When Jeff Hiller heard his name announced as this year’s Emmy winner for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series —his first-ever nomination, for his role in HBO’s Somebody Somewhere—he appeared stupefied. For a long moment, his face remained unchanged, failing to register the shock. But as Hiller got up from his seat and began walking up to the podium to accept the honor, his expression seemed to catch up with his emotions: He chuckled, stuck his tongue out, and widened his eyes, as if to wordlessly communicate what everyone around him seemed to be thinking: What on Earth? Even two of Hiller’s fellow nominees, Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang and the Shrinking actor Michael Urie, held their faces in their hands in what looked like joyous disbelief.
Hiller’s win, to put it generously, was considered to be a long shot. Ahead of tonight’s ceremony, industry insiders widely surmised that Television Academy voters would go for a different first-time Emmy nominee—the 83-year-old Harrison Ford, who earned a nod for his role as the therapist Dr. Paul Rhoades in Shrinking. Ford is a Hollywood institution, the star of nostalgic blockbusters whose late-career turn toward television has been well received. Meanwhile, Hiller is a character actor known by a comparatively niche audience; as Joel, a queer Midwesterner wrestling with his faith in the bittersweet Somebody Somewhere, he played in a more subdued mode than his brassier fellow nominees, including Ike Barinholtz in The Studio and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in The Bear. Somebody Somewhere, too, is unlike much of the TV comedy landscape: The series, which concluded last December, follows a woman in her forties, Sam (Bridget Everett), at loose ends in her Kansas hometown after her sister’s death. On paper, that doesn’t sound especially titillating, which Hiller poked fun at in his speech: “I just want to say thank you to HBO for putting a show about sweaty, middle-aged people on the same network as the sexy teens of Euphoria,” he said, his voice quaking.
Although critically adored, Somebody Somewhere didn’t quite hit mainstream resonance in its three seasons on air; before this year, it had also failed to capture the attention of the Emmy voters. Hiller himself recently told the Los Angeles Times that he ignored calls from his manager the day nominations were announced. The actor has also spoken openly about his decades-plus climb to be taken seriously in Hollywood, both in his cheeky memoir Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success, and tonight, in his acceptance speech. For Hiller, continuing to work in the industry at all has been a hard-won prospect. Trembling as he clutched the award, he told the crowd: “I feel like I’m going to cry because for the past 25 years I’ve been like, ‘World, I want to be an actor.’ And the world’s like, ‘maybe computers?’”
Hiller is hardly the first actor to profess surprise at an awards win. But what feels so meaningful about Hiller’s win has everything to do with the themes that undergird Somebody Somewhere itself: the hard and rewarding work of fostering community, and the search for warmth in a world that’s turning ever more towards coldness and isolation. While thanking his colleagues on stage, Hiller noted that with Somebody Somewhere, the writers had put together “a show about connecting and love in this time when compassion is seen as a weakness.” He lingered on the last word, letting it hover for a beat in the room.
For a show to steadfastly champion such virtues felt revelatory, as did its ensemble of actors who didn’t fit Hollywood’s usual expectations of age, sexuality, or body type. But Somebody Somewhere took its exploration of empathy further, tackling subjects not often given space to exist on-screen—like the lingering effects of grief and the challenge of sustaining friendships as you age. For the Television Academy to recognize Hiller’s role in this show seems like a vote not just for a moving and intuitive performance, but also for earnestness.
