When the third season of Ozark arrived in March 2020, plunging locked-down audiences back into the blistering, blood-spattered lives of the Byrde family, the thriller was already well established as one of Netflix’s biggest ever hits. Critics couldn’t get enough of this normal family who broke bad, and the show, pitch-black and visually sumptuous, was an awards darling from the off. Then, Tom Pelphrey entered the scene as Ben, the bipolar brother of Laura Linney’s Wendy. The actor was a relative unknown, but he portrayed Ben’s inner turmoil with such staggering realism that Ozark was elevated from a brilliant series to a full-on streaming phenomenon.
“Everybody and their mother just kept promising me that I would be nominated for everything,” says Pelphrey, letting out a big whoop of laughter. But he wasn’t.
