‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ could take same path to Emmys that ‘Wild’ took to Oscars

You may not readily group Cheryl Strayed with Elizabeth II, Elvis Presley or Annie Wilkes, but the self-help author could soon have at least one thing in common with them. If Kathryn Hahn (“Tiny Beautiful Things”) receives an Emmy nomination for playing a version of the role that nabbed Reese Witherspoon (“Wild”) an Oscar bid in 2015, Strayed will join that list of real and fictional personas whose depictions have garnered multiple actors awards recognition across media.

Two-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever could also crash the Best Movie/Limited Series Supporting Actress race for playing Strayed’s mother, a role that earned Laura Dern her second Oscar nomination (she would go on to win five years later for “Marriage Story,” which co-stars Wever). According to Gold Derby’s Emmy odds, the two are safer bets than the show itself, which has yet to crack the Limited Series top 10. 

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As executive producer Liz Tigelaar (Witherspoon and Dern co-produce) puts it, “Tiny Beautiful Things” projects one of the lives Strayed could’ve led had she never hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and become the best-selling author of a memoir, inspiring some to call it “Wild’s” “multiverse expansion.” Though there are a few biographical differences – the woman we meet is named Clare and works in a retirement home – both “Wild,” set two decades earlier, and this revisionary sequel depict its subject’s life before she embarked on the PCT, particularly the journey through college shared with her mother. The series also draws from Jean-Marc Vallée’s film in its use of non-linear, expressionistic flashbacks. 

Clare is personally and professionally spiralling. Her husband (Quentin Plair) is considering a divorce after learning she’s been emptying their daughter’s (Tanzyn Crawford) college fund to loan her brother money, a misunderstanding at work escalates into a formal investigation, and she is no closer to healing from her mother’s death than the younger character we meet in “Wild” (played here by Sarah Pidgeon). After a chance encounter, she finds renewed purpose in answering letters sent to the Rumpus’ “Dear Sugar” advice section. One of them is from a man who can’t choose between two paths he knows will bring him equal happiness despite their concomitant tradeoffs. Clare metareferentially writes back, “I’ll never know the life I didn’t choose, and neither will you. We’ll only know that whatever that sister-life was, it was important and beautiful. And not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There is nothing to do but salute her from the shore” (though in Strayed’s case, of course, there’s longform television).

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There are a couple more winks to the concept of exploring alternate strands of the Cherylverse, such as Clare exasperatedly asking her daughter why anyone would ever take a bus to Reno, unaware that she takes the very same ride in a “sister life” to avoid a snow-covered segment along her 1,200-mile trek through the Pacific Northwest. 

“Tiny Beautiful Things” currently holds a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with many critics calling Hahn, whose “made fortysomething meltdowns her métier” (Rachel Syme, The New Yorker), the chief reason you should watch the eight-part, roughly four-hour drama. She previously competed for “Transparent” (2017) and “WandaVision” (2021) and is currently ranked 10th in Best Movie/Limited Series Actress. Wever, ranked eighth in her category and rising, won for “Nurse Jackie” on her second nomination (2013) and prevailed again with Netflix’s “Godless” (2018). 

For Strayed, all trails could lead to the same place. Should Hahn and Wever contend without the show appearing in any other categories, “Tiny Beautiful Things” will repeat “Wild’s” two Oscar nominations at the Emmys. 

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