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Peak TV has been a boon for actors. They’re working more and there’s a wider than ever selection of roles available to them, whether as a lead or in a supporting role.
The odds are better than ever that you’re going to be bowled over by an actor’s work, and chances are your new favourite thespian has an earlier performance worth seeking out.
Here are eight actors, none of them stars, whose great work this year is matched by a previous role.
Uzo Aduba with Jamaal Grant in Painkiller.Credit: Keri Anderson/Netflix
UZO ADUBA
Like that? Painkiller (Netflix)
Watch this! Mrs America (Disney+)
As Edie Flowers, a diligent and increasingly disgusted state investigator pursuing the corporation fuelling America’s opioid crisis, Uzo Aduba is the anchor of Painkiller. The stylistic flourishes that pepper the Netflix series, where the dead confer with the living, work because Aduba’s performance provides an unshakeable baseline of authenticity. In 2020’s Mrs America, a telling recreation of 1970s second-wave feminism in America, Aduba carves out her own destiny as Shirley Chisholm, a trailblazing black politician and presidential candidate. Cate Blanchett and Rose Byrne had top billing and gave exemplary performances, but when you focus on Aduba, there’s a compelling mix of resilience and frustration.
MICHAEL CHERNUS
Like that? Dead Ringers (Amazon Prime)
Watch this! Patriot (Amazon Prime)
No role is too small for one of my favourite character actors – “Chernus!” I invariably exclaim when he pops up – who excels at everything from sweet goofballs to entitled fools. As a research scientist who is easily coerced into facilitating illegal research by the more extreme of Rachel Weisz’s identical twins in Dead Ringers, Chernus is comically uncomfortable as a potential patsy. For a wider take on his talents consult Amazon’s under-seen Patriot, where he plays a US Congressman and conduit to his brother, Michael Dorman’s CIA agent. Silly, but also aware of his subterfuge, Chernus’ sibling steals his scenes. His monologue about seeing the Beastie Boys live at age 11 is amazing.
Dominique Fishback plays an awkward, young popstar fan in Swarm.Credit: Warrick Page/Prime Video
DOMINIQUE FISHBACK
Like that? Swarm (Amazon Prime)
Watch this! The Deuce (Binge)
At every turn, David Simon’s fictionalised history of Times Square and its intertwined sex trade through the 1970s and 1980s has to supplant established archetypes: sleazy pornographers, flamboyant pimps, and long-suffering sex workers. As Darlene, a transplant from the south who has weighed up the costs and opportunities, Dominique Fishback is a quiet revelation as a street girl chiselling out a degree of agency. The actor has an exacting watchfulness – you can see her weighing up her moves. It’s also there in Swarm, a genre-crossing horror-thriller co-created by Donald Glover, where she stars as an obsessive fan of a Beyonce-like pop star whose dedication extends to bloody lengths.
Rupert Friend as Guru Bob and Patricia Arquette as Peggy, who both try to out-con each other in High Desert.Credit: Apple TV+
RUPERT FRIEND
Like that? High Desert (Apple TV+)
Watch this! Homeland (Disney+)
Rupert Friend is the most famous actor on this list, alternating between key supporting roles and leading man. In recent years he’s displayed a yen for character comedy, culminating in his Coen Brothers-worthy turn as a new age guru in High Desert. But if you go back to Homeland, which debuted in 2011, you’ll find his breakthrough work as CIA agent Peter Quinn has tragic dimensions. An uncompromising operative, Peter’s past slowly emerges in the margins of Claire Danes’ immense lead performance. Having made use of him as a 16-year-old, for questionable purposes, Peter has grown up within the CIA. It is his family, and he serves it without limit. The mix of violence and vulnerability is heartbreaking.
Shira Haas as DC Maplewood in Bodies.Credit: Matt Towers/Netflix
SHIRA HAAS
Like that? Bodies (Netflix)
Watch this! Unorthodox (Netflix)
Put this diminutive Israeli actor in front of a camera and her huge hazel eyes acquire a magnetic attraction – directors fall in love with her close-ups. The question is, what can a show do with them? If you’ve just watched Bodies, a temporal thriller where Haas plays a police detective, you get a performance built on self-denial and separation. Go back to 2020’s Unorthodox, a limited series where Haas plays a young ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman from New York who flees her marriage and faith, and Haas is captivating as a new arrival in Berlin discovering the wider world and testing her place in it.
Sean Harris, right, with Joel Edgerton in The Stranger.Credit: Ian Routledge
SEAN HARRIS
Like that? The Gold (Paramount+)
Watch this! The Stranger (Netflix)
With his piercing gaze and a face defined by menacing planes, this British actor has played the villain countless times, including in multiple Mission: Impossible movies, but you never get the same performance twice. Amongst the 1980s South London gangsters of The Gold, Harris’ Gordon Parry is circumspect and ambitious – a schemer with both plans and a deceptively deferential presence that proves to be a trap. In The Stranger, an exceptional Australian crime thriller where he stars opposite Joel Edgerton, Harris is mesmerising as a potential monster whose evil reveals itself in almost inexplicable terms. In a brief moment where he plays a favourite song Harris’s Henry Teague vibrates with palpable malignancy.
Mabel Li and Yoson On in New Gold MountainCredit: SBS
MABEL LI
Like that? Safe Home (SBS on Demand)
Watch this! New Gold Mountain (SBS on Demand)
Still only a few years out of that bellwether for accomplished Australian actors, Sydney’s the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Mabel Li has been accumulating impressive performances. If you watched her in the recent family violence drama Safe Home, Li shone as Jenny Lee, a young lawyer at a community legal centre fighting for her marginalised clients. Li shows you how the demanding work can excise not just your faith in other people, but your own optimism. Before that, in the gold rush period drama New Gold Mountain, Li illuminated a potentially cliched role as a triad boss’ daughter. Her Cheung Lei is both a threat and a victim – a capable woman forever enduring a world ruled by men.
In The Bear, Ebon Moss-Bachrach is outstanding as the headstrong but unmoored Richie.
EBON MOSS-BACHRACH
Like that? The Bear (Disney+)
Watch this! Girls (Binge)
It’s a fun debate, but in a show as emotionally vivid and narratively tactile as The Bear, Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s headstrong but unmoored Chicago native Richie Jerimovich might just be the breakout character. Certainly, his season two solo episode is a classic. Moss-Bachrach has worked steadily in the years prior, but it’s been a slow climb. As a recurring character in Lena Dunham’s Girls, he didn’t have many moments, but as an actor and musician who ended up in a tumultuous relationship (and worrying band) with Allison Williams’ Marnie, he adds an inflammatory quality to every scene they share that felt deeply plausible.
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