The challenge of crafting a list of the best performances of the year never lies in thinking of people who deserve to be on it. It’s always, always in agonizing over which ones to include in the limited slots we have.
That is why, as usual, we’ve restricted ourselves here to shows that aren’t on either of our individual top 10 lists or on our list of favorite episodes (and why we further kept our ourselves to only one actor per show). It’s not that we don’t know how good Andrew Scott on Ripley or Jessica Gunning on Baby Reindeer or the entire casts of Shogun and Somebody Somewhere and My Brilliant Friend are. We do! We just really want to spread the love when we can, given the sheer amount of excellence on display during the past 12 months.
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… And even then, if we’re being honest, we’re left regretting all the phenomenal actors we still didn’t have room for. So with our deepest apologies, here are some (but by no means anywhere near all) of our very favorite performances of 2024.
Chloe Guidry, Under the Bridge
With all due respect to a phenomenally talented cast of grownups (Lily Gladstone, Riley Keough and Archie Panjabi among them), it was the young cast who truly shone in Hulu’s true crime series. And of that breakout bunch, it was Guidry who most fully captured its wounded heart. Her Josephine is a mobster-idolizing queen bee with the violent streak to back up her teenage mind games; you can see instantly why an outsider like Reena (Vritika Gupta, also excellent) might regard her with both awe and fear. But then there are those moments when Josephine’s bluster falters, revealing the raw and heartbreaking vulnerability still pulsing underneath. Guidry’s performance, balanced on a knife’s edge between the scared, sad kid that Josephine still is on some level and the hardened woman she’s yet to fully become, forces us to look beyond easy labels like “victim” or “villain” in search of a more challenging and clear-eyed empathy. — ANGIE HAN
Manny Jacinto, The Acolyte
When the Stranger was unmasked halfway through Disney+’s Star Wars spinoff, the internet collectively went bananas over the discovery that Jason from The Good Place was hot now. To which I say: Did you even watch The Good Place? He was canonically handsome the entire time! No, the real jolt came from realizing the true breadth of Jacinto’s range. His Qimir started the series a genial nobody, unassuming and unreliable and prone to falling asleep on the job. But as his true identity was revealed, Jacinto was able to show off his own talents in a whole new light. Layering an ice-cold fury with notes of pain, longing and disappointment — often through gestures as subtle as a tensing of the jaw — Jacinto commanded the screen as effortlessly as Qimir wields a lightsaber. What the Sith lord might have accomplished in a theoretical second season, we’ll never get to know. But what Jacinto’s capable of, I suspect we’re only just starting to find out. — A.H.
Stephen McKinley Henderson, A Man on the Inside and The Madness
There are few things more satisfying than when a lifelong character actor is handed a meaty featured role that forces even casual audiences to go from saying, “Hey, it’s that guy,” to saluting them by name. Henderson, acclaimed as a stage star and memorable as part of Alex Garland’s recurring ensemble, gets one of those parts in Netflix’s A Man on the Inside. As backgammon-and-baseball-loving Calbert, Henderson is the moral center of Mike Schur’s comic mystery — shining especially in “From Russian Hill With Love,” a beautiful half-hour of male bonding in which Henderson and Ted Danson mostly just wander appreciatively through San Francisco. Then, less than a week after A Man on the Inside premiered, Henderson held his own as Philadelphia fixer Isiah opposite an impossibly cool Colman Domingo on Netflix’s The Madness. Every year should be Stephen McKinley Henderson’s year, but 2024 was especially Stephen McKinley Henderson’s year. — DANIEL FIENBERG
Marcello Hernandez, Saturday Night Live
A couple of years ago, when the cast exodus from Saturday Night Live included stalwarts like Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson and the irreplaceable Kate McKinnon, we got the reliable cultural freakout regarding the show’s ability to restock its larders. Don’t look now, but the Season 50 cast is just packed with ascending talent, from the reliably loopy Sarah Sherman to the masterfully extreme everyman Andrew Dismukes. Nobody, however, has had a rise as fast and as high as Hernandez, who came in with the Season 48 cast as its then-youngest and then-only-Latino cast member. Hernandez has brought charming puppy-dog energy and bilingual flair to his regular sketch appearances while also becoming, on the side, a commercial pitchman for products like T-Mobile and Major League Baseball. What truly cemented his position here, though, was his titular role in multiple “Domingo” sketches this fall, one of the show’s first characters to become a recurring sensation thanks to TikTok. — D.F.
Kathryn Hunter, Black Doves
This whole list could easily have been filled by the cast of Netflix’s Black Doves, from stars Ben Whishaw, Keira Knightley and Sarah Lancashire to scene-stealers Ella Lily Hyland and Gabrielle Creevy. But I want to especially sing the praises of noted avant-garde stage performer Hunter as Lenny, manipulative boss to Whishaw’s reluctant triggerman. Although she’s been known for the outsized physicality of her theatrical performances — see her memorably witchy turn in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth — Hunter’s work here is almost eerily still. Lenny is controlled, powerful and effortlessly threatening, all from beneath a veneer that seems reasonable and almost warm. No matter how decorated her scene partner, Hunter’s presence is so thoroughly unique and unsettling that whenever she appears onscreen, she invariably becomes the point of focus. Here’s hoping that Hunter, who also appeared on FX’s Grotesquerie this year, gets more to do in the upcoming second season of Andor. — D.F.
Richard Kind, John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A., Only Murders in the Building and Girls5Eva
Late in the third (and now final) season of Netflix’s Girls5Eva, Kind explains that it’s medium success, not mega fame, that brings true contentment: “I’ve spent the past 40 years striking the perfect balance between constantly working and never getting bugged in a deli.” And while he’s technically playing a fictionalized version of himself on the show, his real-life résumé doesn’t seem far off. Nobody was having a better time in 2024 than Kind, whether he was acting as the oddball sidekick to John Mulaney in Netflix’s Everybody’s in L.A., or playing the genial eyepatch-ed neighbor on Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, or popping up in any of a half-dozen other projects. And nobody was more fun to watch, thanks to his game sense of humor and unwillingness to phone in even the briefest and silliest of cameos. We’d only be remiss to point out that at the rate Kind is endearing himself to TV viewers of all stripes, it might not be long before he’s getting bugged in delis after all. — A.H.
Cristin Milioti, The Penguin
I don’t know if it bothers Milioti that, despite being the best part of the final season of How I Met Your Mother, a standout in the ensemble of the second chapter of Fargo, the best part of the acclaimed “USS Callister” episode of Black Mirror, a standout topline star of respected shows like Made for Love and The Resort, and the best part of the best episode of Mythic Quest, she somehow has never been nominated for an Emmy. Well, it bothers me! Fortunately, Milioti’s streak as TV’s most under-appreciated great actress looks to be coming to an end with HBO’s The Penguin. That’s what happens when your show features an Oscar-nominated leading man buried in cutting-edge latex, but everybody comes away agreeing that though the series might be named for Colin Farrell’s waddling DC favorite, it rapidly becomes a platform for Milioti’s traumatized, vicious, stylish, calculating Sofia Falcone — the character with the more complex and emotional arc and one of the year’s best showcase episodes. Surely even the most recalcitrant of Emmy voters will have a hard time resisting a performance this impeccably showy. — D.F.
Natasha Rothwell, How to Die Alone
Hulu’s airport workplace comedy slash dramedy of self-discovery slash rom com boasts the sort of instantly hilarious comedic ensemble that you can only hope you’ll get to hang out with for seasons to come. And the shining jewel at the center of it all is Rothwell, whose natural charisma lights up the screen from the very first scene — no surprise, if you’ve seen her in stuff like Insecure or The White Lotus. As she moves through Mel’s journey, the star-creator flits easily between notes of over-the-top physical comedy and grounded emotional drama, between playful flirtation and bittersweet yearning, between the character’s longstanding insecurity and her determination to build herself a better life. She even gets chances, here and there, to show off an incredible singing voice. It takes Mel a season to realize she can be anyone she wants to be. It’s clear from the jump that Rothwell already does. — A.H.
Megan Stott, Penelope
With only one star to speak of, and no flashbacks or subplots to break up the central narrative, Netflix’s survival drama lives or dies by the quality of its lead performance. Luckily, it has found in Stott an actor who could look fascinating watching paint dry. Or watching wood dry, rather, since entire episodes are spent watching Penelope teach herself to start a fire or build a shelter or forage for food. When she does cross paths with occasional human guest stars, it’s Stott’s expressive face and physicality, more so than even her dialogue, that clues us into what’s going on in her head: the guileless curiosity with which she approaches others, the intense look of focus as she processes what they have to say, the flashes of worry or delight or determination dancing across her face. Penelope might spend most of her time alone in the forest, but as a heroine for us to watch from our own nests, Stott makes for excellent company. — A.H.
Hoa Xuande, The Sympathizer
Playing the character known only as the Captain, Aussie-born Vietnamese actor Xuande was the star of HBO’s ambitious adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. It’s a complex role: A North Vietnamese spy in the South Vietnamese army transplanted to the U.S. and working both sides, the Captain is funny, dogmatic and, from scene to scene, impossible to read or trust on any straightforward level. Without Xuande, The Sympathizer couldn’t exist at all, much less be as provocative and periodically dazzling as it is. Naturally, all of the awards attention for the series went to Robert Downey Jr. for an impressive but thoroughly hammy five-part performance that, as good as it is, often throws the entire limited series out of balance — leaving Xuande to admirably and constantly restore balance. — D.F.
