The Performer of the Week: Idris Elba
THE PERFORMER | Idris Elba
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THE SHOW | Apple TV+’s Hijack
THE EPISODE | “Not Responding” (July 12, 2023)
THE PERFORMANCE | Elba has been so effective, demanding your attention in every frame, in the role of Sam Nelson, an elite corporate negotiator who has found himself trying to mediate a passenger plane hijacking. But in the real-time thriller’s latest episode, he added a little something extra.
Episode 4 saw Sam zip-tied in the galley after falling shy in his extremely calculated bid to get the drop on hijacker Terry. When the younger male hijacker (Lewis, played by Jack McMullen) came back to the galley to get treatment for a gnarlier-than-he-cared-to-admit stab wound, Sam saw an opportunity to curry some favor with a captor, but also to possibly save a man’s life.
“I’ve got a son your age…,” Sam started, explaining why he cared about Lewis’ welfare. And because Elba imbued Sam’s words with so much sincerity, and vulnerability, it’s easy to see why Lewis would let him be untethered from the aft door handle, to offer flight attendant Deevia assistance in wrapping the gushing wound.
When Lewis posited that Sam was only helping in order to coax information out of him (such as, whoops, Terry’s name!), Sam plainly stated, “I just want to get home and see my family. See my son. See his mum…. Anything else would be a lie.”
Despite all the first aid wrap in the world, Lewis’ condition took a turn. But Sam wouldn’t let the lad accept death so easy. “As soon as you start talking like that, your body starts believing it,” Sam counseled, and the intensity in Elba’s face — especially when he then rallied another hijacker to drum up a doctor — made clear his intention to save Lewis’ life.
Most moving was the sequence in which Sam used Lewis’ phone to, yes, sneak a message to estranged wife Marsha back in London, but also to let the young man speak to his mother. A final goodbye, if it comes to it. Elba’s composure throughout, as Lewis nearly blubbered to Mum, was the definition of “gentle giant.”
With the eventual help of a doctor on board, followed by a ballpoint pen thoracostomy, Sam helped Lewis to live another day. Then, explaining to hijacker Jamie the phone call he helped make: “Every son needs their mother, right?”
HONORABLE MENTION: Alejandro Hernandez
From carrying on an entire conversation with a body slung across his shoulder to flashing inexplicably hilarious looks as everything turned to sh–, The Horror of Dolores Roach’s Alejandro Hernandez injected comedy into his character’s dramatic downfall. In the Season 1 finale, as dead bodies piled and murders mounted, Hernandez’s Luis let air into the room with pithy one-liners about weed, love and his self-identification as a pacifist despite being, ya know, a cannibal. And somehow, the comedy never felt cartoonish as Hernandez effectively guided us through his character’s naive confidence and childish logic. But it wasn’t all just fun and murder. Luis’ desperate pleas for Dolores to stay with him in the episode’s final moments kept the show’s emotional backbone intact. Plus, that frenzied reaction to burning his face off followed by the slow crumble to the ground? The man knows how to play dead!
HONORABLE MENTION: Sam Richardson
The pressure was on for The Afterparty‘s Aniq when he prepared to meet Zoe’s parents at a wedding weekend gone horribly wrong. Dead groom aside, the premiere gave his portrayer Sam Richardson the perfect setting to revel in social ineptitude and faux pas, as his character banged up Feng’s new truck, spat camel’s milk on the mother of the bride and crawled under tables looking for a lost lizard. Richardson’s physical comedy and verbal diarrhea raised the cringe level to 11 and we ate it up faster than a slice of decadent wedding cake. It took just minutes for the actor to win us over, and with his wide eyes and horrified facial expressions, Richardson’s displayed dorkiness kept us LOLing right on through the last dance.
HONORABLE MENTION: Lola Tung
The Summer I Turned Pretty’s return this week delivered multiple heartbreaks for Belly that her portrayer Lola Tung conveyed with the emotional sensitivity and intensity of a teenager on the cusp of adulthood, yet too young to fully comprehend such loss. In Belly’s prom-set breakup with her boyfriend Conrad, Tung was every bit the brokenhearted teenage girl watching her first love slip through her fingers, the pain in her eyes a crushing sight. Then Belly suffered an even bigger, more permanent loss when Susannah died. Throughout the funeral, Tung deftly portrayed what it feels like when the unimaginable happens: how helpless one feels, and how one desperately tries to stay strong for others. Belly lost a lot in Episode 3, while Tung found painful and powerful ways to break our hearts.
Which performance(s) knocked your socks off this week? Tell us in the comments!
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