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50+ Performers Nab 15 Key 2023 Emmy Nominations
Jeff Bridges, Brian Cox, Sheryl Lee Ralph and more vie for TV’s top honors
(Clockwise from top left) Jennifer Coolidge in "The White Lotus," Jeff Bridges in “The Old Man,” Martin Short in "Only Murders in the Building," Sheryl Lee Ralph in "Abbott Elementary" and Brian Cox in "Succession."
Fabio Lovino/HBO; Prashant Gupta/FX; Barbara Nitke/Hulu; Gilles Mingasson/ABC; Macall Polay/HBO
It’s a great year for grownups on TV, and this week’s Emmy nominations are proof. Performers 50 and older earned 15 nominations in major acting categories in the 2023 Emmy Awards race. They’ll learn whether they’ve snagged a coveted golden statuette when the winners are announced on Monday, Sept. 18, 8 to 11 p.m. ET on Fox.
Here are the 50-plus nominees in the main acting categories:
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Lead Actor, Drama
David Russell/HBO
Brian Cox, 77, Succession
In a shocker worthy of Hitchcock, Cox’s potty-mouthed character Logan Roy died fetching a cellphone from an airplane toilet in the third episode of the final season of the most buzzed show of the year. But nobody will forget the role that defines his career — strangers will be begging him to tell them to “F--- off!” for years to come.
Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
Bob Odenkirk, 60, Better Call Saul
Few if any spin-off shows have outdone the hit they sprang from, but Odenkirk made lawyer Jimmy McGill’s moral transformation into broken, bad Saul Goodman at least as compelling as Breaking Bad’s hero, a chemistry teacher turned drug lord. Odenkirk says he only reads his scripts the day he shoots them, to make it feel spontaneous. “Saul gets very carried away, and it’s fun to watch someone going out on a ledge — you’re, like, ‘Dude, you’re gonna fall! See how far you go!” While filming the show’s last season, a myocardial infarction stopped Odenkirk’s heart from beating for 18 minutes, but the near-death experience gave him a sense of being reborn. “I think it’s a version of the crisis that you have all through life as you reach different levels of growth and change — chapters really — in your life,” he told AARP.
Michael Becker/FX
Jeff Bridges, 73, The Old Man
How tough is Bridges? When he got punched around filming action scenes as a retired CIA assassin in his first major TV role, he didn’t realize he had a foot-long tumor in his belly. But bouncing back from cancer surgery and a devastating bout of COVID, he knocked the role out of the park in a show that proves old men can still have moxie. “If we’re lucky, we are all old men, finally,” he told AARP.
Don’t miss this: Jeff Bridges Reflects on His Cancer, COVID Battle: “The Obstacle Was Death”
Lead Actor, Comedy
Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu
Martin Short, 73, Only Murders in the Building
Short got his second Emmy nomination in a row for his crime comedy costarring Steve Martin, 77, about amateur sleuths who investigate murders (and make podcasts). The key to the show’s success is the bantering repartee Short and Martin perfected over decades of performing together, and the audience’s positive expectations. “Now when they see Steve and me come out, they go, “There they are!’” he told AARP. “We’ve already won them over with our careers up to that point. So that’s nice.”
Don’t miss this: Martin Short and Steve Martin’s Best Collaborations
Lead Actress, Drama
Natalie Seery/Apple TV+
Sharon Horgan, 52, Bad Sisters
Horgan, who turns 53 on July 13 and was previously Emmy nominated as a writer for Catastrophe, wrote herself a dazzling part as a sister leading her clan in deadly vengeance against another sister's abusive husband in this must-see drama with a satiric edge.
Lead Actress, Comedy
Saeed Adyani/Netflix
Christina Applegate, 51, Dead to Me
Her seventh Emmy nomination (including three for Dead to Me and an Emmy win for guesting on Friends) is her most emotional yet. Her brilliant acting achievement in the dark comedy about death, illness and awful secrets may be her last, thanks to the multiple sclerosis that, she says, could end her career. We hope not, but join the Emmys in saluting her heroic performance against all odds.
Supporting Actress, Comedy
Gilles Mingasson/ABC
Sheryl Lee Ralph, 66, Abbott Elementary
Last year, she won her first Emmy award on her first nomination, and now she’s back. Earlier this year, when she won AARP’s award for best TV actress (sometimes a precursor to Emmy honors), she looked back on her career and said, “There were so many hurdles to be jumped over, there were so many glass ceilings to crash.” But now at the Emmys, she’s a usual suspect.
David Giesbrecht/Prime Video
Alex Borstein, 52, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
She’s already had four Emmy nominations and two wins for playing the rebellious manager of the show’s rich housewife-turned-standup comic heroine (plus four nominations and one win on Family Guy). If she wins, it’ll be tough for her to beat her 2019 acceptance speech, about her grandma who escaped the Holocaust by stepping out of a line despite armed guards all around. “And for that, I am here,” said Borstein. “And for that, my children are here. So step out of line, ladies. Step out of line.”
Supporting Actress, Drama
Fabio Lovino/HBO
Jennifer Coolidge, 61, The White Lotus: Sicily
When she won an Emmy for playing a vulnerable yet horrible rich woman in the first season of the wicked satirical show, she said, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing!” Except it wasn’t. She’s nominated again, and if anything, her performance was more outrageously funny (and ghastly) in her character’s final season.
Macall B. Polay/HBO
J. Smith-Cameron, 65, Succession
Nominated for her second Emmy as sometime Waystar interim CEO Gerri Kellman, Smith-Cameron described her character as a woman caught between "a bossy man and his childish son." She gave Gerri her trademark look and trademark drink (martini) — and we propose a toast to an actress for a well-earned honor.
Rhea Seehorn, 51, Better Call Saul
If anyone on TV topped Bob Odenkirk's performance as a good person who goes to the dark side, it's his costar Seehorn, playing Saul's once idealistic lover and partner in crime. She's one of the most outrageously snubbed losers in the history of the Emmys, so we bet — no, demand! — that she wins this time.
Supporting Actor, Comedy
Merrick Morton/HBO
Henry Winkler, 77, Barry
In his best role since the Fonz on Happy Days, he’s as funny as ever, but with a dark new depth you might not have thought he could pull off. As a washed-up acting teacher whose hit-man student loves him (but might have to kill him), he proves that scary and funny are two great tastes that taste great together, and age can be a boon to a great actor. As he told AARP, “If you make a life that gives you joy, you have no time to get old.”
Supporting Actor, Drama
Macall Polay/HBO
Alan Ruck, 67, Succession
Playing the disrespected eldest son of the Roy family, Ruck felt so underutilized in the early seasons that he actually asked to be written off the show — but fortunately, the showrunners said they needed him. His performance paid off, for the show and the actor, who made Connor Roy touching as well as hilarious. Ruck told Gold Derby, "Even though it’s a dysfunctional family, every now and then there’s a moment of happiness. Not much."
Fabio Lovino/HBO
F. Murray Abraham, 83, The White Lotus: Sicily
After his Oscar-winning 1985 turn as Salieri in Amadeus, Abraham was too choosy about follow-up roles and fell off Hollywood’s A-list for years. But his stinging wit as the old composer helped land him a role just as rich: the sexist, whoremongering grandpa on TV’s cleverest, harshest sex comedy. Perhaps this, his fourth Emmy nomination and first for an A-list show, will be his winner. In any case, he feels exultant. “I’m 83 and I don’t feel like there’s any end for me,” he told NPR. “I’m going to drop dead on the stage — that’s my fondest hope.”
Fabio Lovino/HBO
Michael Imperioli, 57, The White Lotus: Sicily
On the YouTube channel Noisey last year, Imperioli described the time his wife razzed him the night he won an Emmy for The Sopranos. “She goes, ‘I am not impressed.’ And she said, ‘And if you had any balls, you’d take that Emmy and throw it right in the garbage.’ The booze had been flowing. I took that Emmy, threw it in the garbage. We both went to bed. Wake up the next morning, 11 o’clock. First thing she says: ‘Can you order coffee? And don’t forget to take your Emmy out of the garbage.’ ”
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