2. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Jaime Lannister
On paper, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau had the hardest job this season. Simply put, he had to make us feel for a smug dick. Scratch that the smuggest dick. The Jaime Lannister of season one and two were supposed to be utterly contemptible, and a real contradiction in terms. After all, here we have a man who looks like a knight and fights like a knight, but acts like anything but. It was made very clear from the start that this was a man who deserved your contempt when he threw a ten-year-old boy out a window theres no coming back from that. Yet Coster-Waldau has managed the impossible. While before we could find Jaime entertaining when fired out sardonic quips, we could never truly be on his side. Yet this season, he went through a narrative arc no-one else has gone through yet in Game of Thrones he found redemption. Understandably, hes still got a long way to go to make up for his past crimes, but hes well on his way, and the fact were actually happy for him marks Coster-Waldau out as an excellent actor. What makes the performance even better is that Coster-Waldau was imbuing Jaime with the correct sense of honour even before he got his hand chopped off. He managed to find the correct balance between actually caring for Brienne and wanting to be seen as cocky, absolutely nailing every character beat along the way. Yet what put him head and shoulders above most of the cast was
the bathtub scene it was a monologue so powerful, so sincere and so emotionally charged that if you werent even slightly moved by it, I think you need to check where your heart is. Frankly, if Coster-Waldau isnt on the Emmy nominations list for this episode alone, Ill be astounded.