Best Television Series – Drama – Nominee
The final episode of the fourth season of Best TV Drama nominee Ozark is appropriately titled, “A Hard Way To Go.” It’s an appropriate description for both cast and fans of the series after finally watching the show’s bittersweet finale.
The American crime drama stars Jason Bateman as Marty Byrde, a financial advisor who drags his family from Chicago to the Missouri Ozarks after he discovers his deceased business partner has stolen from a Mexican drug boss: he is now forced to launder money to pay back his debt. Marty’s wife, Wendy (Laura Linney), and children, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner), are understandably unhappy with this dramatic change in their lives too, but eventually they understand that in order to survive, they must do it as a family.
Jason Bateman earned three consecutive Golden Globe nominations in the role (2018, 2019 and 2021) and told the HFPA on a set visit to the show’s Atlanta soundstages that he came to realize his character’s ego was part of his downfall. “Marty started out as this big city guy who thought he could go down and dominate these small-town people and that’s a pretty foolish thing to think you can do,” Bateman said at the time. “He’s not as smart as he thinks he is, which is a good thing for the show because if he was, we would have only lasted three or four episodes and then he would have figured out how to fix everything and go back to Chicago!”
The final season of the series earned Golden Globe acting nominations for Laura Linney and Julia Garner, who plays a small-town waitress lured into the money laundering world by the Byrdes, and who ultimately seems destined to meet a tragic end to pay for their sins.
During the set visit, Laura Linney remarked on the strong performances that allowed her to bring her “A” game. “There were so many fantastic and very different dynamics with each of the cast, it was really like a kaleidoscope where you’d be with one person and then, suddenly, you’d have to shift and everything would be a little different,” she said. “It’s fun to play scenes with different people and approach each scene depending on the relationship and what’s at stake in that moment.”
Julia Garner – whose character meets the Byrdes when they arrive in the Ozarks – makes a dramatic transformation from waitress to strip club manager to casino operator as she’s dragged deeper into the family’s shady relationship with the drug cartel. “It’s hard because after a while when I play someone, I start feeling what the character is feeling and by the end of each day, I’d feel like I’m getting hit over the head by a frying pan,” Garner told the HFPA on set. “But it got easier as I got to really know Ruth and that was also because while the scenes were intense, the energy of the people on set was not heavy, but safe and supportive and fun.”