The inaugural Screen Awards are here, honoring the very best in TV, film, and anime. Editors, critics, and industry experts from ScreenRant, Collider, CBR and MovieWeb came together to form the Screen Awards Jury, collaboratively combing through a year’s worth of stellar entertainment to narrow each category down to just five nominees. (You can explore all the nominees over at the Awards Hub.)
As the Movies & TV Authority Editor & Critic at CBR, I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing everything the big and small screens had to offer this year—and trust me, there was no shortage of worthy contenders. Among the Best Supporting Actress in TV nominees, five exceptional scene-stealers may not have had top billing, but they lingered in our minds long after the credits rolled thanks to their unforgettable performances.
Let’s dive right in. Here are the nominees for Best Supporting Actress in TV.
Carrie Coon (The White Lotus)
Season three of The White Lotus, Mike White’s critically acclaimed HBO anthology series following guests at a luxury wellness resort, brought its signature brand of unhinged black comedy to Thailand. As with the previous seasons, the cast was stacked with icons and rising stars alike. Among the former was the incomparable Carrie Coon.
Coon plays Laurie Duffy, one-third of a lifelong friend trio whose love-hate dynamic is as uncomfortable as it is riveting. A corporate lawyer and recent divorcée, Laurie arrives at the resort alongside Jaclyn, a successful TV actress, and Kate, a country club wife. The women needle one another relentlessly, gossip behind each other’s backs, and yet remain deeply bound by shared history and affection.
Coon delivers the season’s most nuanced portrayal of this emotional contradiction, capturing how intimacy can curdle into jealousy, rivalry, and resentment without ever fully extinguishing love. The pièce de résistance comes in the finale, when the noted monologue master delivers an emotionally exposed speech that perfectly crystallizes the trio’s fraught bond in one devastating, heartfelt scene.
Coon earned an Emmy nomination for her work on The White Lotus, her third overall after previous nods for Fargo Season 3 and The Gilded Age. Prestige TV fans, however, will forever associate her with her breakout role as Nora Durst on The Leftovers, where said monologue mastery was first on display.
Erin Doherty (Adolescence)
When Erin Doherty’s Briony Ariston appears in Episode 3 of Adolescence, she is, to put it mildly, not having a good day at work. A forensic psychologist tasked with interviewing Jamie, a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a female classmate, Briony enters the series at its most harrowing point. The four-episode psychological crime drama is a devastating examination of young male violence against girls, rendered with extraordinary technical precision: Each episode famously unfolds in a single continuous take. Doherty’s episode is arguably the most intense of the series, focusing entirely on Briony’s interrogation of Jamie as she oscillates between cold detachment and emotional warmth in an effort to uncover the truth.
Doherty imbues Briony with remarkable depth, making her feel fully realized despite limited screen time. Her restraint is key: Briony maintains professional composure until the episode’s final moments, when she finally allows herself to break down in a stunning release of vulnerability. The result is a performance that grips the viewer completely, then leaves them shaken.
Doherty won an Emmy for Adolescence, following her breakout as Princess Anne in two seasons of The Crown. She also starred alongside Adolescence series creator and star Stephen Graham in A Thousand Blows.
Fiona Dourif (The Pitt)
From the moment she appears, Fiona Dourif’s Cassie McKay establishes herself as one of The Pitt’s most compelling characters. HBO’s smash-hit medical drama follows doctors through a single, hellish shift in an understaffed and overloaded Pittsburgh ER, unfolding in real time with each episode covering one hour — a 24-style conceit that lends brutal immediacy to an often oversaturated genre.
McKay initially presents as pleasant and capable, but a glimpse of an ankle monitor quickly reframes everything. As the season unfolds, it’s revealed that she’s a newly sober single mother fighting to regain custody of her son while navigating a fraught relationship with her ex and his new partner.
Dourif makes McKay instantly sympathetic, grounding her fierce sense of justice in lived-in trauma rather than saviorism. Her relentless advocacy — whether confronting a suspected trafficking case or clashing with a volatile young patient — feels earned, human, and deeply affecting. It’s a performance marked by empathy, realism, and emotional precision.
Before The Pitt, Dourif was best known for her work in the Child’s Play franchise, including Syfy’s Chucky (RIP), where she starred opposite her real-life father, Brad Dourif — who incidentally also makes a brief cameo as McKay’s father on The Pitt.
Katherine LaNasa (The Pitt)
The Pitt thrives as a true ensemble, and Katherine LaNasa’s Dana Evans is a cornerstone of its success. A charge nurse who’s spent decades in the ER, Dana is the team’s emotional anchor and de facto old guard — a no-nonsense mama bear who keeps everything running, in turn both tender and tough.
LaNasa plays Dana with sharp intelligence, dry humor, and deep compassion. She’s the one coworkers confide in during moments of crisis (like Collins’ secret pregnancy and mid-shift miscarriage), and she’s often the steady hand guiding younger doctors through chaos. Yet the performance is carefully restrained, revealing only fleeting glimpses of how much the job weighs on her.
That restraint shatters in Episode 9, when Dana becomes the victim of a violent, disgruntled patient. The shocking moment triggers a subtle but unmistakable shift, as LaNasa conveys the quiet realization that even the strongest caretakers have limits. It’s a formidable, deeply human performance.
LaNasa won an Emmy for The Pitt, following a career of memorable work on series like ER, Big Love, Longmire, and The Deuce. She also recently appeared in Daredevil: Born Again as Artemis Sledge.
Patricia Arquette (Severance)
From the moment she first drawled “Maaaark,” Severance viewers were captivated by the unnervingly chilly Harmony Cobel (aka “Mrs. Selvig”). Though Cobel was ousted from Lumon Industries at the end of Season 1, her devotion to the company — and its ideology — remained disturbingly intact. Much of the first season was clouded in mystery and unanswered questions, and while there’s still plenty of that in Season 2, Patricia Arquette gets more room to play — and more room to deepen Cobel and add nuance to her. Case in point: the spotlight episode, “Sweet Vitriol,” which sees her go back to the seaside town where she grew up and first became a Lumon devotee. It also establishes one of the series’ biggest twists to date: That Cobel was involved in the creation of the severance procedure.
Cobel spends much of the second season seemingly trying to help Mark (sorry, Maaaark) and Devon, though her true intentions still aren’t fully clear. Arquette plays her as a mystery unto herself — cool, controlled, and utterly unreadable — while allowing brief flashes of vulnerability to surface at precisely the right moments. It’s a masterclass in restraint, perfectly suited to Severance’s puzzle-box storytelling. A screen legend, Arquette won an Oscar for Boyhood and Emmys for Medium and The Act. She has also earned two Emmy nominations for Severance.
