Merritt Wever

Merritt Wever was a teenager when she played Momo in the 1998 ensemble comedy Strike!, and for the decade after that she worked the way most New York actors do, in other people's films, in parts with two scenes and no arc. Signs, Michael Clayton, Into the Wild, The Messenger, Greenberg. None of them are performances anyone remembers, which is not a criticism of her so much as a description of the job.

What she can do that almost nobody else can is talk badly on purpose. Wever stalls, doubles back, starts a sentence she cannot finish and abandons it, and the effect is not cute, it is a person thinking in real time while being watched. Zoey Barkow on Nurse Jackie, from 2009, is built entirely out of that. Then Godless in 2017 took the instrument away: Mary Agnes is flat, terse and wastes nothing, and Wever is just as good with the tap closed. Detective Karen Duvall in Unbelievable sits between the two, a competent woman whose warmth keeps leaking through the procedure.

She has two Primetime Emmys, one in a comedy category and one for a miniseries or a movie. The films have got better as a result, though they still tend to use her in single memorable scenes rather than across a whole picture: Annie in Birdman, Cassie in Marriage Story, Roberta in Welcome to Marwen, Karlene Faith in Charlie Says. Recent television, RUN, Tiny Beautiful Things, Severance, has been more willing to hand her the lead and let her hold it.