With the Emmys set to announce their nominees for the 2025-2026 television season on Wednesday, the big winners are likely Apple’s Widow’s Bay and Shrinking, HBO’s The Pitt and Hacks, and Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building and Paradise. But one big one could be a former A-List actress that hasn’t found herself as a true award player in decades, as Michelle Pfeiffer’s 2026 could land her an Emmy nomination in both drama and comedy.
Pfeiffer, of course, landed back-to-back Academy Award nominations in the 1980s for Dangerous Liaisons and The Fabulous Baker Boys, as well as a nomination in 1992 for Love Field, the same year she starred as Catwoman in Batman Returns. Pfieffer’s run in the ‘80s after he breakout opposite Al Pacino in Scarface made her one of the most bankable actresses of all-time for a fifteen year window. Following a Golden Globe nominaton for Scorsese’s Age of Innocence, Pfeiffer’s career hit a major dryspell in the late ‘90s and heading into the 2000s, and she disappeared from awards contenders entirely outside of The Wizard of Lies, a 2017 HBO film opposite Robert De Niro that landed her the first Emmy nomination of her career for portraying Ruth Madoff. Outside of a Showtime miniseries that cast her as First Lady Betty Ford, Pfeiffer had never starred in a major television show until 2026, and 2026 was pretty good to her.
The first of the projects is a television show called The Madison. There was a lot of apprehension surrounding this show initially, factoring in the Taylor Sheridan of it all. But one of Sheridan’s final projects before leaving Paramount for NBCUniversal is less Yellowstone rehash, and more of him using the scenic landscape to explore the internal. With an ensemble cast led by Pfeiffer, her Tequila Sunrise co-star Kurt Russell, and Suits star Patrick J. Adams, the three main actors anchor a show that otherwise would be tedious due to the clear inexperience of the remainder of its cast. But armed with Russell’s endless charm that’s made him a successful leading man for fifty years, it’s Pfeiffer who uses Russell’s likability to truly shine.
That isn’t to say she isn’t likable, in fact, she might be the only likable character on the show that’s alive for the entirety of it. But the way that The Madison tells its story is that the couple, which has a life they refuse to leave back in Manhattan because of Pfeiffer’s apprehension, because it wouldn’t be a Sheridan show without the ‘big city=bad’ trope, spend time away from each other due to Russell’s love of the frontier. When Russell’s character dies in a plane crash with his brother, it forces Pfeiffer to go to the one area her husband always begged her to go to. It’s there where Pfeiffer realizes the one thing in her life she loved more than anything else is no longer with her, and that she could’ve shared his favorite place with him. While she’s there, she remembers every phone call from every night over the last 30 years of him telling her what she’s missing, allowing the audience to get to know the Preston character and how much the Stacy character adored him.
While this show gets a tad soapy at times, Pfeiffer truly shines as a grieving widow alongside her family, her two kids, two grandkids, and son-in-law that never really had a fleshed out relationship with the patriarch of the family because of their upbringing. That particular story thread leads to one of the best scenes of Pfeiffer’s career as she realizes her grandchildren are being raised the same way that she messed up raising her children, sparking an argument with her daughter. However, the best scenes are in the hour-long pilot as she finds out that her husband has passed away and she has to identify his body, as Pfeiffer hits a range of emotions that evoke similar feeling within the viewer, especially physically in the former scene as her character loses all train of thought in the middle of the restaurant.
But there’s also some really strong scenes opposite Will Arnett, the therapist that helps her grieve. The main issue with Sheridan’s brand of television is that there’s traditionally so many contrived plotlines going on at once, as scene in the Yellowstone universe or Tulsa King, and they all kind of wrap up without the stakes being met so he can set up the next season. Without that brand of show, Sheridan allowed the Madison to develop its characters to a richer degree, using the crayons to color a script that show why he was once the most sought after screenwriter in Hollywood after his Oscar nomination for Hell or Highwater, even if the last ten years have led people to figure about the skill he possesses.
The magnetism found within the sorrow Pfeiffer brings across the six episodes The Madison should be more than enough to garner a nomination for Best Actress in a Drama Series, though it is one of the toughest categories to get into. Rhea Seehorn is not only a nomination lock, but the likely winner for her role in Pluribus. The television academy might feel the need to nominate Zendaya for Euphoria, considering it is the last time they’ll have the opportunity to do so. Carrie Coon in The Gilded Age and Keri Russell in The Diplomat are always safe bets at this point in their run, which leaves one spot remaining between Pfeiffer, Jennifer Aniston, Kathy Bates, and Chase Infiniti. The Testaments likely didn’t get enough coverage to break through the noise, ruling Infiniti out, leaving the three Hollywood veterans. While it’ll likely go to Aniston or Bates, it doesn’t feel like The Morning Show or Matlock really gave either actress anything new to do, whereas Pfeiffer shined in something that hasn’t already been nominated for what they’re doing. It’ll likely be Bates, considering she is one of the greatest actresses of all-time, and she seems to be the priority of a Paramount regime that doesn’t have a large campaign division anymore.
But for Pfeiffer, she’ll still likely hear her name called tomorrow because as good as she is in The Madison, she’s even better in Apple’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, and it’s a significantly better show around her to boot. Whereas with The Madison, Pfeiffer is the only reason the show works and will be it’s sole nomination if she’s an Emmy morning surprise, Margo’s going to clean up. You can read a deeper review I’ve written on the show here, as it explores a deeper connection to professional wrestling that truly understands the industry.
But Pfeiffer’s role as a mother in Margo is completely different than the role as a mother in the Madison. Whereas Pfeiffer’s character was a wealthy socialite forced to grieve the death of her husband, here Pfeiffer’s character is a far more outwardly flawed individual, a former Hooter’s waitress that was knocked up during an affair with a professional wrestler, forced to watch her daughter make the same mistakes she did with her married college professor. There’s a physical transformation within the look of Pfieffer for Margo that voters always love, but the timing of Pfeiffer is what really stands out amongst the material she has to work with. From an acting perspective, acting opposite Elle Fanning who’s coming off of her first Academy Award nomination for Sentimental Value, Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman, and Nick Offerman, who’s one of the best character actors in the world, Pfeiffer holds her own the entire time. But it’s her scenes with the secondary characters, specifically the always terrific Marcia Gay Harden who portrays the other grandmother of her grandchild, and Greg Kinnear, who plays her husband, that allow Pfeiffer to really shine. As the Shyanne character’s adventurous past is a big part of the present day dynamic, it’s Kenny (Kinnear) that keeps the party girl grounded as a devout episcopalian. The dynamic of how she feels obligated to justify her life to Kenny provides some of the funniest scenes in the show. But the most well-acted scene in the show comes from her wedding episode in Vegas, as that’s when she finds out that Margo is using OnlyFans to make money to keep a roof over her head. The ensuing argument that points out the hypocrisy of Shyanne’s background within the judgement of Margo’s occupation provides some of the most scintillating television of the year.
With seven nominees in this category, there’s also more room to get in. Jessica Williams for Shrinking, who should win, by the way, is a lock, as is likely winner Hannah Einbinder for Hacks. Kate O’Flynn in Widow’s Bay is likely going to show up. Other than that, it’ll be two Abbott Elementary actresses (likely Sheryl Lee Ralph and Janelle James), and then probably another actress from Hacks. When the category itself is top heavy from shows, voters tend to want to spread the love around, and Pfeiffer is a beloved industry vet in one of the big players of the year with a clear path to the nomination.
We have Pfeiffer getting one nomination, but there’s a chance she can land both. Regardless, for an actress who is far from her peak, to score a big role that has awards buzz in two separate television shows in the same year may be exactly what she needs for a late-career renaissance, and the ability is still there.
The Madison can be streamed on Paramount+, while Margo’s Got Money Troubles can be found AppleTV.
Jameus Mooney is an entertainment writer for Comicbook Clique, having covered the entertainment industry for years. You can follow him on Twitter here, and Letterboxd here. You can also listen to his horror podcast, The 2:17 Horror Podcast, at the DeathArts XIII YouTube channel.