Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama

Nominees:
Jeff Bridges (The Old Man)
Kevin Costner (Yellowstone)
Diego Luna (Andor)
Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul)
Adam Scott (Severance)

This year’s Golden Globes Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama are notably diverse: from a retired spy, to a corrupt lawyer with multiple personalities, to a paranoid hero in the Star Wars universe, to a Montana cowboy and culminating in an unfulfilled employee who doesn’t know what he’s doing at work.

Golden Globe winner Jeff Bridges plays former CIA agent Dan Chase, a man who managed to disappear for decades until an assassin shows up on his doorstep. The Old Man shows Bridges, 72, peeling, bumping into walls and hard floors, Bridges credits the stunt coordinators’ expertise for making the combat look so realistic. “It’s like figuring out a dance routine or something,” the actor comments in a behind-the-scenes interview.

What is it about Yellowstone, the hit series about a Montana ranching family, that has turned it into a mirror of American politics? And why do so many of us adore the law-breaking Duttons, finding heroism in their particular anti-heroism, led by stoic patriarch John Dutton (Golden Globe winner Kevin Costner)? It’s probably his character’s comparison to Don Vito Corleone.

Costner sees the parallels, but says in an interview with the LA Times, “Don Corleone didn’t have his fingers as deep in the killing as I seem to have them. I’m a little closer to thumbs up or thumbs down because I don’t deal with a big organization; I deal with my land.”
Diego Luna is already used to that kind of attention, since Andor is the highest-rated Star Wars universe creation in years. Created by Tony Gilroy, it tells a very different kind of Star Wars story: a ground-level look at the birth of the Rebellion through the eyes of a petty thief turned budding revolutionary named Cassian Andor, a character Luna created in the film Rogue One. Even with that well-received film as a pedigree, Andor’s biting political relevance, his decidedly flawed characters (on all sides of the conflict) and the total absence of Jedi, Siths and baby Yodas ran the risk of alienating audiences.

“It’s never too late for justice,” comments Saul Goodman in one of his episodes of Better Call Saul. And while lawyer Jimmy/Saul/Gene (Golden Globes nominee Bob Odenkirk) was known for his unpredictable moves and colorful schemes, he saved a big one for his final act in Better Call Saul. Except this one involved self-sacrifice, self-improvement and radical honesty.
For Adam Scott, Severance was more than an ordinary job. “The show was right in front of me,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I was processing it on my own and grieving on my own, but also processing and grieving through the show. I’m still very grateful that it was there for me in some way, because I was figuring it out, both on-screen and off-screen, as we were filming.”