The Oscar Grouch: How Our Formerly Reviled TV Teens Are Now Oscar-Worthy

The comeback story is one of the cornerstones of a great many successful Oscar campaigns. Actors and actresses who had crawled back from the abyss of stalled careers and disastrous projects, only to claw their way back and then score the role of a lifetime. These are the stories of people like Mickey Rouke (who nearly won Best Actor for The Wrestler) or Eddie Murphy (who got his first-ever Oscar nomination for Dreamgirls in 2006). Matthew McConaughey rode to the 2013 Best Actor Oscar on the crest of a wave that lauded him for rebounding from the setback that was years of his own bad role-picking. America loves a comeback, and Oscar voters are not exempt from that. We just don’t normally think of our comeback kids as teenagers.

In Manchester By the Sea, the upcoming film from writer/director Kenneth Lonergan, Casey Affleck plays a man haunted by a tragedy in his past who then has to return to his hometown after his brother’s untimely death, leaving him with a fatherless teenage nephew to deal with. That nephew, played by Lucas Hedges, might not look familiar to you, and if he doesn’t, that means you were one of the unfortunate many who never watched NBC’s mini-series The Slap. Yes, the one that turned Zachary Quinto slapping one particularly rotten little tot into a federal damn case that lasted for weeks. If you did watch, you may recall that there was a subplot involving the babysitter for one of the central couples and her closeted gay bestie, who it turned out was in possession of some very important information regarding the titular slap (you guys, The Slap was so, so bad). Hedges’ parts of The Slap weren’t especially bad (in fact, he was quite good on the show), but every time the show cut to the teens, it felt like the show actively stalling for more time, so it was hard not to see the teens and not just scream GET ON WITH IT!

But here’s the great and unexpected thing: turns out, Lucas Hedges is a phenomenal little actor, who gives a performance that is in many ways the secret weapon of Manchester By the Sea. Casey Affleck in the lead role has gotten the lion’s share of raves, and he’s going to get an Oscar nomination, and both of those things are well-deserved, but that’s not a surprise. Casey Affleck is a great actor, and if Manchester By the Sea was going to be any good, Affleck was going to have to be great. Similarly, Michelle Williams has been lauded for her time-delayed explosion of a performance in the film’s final third. But the role of the teen boy is a role that even great movies either fumble or don’t care enough about to do right, or even interestingly; but Lonergan and Hedges team up to create a character who is surprising, who defies the trajectory we’d expect of a teen whose dad had just died and whose central conflict is with an uncle who wants to take him to live in Quincy. Hedges plays this teen as a self-reflective mixture of cockiness, kindness, vulnerability, and fear that feel so much more like an actual person than a role like this ever gets. He wisely never lets whatever emotion Patrick is feeling at the time crowd out all the other ones, with the important and notable exception of a panic attack scene that’s as visceral as anything Affleck delivers in his comparatively showier performance. In a just world, Hedges would be on his way to an Oscar nomination, earning the ultimate comeback narrative, because this kid survived The Slap.

It’s not just Hedges, though. Take a look around at the young-actors landscape and you’ll see that some of our most promising bright lights are survivors of some of TV’s most reviled teen storylines.

• Morgan Saylor played Dana Brody on Homeland, to a chorus of boos that got louder with every passing episode. Dana’s storylines were maddening, always at odds with the version of the show that audiences wanted to see, to the point where “Dana Brody” became shorthand for “TV teen who is ruining an otherwise good show.” Cut to 2016, with Dana (and all of the Brodys) well finished on Homeland, and Morgan Saylor is delivering a performance in the indie film White Girl that should open a lot of doors for her. It’s a performance that the Los Angeles Times‘ Justin Chang called “mesmerizing, even heroic, in its utter refusal of the audience’s sympathy.” Saylor won’t end up in the Oscar race — though in the good old days when the Indie Spirits were more indie, she might’ve had a shot there — but all of a sudden, she’s found a way out from Dana’s dark cloud.
• Timothee Chalamet got caught up in Homeland‘s worst Dana Brody storyline, when he was cast as Dana’s boyfriend who hit the homeless person with his car. It was the worst of Homeland by a mile, and by all rights the sight of Chalamet should have sent viewers running for the rest of his career BUT, with a few years difference, he shows up in the indie dramady Miss Stevens opposite Lily Rabe and delivers a wounded live-wire of a performance that, while very showy, makes me want to see him in easily six more movies. Miss Stevens went really under the radar over the summer, though, so hopefully Hollywood seeks this one out and gets onboard.
• Emory Cohen is the leader of this particular pack, after playing the singularly loathsome Leo on NBC’s Smash. While his subsequent performance in The Place Beyond the Pines divided critics between those who saw him as an overly affected try-hard of an actor and those who were mesmerized by his method-y performance. More agreed-upon was Cohen’s turn in last year’s Brooklyn as a sweet Italian dreamboat of a husband for Saoirse Ronan.
• Makenzie Leigh was the other half of The Slap‘s teen storyline, and while she’s easily the least of this quintet in terms of what she’s shown us on screen thus far, she’s got a featured role in Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk that should give her a few more chances to impress in the future.

Of these five, only Hedges has a real shot at any kind of Oscar attention this year — and it’s a bit of a longshot at that — but the talent on display just goes to show that TV’s shitty teens shouldn’t be disregarded entirely. Just, you know, while they’re on TV.