Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Losing the EGOT

Occasionally I find myself sorting through particularly random trivia (this happened a few days ago in a conversation with a friend), and one of my favorite bits of trivia surrounds the younger of the acting Redgrave sisters.  While Vanessa was the great actor of her generation, Lynn had something else special about her.  Lynn managed to be the only person in the history of entertainment to receive nominations for an Emmy, Oscar, Grammy, and Tony award...and not win any.

This is of course both a huge compliment and an enormous disappointment.  Redgrave managed to get nominated for three Tonys, two Emmys, two Oscars, and a Grammy in her career, something almost every actor would kill for, but you have to assume that she wishes she could have taken the stage just once to accept one of those major awards (to her credit, she did pick up a pair of Golden Globe Awards).

We took a look at Redgrave's record six years ago, but I was curious after the conversation with my friend if there had been any new additions to this list, if any people who had been on the list had migrated off of it, and most importantly, if someone had tied Redgrave's record.  Below you'll find that her record is still intact, though there's still room for some performers to go after it, and a few more have been added to the challenge since six years ago.  I've listed below every living performer I could find that has been nominated for (and lost) three of the four of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, & Tony.  If you have a name I don't have on the list, please bring it to the comments (particularly for the Grammys, this is hard to research), and I'll update accordingly!

(Note: All of these are listed alphabetically)

Lauren Ambrose

Nomination She's Missing: Oscar
Emmys Lost: 2002 & 2003-Lead Actress in a Drama (Six Feet Under)
Grammys Lost: 2019-Best Musical Theater Album (My Fair Lady)
Tonys Lost: 2018-Best Actress in a Musical (My Fair Lady)
She Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: She won two SAG Awards for her work on Six Feet Under.

Can She Seal the Deal?: I would assume not.  Ambrose getting the lead in My Fair Lady is surprising in retrospect (her career had been relatively mixed since her breakout role in Six Feet Under ended, and I suppose this was a case of the "play" selling tickets more than any of the stars).  Currently she is on Servant for AppleTV, but hasn't done a film role in almost a decade, so an Oscar nomination would be a surprise.

Antonio Banderas

Nomination He's Missing: Grammy
Emmys Lost: 2004-Best Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie (And Starring Pancho Villas Himself), 2018-Best Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie (Genius)
Oscars Lost: 2019-Best Actor (Pain and Glory)
Tonys Lost: 2003-Best Actor in a Musical (Nine)
He Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: Banderas won a Drama Desk for Nine, and finally pulled off a Goya earlier this year for his work in Pain and Glory

Can He Seal the Deal?: Of all of the people on this list, Banderas has the most grounds to be mad, as under current awards rules he would have tied Lynn Redgrave for this award.  Banderas was a key vocalist on the cast recording on Nine, and that was nominated in 2004 for Best Musical Theater Album (but lost to the Bernadette Peters revival of Gypsy).  Today Banderas would've been nominated for a Grammy for the award as a principle vocalist, but at the time he wasn't because it was only the producers of the album that got nominated.  I don't know if Banderas has it in him to do another play (he hasn't gone back to either musicals or the theater in recent years), and so I kind of wonder if this is a trivia answer that will never be, but was very close to becoming reality.

Gabriel Byrne

Nomination He's Missing: 
Oscar
Emmys Lost: 2008 & 2009-Lead Actor in a Drama (In Treatment)
Grammys Lost: 1998-Spoken Word Album (The Nightingale and the Rose)
Tonys Lost: 2000-Lead Actor in a Play (A Moon for the Misbegotten), 2016-Lead Actor in a Play (Long Day's Journey Into Night)
He Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: He did win a Golden Globe for his work on In Treatment

Can He Seal the Deal?: The trick to "pulling a Lynn Redgrave" (patent-pending) is to be able to make positions second through fifth, but not manage to grab first.  I think that Byrne could well nab an Oscar nomination, considering he is a multi-hyphenate entertainer (he not only acts, but also writes, directs, and produces), and doesn't seem too likely to win any of the other awards anytime soon.  He rarely does Broadway and his television show isn't on anymore.

Adam Driver

Nomination He's Missing: Grammy
Emmys Lost: 2013, 2014, & 2015-Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Girls), 2020-Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series (Saturday Night Live)
Oscars Lost: 2018-Supporting Actor (BlacKkKlansman), 2019-Actor (Marriage Story)
Tonys Lost: 2019-Lead Actor in a Play (Burn This)
He Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: Driver has failed to secure any major entertainment award in his career, so there should be some sympathy for him, but it feels doubtful he's going to end his career empty-handed considering its current trajectory, so don't worry if you're a fan.

Can He Seal the Deal?: I would assume that Adam Driver is the type that might randomly get a Spoken Word Album nomination at some point (not for a memoir, but more so for a table read recording of The Crucible or something similar).  But Driver's career trajectory (he has been nominated for three of these awards in the past two years alone) indicates that a win is more likely to stop him from reaching Redgrave's record than a missing Grammy nomination.  He seems certain to win one (probably the Oscar or Tony) in the next few years.

James Franco

Nomination He's Mising: Tony
Emmys Lost: 2002-Lead Actor in a Miniseries (James Dean), 2011-Outstanding Special Class Programs (The 83rd Academy Awards...yes, James Franco was nominated for an Emmy for his comically bad hosting of the Oscars...let that sink in for a second), 2016-Outstanding Short Form Variety Series (Making a Scene)
Oscars Lost: 2010-Best Actor (127 Hours)
Grammys Lost: 2014-Spoken Word Album (Actors Anonymous)
He Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: Franco missed the Emmy but picked up the Golden Globe for his work in James Dean, and he missed the Oscar but pulled off another Globe for The Disaster Artist.

Can He Seal the Deal? I'm starting to think no.  Franco has done stage work (he did a turn in Of Mice and Men six years ago), but he wasn't nominated for a Tony Award (instead they went for his costar Chris O'Dowd).  Franco's sexual misconduct allegations have hurt his career; after his surprise Oscar snub in 2017 for The Disaster Artist, he has made direct-to-video & unreleased films, and his only more mainstream work was a cameo in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and The Deuce, which was a middling success at best for HBO.  Winning an Emmy at this point seems more probable than a Tony nomination.

Ed Harris

Nomination He's Missing: 
Grammy
Emmys Lost: 2005-Lead Actor in a Miniseries (Empire Falls), 2012-Supporting Actor in a Miniseries (Game Change), 2018-Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Westworld)
Oscars Lost: 1995-Supporting Actor (Apollo 13), 1998-Supporting Actor (The Truman Show), 2000-Lead Actor (Pollock), 2002-Supporting Actor (The Hours)
Tonys Lost: 1986-Actor in a Play (Precious Sons)
He Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: He has two Golden Globe awards, for The Truman Show and Game Change

Can He Seal the Deal?: For a long time there, it seemed like Ed Harris would surely win an Oscar.  He received a staggering four nominations in the span of seven years, and one could make a pretty convincing argument that he was in second in two, if not three of those years (Amy Adams-take note).  Harris has since fallen on hard times with the Academy and has had no more luck with Emmy (not even his grand return to TV with Westworld has gotten him a trophy so far).  This of course could happen, as the Spoken Word Album category can slip someone in at almost any time, and Harris is famous enough that he could make it for some reading of Shakespeare or Arthur Miller.  However, he's never been a particularly "awards-seeking" performer (otherwise he would have beaten James Coburn in 1998), and I don't see this happening.

Marsha Mason

Nomination She's Missing: Tony
Emmys Lost: 1997-Guest Actress in a Comedy (Frasier)
Oscars Lost: 1973-Best Actress (Cinderella Liberty), 1977-Best Actress (The Goodbye Girl), 1979-Best Actress (Cinderella Liberty), and 1981-Best Actress (Only When I Laugh)
Grammys Lost: 2000-Best Comedy Album (The Prisoner of Second Avenue)
She Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: Mason won Golden Globes for both Cinderella Liberty and The Goodbye Girl

Can She Seal the Deal? The better question has to be how has she not?  Marsha Mason is one of my minor obsessions (she's been nominated for four Oscars, is still living, and yet somehow she disappeared off the face of the public sphere after her divorce to Neil Simon), and the real question was how was she ever going to get a Grammy nomination considering how minor her celebrity is.  With the Comedy Album citation, though, she's actually most well-known these days for her work on Broadway, as she's done six different productions in her career and is constantly working in the New York stage.  Make it happen Marcie!

Kate Nelligan

Nomination She's Missing: 
Grammy
Emmys Lost: 1989-Actress in a Drama Series (Road to Avonlea)
Oscars Lost: 1991-Supporting Actress (The Prince of Tides)
Tonys Lost: 1983-Actress in a Play (Plenty), 1984-Actress in a Play (A Moon for the Misbegotten), 1988-Featured Actress in a Play (Serious Money), 1989-Actress in a Play (Spoils of War)
She Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: She did win a BAFTA for Frankie and Johnny

Can She Seal the Deal?: The longtime Canadian stage actress enjoyed most of her awards-success at the Tonys, where in the 1980's she was a frequent contender but always missed (it can't feel too bad losing to the likes of Jessica Tandy and Glenn Close, though).  Her one-and-done nomination in 1991 at the Oscars makes her the person who has been on this list the longest, and as a whole she rarely acts anymore (on the stage or otherwise), so unless she has a particular penchant to get involved with an album and score a truly random nomination, this seems like the least likely of the list to happen.  It is interesting, though, how such a comparatively obscure (certainly the least well-known of these performers) actress could so quickly score 3/4 of an EGOT loss.

Kathleen Turner

Nomination She's Missing:
 Emmy
Grammys Lost: 2001-Spoken Word Album (The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets)
Oscars Lost: 1986-Lead Actress (Peggy Sue Got Married)
Tonys Lost: 1990-Actress in a Play (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), 2005-Actress in a Play (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
She Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: She has two Golden Globes for Romancing the Stone and Prizzi's Honor.

Can She Seal the Deal?: Of the people on this list, I think this is probably the most shocking person on the list, considering that she almost certainly was close to getting nominated at the Emmys for playing Chandler's mother on Friends.  I would suspect, therefore, that she's also the most likely person to pull the Lynn Redgrave of anyone listed here.  She just needs a solid guest spot on a cable television series (probably not too hard considering their penchant for going for former headliners of a certain age for guest roles), and to not win the Tony Award (she probably would have won in 2005, but no one was going to take out Cherry Jones in Doubt).  I think that's manageable, and that she's probably going to make it thanks to the bizarre dozens-of-people-nominated Shakespeare Sonnets nomination she got in 2001.

Vanessa Williams

Nominations She's Missing:
 Oscar
Emmys Lost: 2007, 2008, and 2009-Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Ugly Betty), 2009-Performer in an Animated Program (Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies)
Grammys Lost: 1989-New Artist and Female R and B Performance ("The Right Stuff"), 1990-Female R and B Performance ("Dreamin"), 1992-Female R and B Performance ("Runnin' Back to You"), 1993-Record of the Year ("Save the Best for Last"), Female Pop Vocal Performance ("Save the Best for Last"), Female R and B Vocal Performance ("The Comfort Zone"), & Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals ("Love Is"), 1995-Female Pop Vocal Performance ("Colors of the Wind") & Female R and B Performance ("The Way That You Love"), 1997-Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album (Star Bright)
Tonys Lost: 2002-Actress in a Musical (Into the Woods)
She Shouldn't Feel Too Sad: She was Miss America, but umm, yeah, maybe she should get a little pity here.

Can She Seal the Deal?: Yeah, that list of Grammy losses is massive.  Williams is one of the most nominated women in the Recording Academy to never win.  Despite her seventeen year absence, I think her best shot would be to pick up one of the below-the-line Grammy Awards rather than take an Oscar nomination.  Williams did sing an Oscar-winning song, of course (1995's "Color of the Wind"), but she's not very much of a songwriter, and the movies have oddly never taken to her like music, television, and the theater.  So my gut says no, she can't quite get there (prove me wrong, casting directors), but may well win one of the other three awards before all is said and done.

And those are the ten!  Like I said, I researched pretty thoroughly, but if you trivia sleuths have an eleventh person let me know!

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