Months before she took home an Emmy for playing vacationing multimillionaire Tanya McQuoid on HBO’s “The White Lotus,” Jennifer Coolidge received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for the same performance. After coming up short in the 2022 Best TV Movie/Mini Actress race against Kate Winslet (“Mare of Easttown”), she now has a shot at being honored by her guild peers for reprising her character on “The White Lotus: Sicily.” Continuing in the role means she now must compete in the Best TV Drama Actress category; fortunately, she would not be the first to clinch a SAG trophy after making this exact move.
Coolidge will have been preceded in this specific type of SAG Award victory by Maggie Smith, who triumphed on her second Best TV Drama Actress bid for “Downton Abbey” in 2014 after first being singled out two years earlier when the show was classified as a miniseries. Coincidentally, the British dame was also bested on her initial outing by Winslet, who took the 2012 Best TV Movie/Mini Actress prize for “Mildred Pierce.”
“The White Lotus” was established as an anthology series with the announcement of its second season in August 2021. The subsequent confirmation of Coolidge’s continued involvement as Tanya caused the show to be at least temporarily reclassified as a continuing drama, but its upcoming third season may be considered anthological as long as its characters are all new. As it stands, Tanya and her husband, Greg Hunt (Jon Gries), are the only Season 1 characters who have shown up in Sicily.
Coolidge’s potential inclusion in this year’s Best TV Drama Actress lineup will make her only the fifth person to be nominated in multiple individual SAG Award categories for playing a single character. Before Smith joined this group, James Spader became its first member by earning comedy (2006) and drama (2007-2009) notices for “Boston Legal.” His costar, William Shatner, added his name to the list in 2009, as did Kiefer Sutherland, who won drama trophies for “24” in 2004 and 2006 before being recognized for his work in the TV movie “24: Redemption.”
Presently, Coolidge is running just behind Gold Derby’s predicted nominees in the Best TV Drama Actress category, with her strongest competitors being Imelda Staunton (“The Crown”) and Zendaya (“Euphoria”). She and her current “White Lotus” costars are also ranked sixth on our Best TV Drama Ensemble list. Other past SAG Award nominees in the “Sicily” cast include F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hollander and Michael Imperioli.
Nominations for the 29th SAG Awards will be announced on Wednesday, January 11 with the ceremony following on Sunday, February 26. The event is expected to be televised, although the organization has yet to partner with a new network after reaching the end of their decades-long deal with TNT and TBS.
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