WiCNet Awards: And the winner of Best Actor in Season 4 is…

…Aidan Gillen as Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish! This is Gillen’s second WiCNet Award for this season, as he previously won for Best Performance as a Politician. Gillen joins Alfie Allen and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in winning the award. Congrats Aidan!

I wrote on behalf of Gillen in that bloodbath of a poll:

Aidan Gillen gets his fair share of criticism for his ever-changing Petyr Baelish accent, but there’s no denying he understand the character he’s playing. Season 4 is a banner year for Littlefinger, too, as he slowly reveals himself to be a mastermind seemingly without equal. Gillen doesn’t even need the character’s mustache–his tone of voice, the movement of his eyes, and the way he carries himself as a quiet threat throughout the season do all the work necessary to turn Littlefinger into the mustache-twirling force of chaos he quickly proves himself to be.

After the jump, some more thoughts on Mr. Gillen…

Here’s Rowan writing about Gillen as the winner for Best Performance as a Politician:

He needs to be great because now Littlefinger is leading. He heads to the Vale to marry Lysa Arryn, and then, when it becomes impossible to rule alongside her, he kills her. But as he steps forward, he also has to start taking responsibility for his actions, instead of merely conniving in the shadows. And Gillen is ready for it. When he sits in front of the Lords Declarant, he attempts to use his typical Littlefinger wordplay to get out of it–but they’re having it. So Gillen sits and squirms in from of them, and it’s great to watch. Even as we discover that has thus-far successful plot to take power in the Seven Kingdoms is longer-term and nastier than anyone knew, we also see him at his weakest, and Gillen pulls off both sides of the character.

As I mentioned in our Small Council votes, Game of Thrones loves to build up characters, make them seem like they’ve won, only to tear to them down. That’s true for Baelish as well as Tywin Lannister, but it becomes especially interesting in Baelish’s case as he interacts with Sansa Stark, who is both the object of his desire and his biggest potential rival. Thanks to Gillen’s great performance in Season 4, I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

Hopping off what Rowan said, in the Small Council for Best Actor in Season 4, I wrote about how the show uses two-person groupings as ways to bring out the best in its actors. The pairing of Gillen/Turner actually goes back to Season 1 (an episode or two shy of being as old as the Iain Glen/Emilia Clarke dynamic that I’m so very fond of) but it’s only this season that the pairing is allowed to blossom as the narrative hits several climactic high notes in the wake of the Red Wedding. The two characters have a kind of twisted mentor/mentee relationship that’s colored by their perceptions of each other (and by their shared connection in Sansa’s mother) and you can tell Gillen and Turner really enjoy exploring those aspects of the characters. So, cheers to a rising narrative tide lifting all acting boats.

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• Published on 12/17/2014 at 10:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 12/17/2014 at 10:00 AM CDT