San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Bay Area actors making it big on small screen
Big TV stars emerge from the Bay Area with some regularity. The most recent example is Oakland’s Zendaya, who recently won her second Emmy Award for her performance on HBO’s “Euphoria.”
Much rarer is the phenomenon of a whole cluster of actors with Northern California ties delivering awards-nominated or otherwise breakout performances in the same year. But it has happened in 2022, with these five actors.
D’Arcy Carden, ‘A League of Their Own’
The San Ramon Valley High School graduate continually found new ways to make Janet, the artificial-intelligence-powered afterlife assistant on NBC’s “The Good Place,” fresh and surprising; she drew her first Emmy nomination in that sitcom’s fourth and final season. A veteran of the Upright Citizens’ Brigade Theatre, Carden also brought exquisite comic timing to her recurring role as Natalie, an eager acting student and people pleaser, on the HBO dark comedy “Barry.”
Neither of these highly entertaining Carden performances suggested the soulfulness and wisdom she would invest in Greta, the glamorous, closeted World War II-era professional baseball player she portrays in “A League of Their Own.” Released in August, Prime Video’s super-gay series reboot of the 1992 film finally gives Carden a high-profile vehicle to show the scope of her acting skills and abundant charisma.
Greta’s wisdom, as Carden’s performance reveals, sadly was born from the doomed nature of most gay relationships in the 1940s. It threatens to harden into cynicism before Greta meets teammate Carson (series co-creator and star Abbi Jacobson). As the pair grow closer, Carden lets vulnerabilities seep in; Greta moves from enticing yet remote to yearning and open, while mostly maintaining a perfect ’40s red lip.
“A League of Their Own” (TV-MA) is streaming on Prime Video.
Colman Domingo, ‘Euphoria’
Domingo developed the spectacular range that has become his trademark in the 1990s and early 2000s on Bay Area stages, including at Theatre Rhinoceros, Berkeley Rep and Cal Shakes.
Domingo’s slow-build screen career has exploded over the past few years. A regular on AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead,” Domingo appeared in the much-hyped theatrical films “Candyman” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and drew an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his ferociously entitled sex trafficker character in the modestly budgeted “Zola.”
In early 2022, Colman returned to one of his best-drawn screen characters to date — recovering addict Ali, the Narcotics Anonymous sponsor of teen addict Rue (Zendaya), on the second season of HBO’s “Euphoria.” As Ali, Domingo cuts through the slick camera work and shock-value moments to emerge as a roadtested voice of reason. A committed truth teller, who is frank about his own volatile past and the horrors that await Rue if she keeps using, Ali is the only adult on the show paying full attention. Domingo on Sunday, Sept. 4, won a welldeserved 2022 Creative Arts Emmy for outstanding guest actor in a drama series for his “Euphoria” performance.
“Euphoria” season two (TV-MA) is available on HBO on demand and streaming on HBO Max.
Ginger Gonzaga, ‘She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’
A graduate of Modesto’s Fred C. Beyer High School, Gonzaga is one of those actors you are happy to see again, even if you can’t quite remember where you saw them before. With Gonzaga, it could be one of many short-lived shows: ABC’s “Mixology,” HBO’s “Togetherness,” Showtime’s “I’m Dying Up Here.”
Credit all that experience, or her training as an improviser, but Gonzaga finds her comic footing in “She-Hulk” a few episodes before the show itself does. Playing Nikki, paralegal and best friend to Jen Walters/ She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany), Gonzaga breezed confidently into episode one of the Marvel Studios sitcom, which premiered in August on Disney+.
She-Hulk’s No. 1 fan, Nikki encourages Jen to work her green magic in the courtroom and on dating sites. More fashionable, socially adept and generally savvier than Jen, Nikki flips the script on the
usual sidekick role. But we want Gonzaga to lead her own sitcom: I’d watch a spin-off consisting of nothing but Nikki filing cases at the county courthouse.
“She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” (TV-14) is available on Disney+.
Myha’la Herrold, ‘Industry’
Summer 2022 offered two intense workplace dramas with brilliant, highly flawed protagonists: Hulu’s Chicago restaurant-set “The Bear” and HBO’s London high-finance-world-set “Industry.” Now in its second — superior to the first — season, “Industry” deserves to be a word-of-mouth sensation just like “The Bear.” This is in large part due to a subtle, sympathetic lead performance by Herrold, a graduate of San Jose’s Archbishop Mitty High School, who plays the outwardly composed, wildly impulsive young American banker Harper Stern.
Harper’s extracurricular sex and drug escapades play as unsurprising for an early 20s woman in a high-stress, highincome job surrounded by other young people in the same circumstance. Herrold really sells the performance when Harper is at work; her always alert eyes, watching upticks and downturns of client stocks on a screen, register alarm or fear before she remembers to mask her emotions. The way Herrold’s spine straightens more with every potential screw-up says more about how Harper was raised than Harper’s dismissive remarks about her controlling mother.
A San Jose Children’s Musical Theater alum who toured with the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon,” Herrold also appears in the bigscreen horror comedy “Bodies Bodies Bodies” and seems destined for a big career. We hope the next stop is “Industry” season 3, although HBO has yet to announce the show’s renewal.
“Industry” (TV-MA) airs at 9 p.m. Mondays on HBO through Sept. 19 and streams on HBO Max.
Adam Scott, ‘Severance’
Before his Emmy-nominated lead performance in the 2022 Apple TV+ sci-fi series “Severance,” the Santa Cruz native was best known as the most serious guy on two mostly goofy shows, Starz’s “Party Down” and NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.” Scott showed the effort it took for his restless catering waiter “Party” character, Henry, and his “Parks” bureaucrat, Ben, to express emotions; he seemed to choke on them a bit before getting them out.
Scott’s dramatic role in “Severance” as Mark, a man so gravely unhappy with his feelings that he undergoes a medical procedure to shut them off for most of the day, therefore does not seem a huge leap. But Scott’s performance is still remarkable in its deft navigation of Mark’s slow-dawning realization, when fully conscious and off the clock from the cultlike Lumon Industries, that his life might have purpose after all.
“Severance” season one (TV-MA) is available to stream on Apple TV+.