For the next two weeks with Emmy nominating ballots in progress Team Experience will be sharing personal favorites. Here's Eric Blume...
When you talk about Justin Theroux, inevitably you turn to the subject of fairness. On one level, is it fair to the rest of us mortals that Justin Theroux looks like this...
Then again, it’s exactly because Justin Theroux looks like that that he is grossly undervalued. Usually, if someone who looked like that was even just able to spell his own name, he would be fawned over. But in the acting game, male beauty is rebuffed, and awards bodies tend to eschew acknowledgement if the male actor isn’t an everyman.
Part of the glory, ironically, of Theroux’s acting in HBO’s The Leftovers is that he so deeply inhabits the everyman, in the true sense of that term. The trajectory for his character, Kevin, was of loving husband and father, trying to protect and save his family, as men do. He couldn’t understand how to bring his family together, how to truly be vulnerable enough to connect. And Theroux’s physical power was the perfect foil for his paralyzing inner fear...
The creative team behind The Leftovers must have realized by the end of the first season what superhuman actors they had with Theroux, Carrie Coon, and others in the cast. For while that first season had a fierce brutality that packed a wallop, they chose a much riskier path for the second two seasons. It was in this third miraculous season of the show that Theroux revealed Kevin’s tremulous, beating heart. The show pushed the boundaries of the “faith story” along the lines of a Carl Theodore Dreyer or Lars von Trier movie, but went on to attempt true flights of fantasy.
[VAGUE SPOILERS OF A KIND AHEAD] Theroux became the main warrior for the more phantasmagoric storylines, as Kevin entered alternate universes as an international assassin, politician, and savior. When the confines of reality were broken in the show, Theroux effortless expanded his naturalistic style to carry off huge leaps in traditional logic, transporting the audience with him to a dreamier, deeper level of acceptance and perception. He was able to make you believe perhaps he was the next Christ, but at the same time he was ultimately never more or less than human.
Theroux’s acting has no ego, and he remains completely at the disposal of the storytellilng. He manages to rise and fall to the demands of the character and the plot, no matter how extreme the situation. Many moments in the show have Kevin literally jumping, diving, or drowning, and those moments are apt metaphors for Theroux’s acting. He was almost always jumping into the sky for a flight into somewhere celestial, or diving down into an abyss of dirt and terror. But Theroux is always, always going off the platform fearlessly. [/SPOILERS]
The Leftovers gave us three punishing seasons of savagery and grace. And in Theroux, the creators found the epitome of these two qualities. Theroux was able to fill Kevin’s brutal journey with astonishing beauty.
Other FYCs
Music for Big Little Lies
Samira Wiley in Orange is the New Black
Judith Light in Transparent
Master of None for Best Comedy
Comedy Moms in Best Actress
The Americans for Best Drama
Aubrey Plaza in Legion
Difficult People for Best Comedy