One of the crimes of the awards season has been the paucity of awards nominations for the actors of Andor, and while we rightly celebrate the Golden Globe nomination that Diego Luna was given this week, the lack of nods for numerous other actors in the second season (especially when some shows seem to grab multiple nominations simply for turning up) is disheartening. Vulture look at this, honing in on and delving into the magnificent performance of Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma.
“Emmy voters should be embarrassed until the end of time for failing to nominate any of Andor’s ensemble in the major acting categories. No Diego Luna for Best Actor, no Stellan Skarsgård for Best Supporting Actor, no Elizabeth Dulau for Best Supporting Actress, and, most irritatingly of all, no Genevieve O’Reilly for Best Actress.
If the first season of the series was Luna’s, with Cassian Andor undergoing a journey of radicalization that would turn him into a central figure in the Rebellion, then the second season belonged to O’Reilly’s Senator Mon Mothma as she realized all of her political wheeling and dealing wasn’t enough to put a stop to the Imperial Empire’s authoritarianism. O’Reilly starts Mothma from a place of sophistication, grace, and panicked resolve, then steadily turns her into an avatar of disgust at the Senate’s collection of corrupt pushovers and cowards. Her speech about the Empire’s Ghorman genocide is an urgent appeal for moral reckoning that is Andor at its most clear-eyed and O’Reilly at her best. Her ability to be composed and aghast in equal measure made Mothma one of the series’ most fascinating creations: a woman constantly navigating what she can do to make the promise of democracy real.”
