Westworld: Taking a deeper look into Jeffrey Wright’s Emmy submission

Westworld is up for a number of nominations at this year’s Emmys but all eyes are on the category for Best Actor in a Drama Series.

Westworld has two Emmy nominations for Best Actor in a Drama Series given to Jeffrey Wright and Ed Harris. There is much to celebrate with two actors up for the award, but we want to take a moment to dive deeper into the episode that Wright selected for his Emmy submission–“The Passenger”.

“The Passenger” was the episode name for the season 2 finale which unleashed all kinds of crazy on us that even months later, we are still trying to make sense of everything. Last year, Wright was nominated in the supporting actor category, and this year he was bumped to lead actor, and rightfully so.

Wright’s role as Bernard in the second season was commendable and stood out as his character experienced glitches, memory loss, and some very intense and trippy moments. To channel these specific and tedious nuances was no easy task and it’s very obvious why Wright would be acknowledged for his work.

The season 2 finale of Westworld took all the major characters to the Forge where all hell broke loose and presumably we lost many major characters. By the end of season 2, Bernard has entered into the real world with Halores (Charlotte’s body, Dolores’ mind), and we have no idea what will take place from here on out.

Bernard realizing and learning that he scrambled his memories to prevent Delos from learning the truth was such a pivotal part of the season 2 finale and Wright blew us away with his performance. Gold Derby points out in a recent article, there are many pros and cons to Wright’s performance as Bernard and whether the season 2 finale will be the thing to snag him another Emmy.

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Wright really had to dig deep to portray the complicated Bernard this season. Given that Bernard’s memories were scrambled and he was constantly glitching, Wright had to convey a believability to all of Bernard’s actions and reactions. We can imagine that this would be a very difficult task to complete and is alone all the reason why he is deserving of walking away with an Emmy for it.

There are so many layers to Bernard in the second season and it only gets more complicated by the time “The Passenger” comes around because, at that point, Ford had taken over Bernard’s mind as well. Even though the plot was getting so complicated and confusing at times, Wright’s performance of Bernard stayed consistent and intriguing.

As Gold Derby points out, one of the cons of “The Passenger” is that it was hands down one of the most confusing episodes of Westworld to date. So much unraveled and occurred within the 90 minutes that it was hard to process it all. Not to mention, the multiple Bernard timelines really tripped us up and it took the character himself time to actually understand what was going on.

These complications can certainly take away from Wright’s performance because viewers are trying to put together the pieces of the story instead of paying attention to how amazing he is. Whatever the case may be, Jeffrey Wright killed it as Bernard this season and whether or not he wins the Emmy, he has won in our eyes.

Be sure to visit Gold Derby and cast your predictions for the upcoming 2018 Emmys which are set to air on NBC at 8 PM EST!