothing but another chance to save Yara.
Sometimes actors earn an Emmy nod because of their work across an entire season of TV, and sometimes they earn it because of one scene where they simply blow the audience away. I submit to you that while Alfie Allen has been brilliant in every season, his two last scenes in “The Dragon and the Wolf” were powerhouses. The first scene takes place in the Dragonstone throne room with Jon Snow. Kit Harington is steady and ultimately reassuring, and allows Allen to weave through a series of intense emotions and deliver a performance that simply nails the viewer to the floor. In the immense quietness of the throne room, where the ocean winds roar in the background, Theon drops his illusions and faces the truth about himself. And after a life of uncertainty, he finally knows what he must do: save Yara.
Allen’s scene with Harington is quite still, but in the next scene, where he faces off with Yara’s last supporters on the Dragonstone beach, his performance is as broad and physical as it gets. Theon initiates a fistfight that he cannot possibly win, and is beaten to a pulp. But while his opponent Harrag is battling for dominance, Theon is fighting for the redemption of his soul. In Allen’s performance, we see the Theon that always could have been, the man grown out of the boy, the hero no longer diminished by Reek. Theon accepts his beating because he believes he deserves it. Theon rises from the bloody sand because he knows he can no longer “stay down,” because he knows a personal victory is the only way he can save Yara. Once Harrag is defeated and Theon throws himself on the sand to wash his face with seawater, we see he has finally proven himself worthy of his quest.
These two scenes with Alfie Allen left me with tears in my eyes. He took a great plotline, great writing, great music and great costars and drove Theon Greyjoy to his highest potential. I’ll never forget Allen’s performance, and that’s why I’ve nominated him for the (theoretical) Emmy.
COREY: Although there were some outstanding performances this year (including one from my favorite, Rory McCann), I would have to give season 7 golden statues for both Outstanding Special Visual Effects AND Outstanding Stunt Coordination. Game of Thrones is hands-down the king of epic battle scenes, leaps and bounds beyond anything else on television, and even better than plenty of movies I’ve seen recently.
Although the battle scenes in season 7 weren’t as lengthy as, say, the Battle of the Bastards or the Battle of Castle Black, they were no less impressive. Euron’s attack in “Stormborn” was our first seaborne battle of the series, and featured a level of brutality we don’t often see, even on this show
The battle beyond the Wall was also a sight to behold, and would be enough to win Thrones Emmys in both categories on its own. Between the amount of stunt performers used to the incredible work done by the special effects team on the dragons and wights, it was stunning.
Of course, all of this pales in comparison to the mid-season Loot Train Attack. The show set a new world record for setting people on fire for this battle, and you don’t manage without prodigious stunt coordination. The way the CGI artists rendered Drogon floating across that lake, or that long shot of Bronn battling his way through the chaos…there are lots of examples of just how good Thrones is at what it does. That’s why I would give them both statues, and basically any other one they want.
RAZOR: I nominate Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score). And while I feel he deserves an award for his compositions across all seven episodes this year, I want to single out his masterful work on Episode 704, “The Spoils of War,” and in particular the music during the the Loot Train Battle sequence.
I find it an outright travesty that a man as talented as Djawadi, who’s scoring arguably the most popular show on TV in this, the Golden Age of Television, has been nominated for the series only once, in 2014, for his work on “The Mountain and the Viper.” That year, he lost to Alan Silvestri’s compositions for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey: “Standing Up in the Milky Way.” I repeat: an outright travesty.
But back to season 7, and yet another award Djawadi won’t win because of something completely out of his control: timing.
For season 7, Ramin Djawadi had to do something he hasn’t had to do very often: blend the musical themes of individual characters together, because for the first time in Game of Thrones history, almost all of the major characters were sharing the spotlight on the main stage. It was Djawadi’s musical genius that tied them all together.
In our Small Council discussion for “The Spoils of War,” I praised Djawadi’s scoring of the climactic battle, calling it “breathtaking” and saying that it “evoked awe,” which it absolutely did.
What stood out, to me, was the way Djawadi was able to weave the Dothraki theme into the Lannister theme (“The Rains of Castamere”), which then flowed into Dany and Drogon’s theme as she yelled, “Dracarys!” And, when he slowed the pacing of the score to match both Tyrion and Jaime Lannister’s looks of despair at the chaos, around them, I shed more than a few tears.
Throughout season 7, Ramin Djawadi proved time and time again that he is the very best composer on television, and the 2017 Emmy for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score) should go to him in a landslide victory.
BROOKE: I nominate Nicolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series. Incredibly, he has never received an Emmy nomination for his work on Game of Thrones, and season 7, arguably his best, is not eligible for this year’s awards. What a shame, because Jaime struggled with intense internal conflict throughout the season, and Coster-Waldau deftly portrayed his character’s emotional battle in scene after scene.
While season 7 saw most of the principal characters firmly set upon their respective paths, Jaime’s remained unclear until the end of “The Dragon and the Wolf.” Jaime has been defined by his dogged loyalty to Cersei, despite having come a long way from the smug blackguard who casually pushed Bran out a window at the beginning of season 1. Like Salome’s veils, Jaime’s hardened layers have been seductively removed throughout the series to reveal the honorable man at his core. Since his better instincts surfaced in season 3, the question for Jaime has been whether those instincts would triumph or be forever smothered by his devotion to his malevolent sister. Coster-Waldau did a masterful job of conveying Jaime’s burgeoning realization that his day of reckoning, and thus the answer to that question, was near.
Coster-Waldau excelled in so many scenes — the secret meeting with Tyrion, Lady Olenna’s execution, the moment with Brienne in the dragon pit, the loot train battle — but he deserves the Emmy for Jaime’s scenes with Cersei. No longer confident in Cersei’s loyalty to him, Jaime was aware that the consequences for his perceived disloyalty were potentially much higher than they had been before, and the new dynamic was apparent in Coster-Waldau’s interactions with Lena Headey. Where once Jaime would fearlessly admonish Cersei for her behavior, in season 7 he was more submissive, carefully counseling instead of scornfully indicting her during their disagreements. Jaime’s loyalty to Cersei rendered him impotent, and his frustration and growing distrust of her was increasingly evident in Coster-Waldau’s performance, outstanding in its subtlety and restraint.
Jaime was effectively gagged this season in many respects, because knowing what Cersei was capable of, he was unsure of just how far he could push her. They say that acting is reacting, and Coster-Waldau proved the truth of that, as Jaime’s emotions were continually at the mercy of Cersei’s machinations. What his character couldn’t express in words, Coster-Waldau eloquently communicated through mute reactions. He did this throughout the season, but there were a couple of standout scenes.
When Cersei told Jaime she was pregnant, Jaime’s initial expression of shock and trepidation melted into one of hopeful gratitude when she told him she was prepared to acknowledge him as the father. As he embraced Cersei and placed a tender kiss on her neck, for a moment Jaime was simply a man who loved a woman. In the next instant, however, after Cersei warned him not to betray her again, he transformed once again into the wary subordinate.
In Jaime and Cersei’s final scene, Coster-Waldau made good on everything he had been building up to throughout the season. Jaime’s entire journey was distilled into mere moments as a gamut of emotions moved across Coster-Waldau’s face. Every tick of Jaime’s brain was apparent as Cersei forced his hand: astonishment and outrage at learning of her duplicity; hurt at being called the stupidest Lannister; disbelief and betrayal when she threatened to charge him with treason; resignation to what she is and that he no longer has the power to influence her; the decision to walk away; and finally, both sadness and contempt as he delivered the simple yet pregnant line, “I don’t believe you.”
In his final scene, Jaime, headed to Winterfell and stripped of his Lannister finery, looked back at King’s Landing for (maybe) the last time. With that one glance, Coster-Waldau was able to convey that Jaime is no longer conflicted, and resolute in his pursuit of a different destiny than he imagined, but one his true nature dictated all along.
The Emmy for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series definitely goes to Nicolaj Coster-Waldau.
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