It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than Tom Pelphrey’s Emmy Win

2 min readI don’t need to wait for the Emmys to wrap up tonight to tell you this: nothing will make me happier than Tom Pelphrey’s win for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Task. And I love myself some Dr. Robby.It’s not just that he deserved the trophy, even battling the likes of Shawn Hatosy, Billy Crudup, and Carlos Manuel Vesga. The New Jersey native turned Robbie Prendergrast into one of the best TV antagonists (if you can even call him that) in recent memory, playing the character with a level of heart that poured through the screen.It’s not even that this marks an overdue trophy for the man. He was nominated in 2022 for his turn in Ozark but didn’t win. I could go on about his underrated performance in Outer Range. But more than that, it’s this: I’ve interviewed a lot of people for this job, and—just as a man, let alone what he won that trophy for—you won’t find much better than Tom Pelphrey.“I thank God for my life and my sobriety,” he said in his speech on Monday night. “I thank my family and my friends for all your love and support all these years, from Emmys to black box theaters and everything in between.”I sat down with the forty-four-year-old Pelphrey just over a year ago now—before Task’s debut last fall. He talked about life with his fiancée, the actress Kaley Cuoco, his New York Giants, and why the script for Task blew him away. He was also just beginning to talk about his sobriety for the first time. Pelphrey was just about to mark twelve years of sobriety, and—although he was just beginning to find the right words to tell his story at the time—he clearly knew what opening up would mean to anyone following him. I’m glad he did.“It's like a deep surrendering in many ways of the things that I thought I was in control of, good or bad,” he told me. “The peace that came with that was instant confirmation that that was the right idea.”My only complaint? It’s that Pelphrey won’t have the chance to defend his trophy—as far as Task goes, at least. I can’t wait to see what he does next.