There is no doubt that Austinite Matthew McConaughey is having a very good year. After a killer performance as Ron Woodroof in 2013's Dallas Buyers Club, McConaughey scored an Academy Award for Best Actor in March. Thursday morning, the 2014 Emmy Awards announced McConaughey's nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his critically acclaimed turn as Rust Cohle on True Detective.
Though he's up against some steep competition including Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad, Jon Hamm for Mad Men and even his own True Detective co-star Woody Harrelson, many critics are already putting the odds on McConaughey to take home the trophy on August 25. If he does, he will make history as the first man to win a best actor Oscar and Emmy in the same year. That's right, Wooderson could make acting history.
Though he will be the first actor to do so, McConaughey joins an elite club of actresses who have pulled the Oscar/Emmy one-two punch. Liza Minnelli (Cabaret and Liza with a "Z" in 1973) and Helen Hunt (As Good As It Gets and Mad About You in 1998) have also pulled off the feat. (Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep have come close. Both have been nominated for an Oscar and an Emmy in the same year, but neither won both awards.)
There has been one man to earn both an Academy Award and an Emmy in the same year, albeit not for acting. Bob Fosse earned both awards for directing, winning in 1973 alongside Minnelli for Cabaret and Liza with a "Z."
Robert Pattinson and Zendaya will be seen together a lot at the movies in 2026, with mega-films like The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three coming out later in the year. But fans can get a much more intimate look at the two stars in a film that offers a unique take on relationship struggles, The Drama.
Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are a New York couple who are engaged to be married. After a quick-but-effective montage of their courtship, the story joins them as they are just days away from their wedding. As they get all the details like music, flowers, and food finalized, a visit to the caterer with married friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie) proves fateful.
A few too many drinks leads to each member of the group deciding to divulge the worst thing they’ve ever done. While each story is slightly shocking, Emma’s takes the cake, so much so that Charlie starts to question their relationship. As they get closer to the wedding date, Charlie finds it increasingly difficult to get beyond Emma’s revelation, with each real or imagined conversation threatening to derail their previously tight bond.
Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, the film is provocative, funny, and cringey as it tries to get to the center of human dynamics. Charlie, Rachel, and Mike have starkly different reactions to Emma’s story, and the way those play out over the course of the film provides, well, the drama. The harder Charlie tries to justify Emma’s past, the more his underlying feelings start to eat at him, causing friction not just between him and Emma, but in other parts of his life, as well.
Strangely, especially for a character played by Zendaya, Emma recedes more than expected. Her explanations for her previous actions are timid at best, and she mostly seems to be waiting for Charlie to forgive her instead of questioning why she needs forgiveness. Borgli favors the male side of the equation, and in so doing he doesn’t dig as deep into the root of the issue as he could have.
Still, the downward spiral at the center of the story has a propulsive nature to it, and each successive step proves to be both hard to watch and impossible to turn away from. It also helps that Borgli manages the tone well, keeping interactions between characters relatively light so that the film doesn’t turn into one like Marriage Story.
Pattinson, who gets to use his own British accent for once, put on an interesting performance that is much better than his last two roles in Mickey 17 and Die My Love. He has good chemistry with Zendaya, who manages to shine despite being laden with a role that doesn’t play entirely to her strengths. Haim and Athie do good work in small roles, while Hailey Grace and Hannah Gross make an impact in brief appearances.
The situation in which Emma and Charlie find themselves in The Drama is not one to be wished on anyone, but it’s presented well by Borgli, keeping tensions high for the bulk of the film. Despite the two main characters not beinggiven completely equal footing, the story finds a way to get to a satisfactory ending.
