Julianne Nicholson Might Get an Emmy for Begging for Cocaine Up Her Butt

You know Julianne Nicholson. She played four different characters across multiple iterations of the Law & Order franchise, including three seasons as a main cast member on Criminal Intent. She emerged from 2013’s star-studded August: Osage County having given the film’s best performance, no matter what Oscar voters said. But for many, it was her Emmy-winning role as Kate Winslet’s best/only friend in the 2021 HBO limited series Mare of Easttown that established Nicholson as a talent to be reckoned with.

This year saw her juggling roles across two very different TV worlds. As Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond, Nicholson gives by far the most intimidating performance on Paradise, Dan Fogelman’s apocalyptic Hulu series. The puppet master behind a small-town facsimile of America that’s established itself deep inside a mountain, Sinatra is both a grieving mother who finds purpose in funding the project and a ruthless self-made billionaire driven to corruption in an attempt to hold on to power. In a very different mode over on HBO Max, Nicholson’s been delighting Hacks audiences as Dance Mom, a substance-abusing TikTok star hired to boost Deborah Vance’s flagging late-night viewership. It’s almost hard to believe the actress ordering clandestine murders on Paradise is also demanding her managers blow cocaine up her butt on Hacks, but that’s just the kind of year Nicholson has had.

Now, Nicholson finds herself in Emmy contention for both performances (Supporting Actress in a Drama for Paradise and Guest Actress in a Comedy for Hacks), but she’s not letting the acclaim get to her head. Nor, it seems, is she facing down a gauntlet of FYC appearances — for now, anyway. “I’ve fallen off the face of the earth,” she told me after calling from her home in England earlier this week. “I said I had an interview, and my family were like, ‘With who? What for?’ So that’s where we are.”

Take me back to Mare of Easttown’s Emmy campaign. What do you remember from that time?
Mare was an interesting case because that was 2021, so there wasn’t as much going on. Nothing in person. I did some Zoom interviews. There are whole machines in these studios that are geared toward getting recognition for shows and actors and it’s like, I have to let them all know that I’m going to be fine if I don’t get nominated. What’s worse is when — this has happened before — for the Independent Spirit Awards or something, you get emails like, “I’m so sorry you did not get nominated for this thing.” It’s like, “Well, I didn’t even know that was happening. I felt fine when I woke up this morning.” So …

I didn’t know I was supposed to be feeling bad!
Exactly! Thanks for reminding me! The less attached you are from the outcome, the better.

Your competition for the Emmy in 2021 was pretty formidable, including your Mare co-star Jean Smart. From an outside perspective, a win wasn’t assured. But then you did! What do you remember from that night?
It was the first Emmys that was back in person, and there were no reps there. At these awards shows, you have a PR person leading you along, saying, “Meet this person” — you’re basically just following along like a puppy and doing what they say. This year, we all had to fend for ourselves. People revealed themselves left and right!

So there was a red carpet — with like three photographers. Maybe five. We got there and we took a picture, we didn’t think we were in any hurry, and all of a sudden it was like, “Show’s starting in 30 minutes.” So then there was a massive rush for all these actors who wanted to get their picture taken. And then people started cutting in line. The more famous people would cut in front of the less famous people. Actually, Sterling K. Brown was the voice of reason. He was literally saying “There will be no cutting. There is a line, and we will respect the line.”

People were in there elbowing each other out of the way. Keri Russell and Allison Janney were like, “Julianne, she’s nominated, she has to go, she has to go!” If you look at pictures, I look shell-shocked. I was just like, I have this fancy dress! I need to get a picture of it or no one will ever want to lend me a dress again! So I’m just sort of looking like I’ve been terrorized. And then of course we go in and then Evan Peters won, and then literally like ten minutes later, I won, which was so unexpected and so exciting.

I watched the clip last night. Is it as rude as it seems when they start playing the music during your acceptance speech? 
I thought I was only talking for like ten seconds! I thought I was being pretty concise. And then I was like, I don’t care, I have to finish. Because it was short anyway and felt important. But it is not a good feeling. You feel like you’re taking up too much time. And as a woman and as an actor who’s been trying to, like, keep moving all these decades, you’re familiar with the feeling of, You’ve taken up too much time, you’ve taken up too much space. And it’s like, No! Take this moment!

And now you’re on the nominating ballot twice this year, for both Paradise and Hacks, playing two very different versions of threats to American culture: dictatorial fascism and the rise of TikTok performers.
[Laughs.] I didn’t think of it in that specific way, but yes.

What I love about your character on Paradise is that she’s so radicalized by climate change. As individuals, most of us don’t have the capacity to do anything about it. Is that something that you brought to your performance?
I love her taking it as seriously as she does, to the point of actually, you know, building a whole new world. I love that she believes in science, for one. It speaks to her convictions and — in a jolly way of saying it — her can-do spirit.

I can’t recall too many outright villains that you played in your career. 
She was the first.

There’s a moment shortly before Sinatra gets shot in the season finale where you say to Sterling’s character, Xavier, “God, forgive me.” Ostensibly, she’s saying this for having ordered Xavier’s daughter to be kidnapped and — she thinks — killed. When you’re delivering that line, is it just about Xavier’s daughter, or are you apologizing for all the other things she’s done? 
It’s everything. It’s all fallen onto her in that moment. She’s like a shark, right? She has to keep moving. And in that moment, she’s finally forced to stop for a minute, and the weight of all of it is being brought home. With the fact that she feels like she could have been responsible for Sterling’s daughter being possibly … who knows what?

Now for Hacks, when you were prepping to play Dance Mom, did you watch a lot of TikTok? 
I went down multiple TikTok rabbit holes — and Instagram, more so, because I don’t have TikTok. It’s a wild world out there.

What sort of dance training goes into playing those scenes?
I worked with a fantastic choreographer in London named Corey Baker. He was my cheerleader from start to finish, because he was there also when we were filming, and it was great to have that sounding board. It’s more about actually learning the steps enough that you can let go of it and just act, and you’re not so in your head about what comes next.

The most indelible image of the season is when Jimmy and Kayla shove Dance Mom’s face into cocaine before she performs on Deborah’s show. How was it filming that with Paul W. Downs and Meg Stalter? What’s the approach to a scene with that degree of lunacy?
They’ve done three seasons of the show, so I know that they’re not gonna let me make a fool of myself. I could just go for it. We rehearsed the night before. They had it already loosely marked out, my character coming in, bashing against that tray full of drinks — which I literally cut my hand on the very first take. And then over to the couch. Rehearsing actually gives you more freedom because you know what the parameters are.

Watching Hacks I was thinking, This is a version of Julianne Nicholson I haven’t seen before. Does that resonate with you? 
Yes, 100 percent. I’ve been looking for more comedy in the last couple of years in particular. I love going to work and laughing. I was trying to make a concentrated effort toward more of that type of material, and it’s harder to come by because it’s not what people normally think of me for. So I leapt at the chance.

And now you’re in contention for two Emmy categories, neither of which Jean Smart is competing in.
What a relief!

Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the delivery method of Dance Mom’s cocaine. Though there was much discussion of putting the cocaine in her butt, it was ultimately put in her nose and on her face.