One year after Ray Liotta received a posthumous Best TV Movie/Limited Series Supporting Actor Emmy notice for “Black Bird,” departed performer Treat Williams is officially up for the same prize. If he is ultimately honored for his fact-based turn on “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans,” he will break new ground as the first deceased limited series acting winner in TV academy history.
Williams, who died last June at age 71, made his final screen appearance as CBS executive William S. Paley on the eight-part second iteration of FX’s “Feud.” The former nominee for 1996’s “The Late Shift” shares the honor of being recognized for the new season of said anthology series with fellow Emmy veteran Diane Lane and first-timers Naomi Watts and Tom Hollander.
Williams is only the fifth deceased performer to ever score an Emmy bid for a miniseries, after supporting actors Jack Hawkins (“QB VII,” 1975), Richard Burton (“Ellis Island,” 1985), and Liotta and lead Stanley Baker (“How Green Was My Valley,” 1977). The last posthumous Emmy contender for a TV movie was J.T. Walsh, who earned a bid for his supporting turn in “Hope” nearly five months after his death in 1998. The only supporting male who has posthumously won an Emmy for any non-continuing program is David Burns, who was given the now-defunct Best Supporting Actor in a Drama award for the 1971 special “The Price.”
The other three actors who have achieved post-death Emmy wins for telefilms are supporting player Diana Hyland (“The Boy in the Plastic Bubble,” 1977) and leads Ingrid Bergman (“A Woman Called Golda,” 1982) and Raul Julia (“The Burning Season,” 1995). Bergman was still alive at the time of her nomination but died three weeks prior to the corresponding ceremony.
In addition to posthumous Best Character Voice-Over champion Chadwick Boseman (“What If…?,” 2022), Williams would also follow three actresses who were lauded after death for their work on comedy series. Alice Pearce (supporting, “Bewitched,” 1966) is the only member of this trio to have passed away before she was nominated, while Marion Lorne (supporting, “Bewitched,” 1968) and Colleen Dewhurst (guest, “Murphy Brown,” 1991) were in situations similar to Bergman’s. At this point, no deceased actor has won an Emmy for a drama series, but there have been some notable nomination examples, including Michael K. Williams (“Lovecraft Country”) in 2021.
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