Emmy Preview: The Movie-Actress Advantage And The Sharon Gless Hail-Mary Pass

Our peek at the Emmys continues today with a look at the actresses. As you'll see, some of these are pretty easy to call, while others just make you scratch your head.

Lead Actress In A Comedy

The thing about this category is that there just aren't that many plausible contenders, compared to other categories. The number of high-profile comedies has shrunk, the number with female leads is relatively low, and as a result, there's not a huge amount of realistic competition.

Last year's nominees were Tina Fey for 30 Rock, Christina Applegate for the (now-canceled) Samantha Who?, America Ferrara for Ugly Betty, Julia Louis-Dreyfus for The New Adventures Of Old Christine, and Mary-Louise Parker for Weeds. Given that there's another slot opening that will let one other person into the race, it's hard to imagine any of those women — all of whom, in different ways, have pretty distinguished reputations — being bumped.

So who's getting the sixth slot? Could be a Desperate Housewives lady. People like Felicity Huffman. I don't sense that Amy Poehler made enough of an impression on Parks & Recreation, but she's got an awful lot of goodwill built up, so I wouldn't rule it out.

But my guess is Toni Collette of The United States Of Tara. She's playing a person with multiple personalities on a show written by Diablo Cody, and I think the show may well get nudged out of the running for Comedy Series. Movie actresses who come in and helm pay-cable shows are the big guns in this kind of category, and Collette is exactly the kind of person who tends to be nominated.

Looking at some of those who are on other folks' lists, Sarah Silverman is a possibility, but it seems like if she were going to be nominated, it would have been last year. Debra Messing has been inexplicably haunting the Emmys for years, but The Starter Wife doesn't have the steam to get her back in the game, I don't think. And nobody is getting nominated for In The Motherhood.

The drama leads and the supporting actresses, after the jump...

 

Lead Actress In A Drama

Glenn Close is in. I don't consider anything to be a certainty other than that, because this has gotten to be a really thick, if not a terribly exciting, category.

I feel like at some point, the nominating of Kyra Sedgwick is going to stop happening. When she started showing up on the list, the fact that she was an established actress who had jumped to cable to head up her own show made her a lot more unusual than she is now. She's good, but the show has cooled a little bit in terms of impact, and I'm not sure she's going to keep it up.

Mariska Hargitay, who has been nominated for the last five years and won three years ago, seems like a shoo-in, but again, streaks are funny things, and as television drama shifts toward more daring cable dramas and away from network procedurals, she could be a casualty.

There was a lot going on with the women on Mad Men this year. January Jones was wonderful; Elisabeth Moss is amazing in a role that's often very unsympathetic. Either or both could be nominated; I think Moss is a tiny bit better, but Jones' role is easier to explain and probably to appreciate based on an episode or two, and that might give her the edge.

It's always possible that somebody like Mary McDonnell of Battlestar Galactica will slip in, but this smells like a category that's going to fill out whatever spots are left with some combination of fairly predictable choices like Holly Hunter (Saving Grace), Sally Field (Brothers And Sisters), or Patricia Arquette (Medium). (And yes, True Blood could pull down a nomination here for Anna Paquin, but my general lack of interest in vampire culture makes it hard for me to reach a conclusion.)

Supporting Actress, Comedy

I would really love to see this category upended by a nomination for Portia de Rossi for Better Off Ted, in which she was absolutely fantastic and completely bizarre. But these aren't dream nominations, right? Right.

Jaime Pressly has made a good showing for My Name Is Earl (though they left her out last year), and she certainly could be back. Jenna Fischer had her best season ever on The Office, and she fully deserves (and will likely get) her second nomination.

How about Jane Lynch for Party Down? That would be an easy way to honor a terrific actress for a very, very good show nobody knows about.

Never leave out previous winners: Jean Smart won last year for Samantha Who?, and she could certainly make the list again.

That brings us to Conchata Ferrell and Holland Taylor, both of Two And A Half Men. They're both actresses I love, and they're both actresses I think have been adequately rewarded for being on this particular show. But you have to think at least one of them takes a spot.

Vanessa Williams has been nominated the last two years, and she probably will be again, as she should be.

That leaves one spot, give or take, which I'm calling for Rosemarie DeWitt of The United States Of Tara. She was also in Rachel Getting Married in 2008 — a movie a lot of people admired a great deal. Again, the movie actress advantage.

Supporting Actress, Drama

This is the most hands-in-the-air category of all. There are so very, very many choices, and there's so much politicking, and sometimes it's good to be the one good thing on a firmly middlebrow show, while sometimes it's good to be associated with a highbrow show — this one is really tough to call, I think.

If Burn Notice sneaks in, this is where you'll see it — with perennial Emmy favorite Sharon Gless pulling off the nomination in this category. I consider it a firm "possible."

I would love, love, love to see Christina Hendricks nominated for Mad Men, and again, I don't think it's a pipedream. Her role isn't as flashy as January Jones' or Elisabeth Moss', but she's just wonderful in it — totally heartbreaking in the role of a woman who is, in every way, entirely unsuited to the social rules she's bound by, while being the woman most flattered by everything about the fashions and styles and trappings of the time.

I do not think the bluebirds are coming back to land on the shoulders of Katherine Heigl. Yes, she had a big story with cancer and a ghost and whatnot, but pulling her name last year when she (understandably) thought her part was simply too lame to take seriously didn't make her any friends, and as high-drama as her story was this season, it was also widely ridiculed.

I do think her Grey's Anatomy co-star, Chandra Wilson, will get a nomination for so firmly outclassing the show week in and week out. Sandra Oh of Grey's is also a possibility, though her role was back-burnered for a good lot of the season.

Don't get me started on Connie Britton of Friday Night Lights — so wonderful, so effective, so understated, so doomed.

Even if we avoid Boston Legal everywhere else, Candice Bergen probably gets in here, particularly with this being her last shot for this role in which she's been nominated twice before.

If the bloom isn't completely off Brothers & Sisters (which it could be), Rachel Griffiths could certainly be back, although that show got dumb at an aggressive pace over the last year or so, and some slipping is certainly possible.

This is also the category where I'm most bedeviled by actresses on shows I don't follow closely: Julie Benz of Dexter, Rose Byrne of Damages, Diane Wiest and Alison Pill and Hope Davis of In Treatment.

You can see the struggle. There are easily 20 women who seem like entirely plausible picks for these six nominations. I really mean it when I say that in this category, your guess is as good as mine.