Emmy FYC: Matt Czuchry for Supporting Actor, Drama
Wednesday, June 10, 2015 at 12:30PM Team Experience is sharing their personal Emmy dream picks daily each afternoon. Here's Andrew Kendall...
Even for ardent fans of The Good Wife, I suspect that Czuchry's name is not the first they'd consider when pitching an FYC for the show. Matt Czuchry, like his character Cary Agos on the show, has been oft-ignored. But Czuchry’s inimitable ability to serve up emotion through a glance has always made the character work more than it might in lesser handers. put to good use. This season with former series regular, Josh Charles, off the show, Czuchry stepped up as the next important male with an arc which immediately thrust him into the forefront:
Cary Agos goes to jail...
But Czuchry does not just earn this FYC for (finally) having a very strong season arc. The success of his work in season 6 was the way its built on moments since the show's inception. Consider the very first shot of Czuchry on the show. It's so dissonant with the Cary we've come to know, especially this past season. [More after the jump]
From his very first shot within its law offices, Cary has been projected as foil to protagonist Alicia and as her life has developed in spades over the years, so has his. If the show's main goal has been deconstructing the myth of Saint Alicia, in an alternate universe we'd be seeing a similar deconstruction of Golden Boy Cary Agos. That preppy fratboy exterior in the pilot has given way to the industrious, self-effacing young lawyer we've come to appreciate.
Czuchry's prison arc resolved somewhere around the middle of this season (back in January), but even when his role is smaller, Czuchry provides excellent support. From The Good Wife's initial main adult cast -- Margulies, Panjabi, Baranski, Noth, and Charles -- Czuchry is the only actor to never get a major nomination of some kind be it a Globe nod or an Emmy statue. Cary Agos is ill-served by a law-firm that he helped create, and it's his unfortunate lot is always to be pushed to the sidelines. Making that watchable is a task, but Czuchry has excelled at it.
Cary Agos will never be an Atticus Finch type of lawyer, with endless baity clips of great speeches to sell him to voters. His best acting moments are more internal. When I think of any random moment of the show’s sixth season just Czuchry reacting to something impresses. He's an excellent reactor and that's often the nature of acting on the edges. What can you tell us when you're not the focus? I worry that this season of The Good Wife, which has been progressively remembered for all the wrong reasons, will put his chances of success in jeopardy. I hope not.
In a widely contested category of princes, and murderers, and many loud and effusive players Czuchry’s quieter but just as effective turn is worthy of remembrance.
Previously on our Emmy series
The Americans, Drama
Jane the Virgin, Comedy
Lisa Kudrow, Actress Comedy
Jon Hamm, Actor Drama
and
Cara Seymour on creating "Sister Harriet" on The Knick
20+ Contenders in Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Emmy, FYC, Matt Czuchry, The Good Wife
Reader Comments (10)
I love The Good Wife. It's the only show with 22 episodes that doesn't suffer from that burden. Besides, they have incredibly good taste in actors: Goode, Pasquale, Cerveris,Magnussen ... all of them in one season!!!
P.S. I particularly enjoyed Sarah Steele this year. A true scene-stealer.
Matt Czuchry will be remembered as the most underrated talented actor in that show.
As someone who actually loves this show, I can't believe that I completely forget how stellar Matt was in the first chunk of the season. Maybe because the second half kept flopping and floundering. I would be quite surprised if Matt actually managed to get a nom but he would deserve it. Cary gets short-changed SO MUCH when it comes to storylines so it was great to see the writers give Matt a bone and watch him go at it.
Yes x 1000, and am I crazy to think it could happen? After the show's surge last year, I hope more voters were watching and he was the most deserving supporting player this season by a mile (though I wouldn't mind a Panjabi nod, but that may be a pipe dream). He was so so good, and I feel like the writers really gave him a lot to chew on this year, with him hitting every scene out of the park.
GO LOGAN HUNTZBERGER!!!!!!
The first half of this season was definitely some of Czuchry's best work ever. Co-sign.
love The Good Wife, and agreed completely on Czuchry (god, this name -_-)
Noth also deserve an FYC of his own. Shockingly he has never been nominated for an Emmy.
What a great article. You really covered Czuchry's tremendous performance this year. You also correctly showed how his character has grown over the years. The fact that Czuchry made so much of the material given to him in previous seasons shows what a great talent he is. One of the best EMMY articles I've read. GO CZUCHRY. Man, does he so deserve it!
I'd give Matt an Emmy for being so damned cute and sexy.
Seriously - The Good Wife doesn't get much Emmy love nowadays. Shame since it is such a terrific drama - even 6 years on.
Agree with this wholeheartedly. It's a shame that The Good Wife's Season 6 is more likely to be remembered for how disastrously it handled Kalinda's exit, because the season started off very strongly with Cary's arrest. Czuchry's sort of in the same boat as Vincent Kartheiser over on Mad Men, no-one ever thinks of him when they think of their respective shows' best elements, but this season was Czuchry's best work, his relationships with the three women in his life the season's most emotionally compelling story arc.