There’s an almighty performance super-powering HBO’s mysteriously handled TV movie The Great Lillian Hall, an elegant Broadway-set drama blessed with an all-consuming Jessica Lange. It’s her first film lead since 2006 (even before then it was in 1998) and it’s one that almost wasn’t hers to have. It had originally been announced in 2021 as Places, Please, with Meryl Streep headlining, an actor who has swallowed up the few meaty roles for older women in Hollywood, a sign not of her rapaciousness, of course, but of an industry’s dire lack. More roles have appeared at a glacial pace but mostly in an episodic format, a world that’s allowed Lange a route back to the limelight.
Her work with Ryan Murphy has mostly been more suited for memes than awards (although her time in the American Horror Story trenches was rewarded with the role of Joan Crawford in the first season of Feud) but it’s still been fruitful, and a delicious, consistent reminder of just what a fantastic, and fun, actor Lange is. The past few years have also seen her return to the stage, most recently in the decade-spanning family drama Mother Play, which scored her a Tony nomination after she won in 2016. Her role here might, and should, vault her into the Emmys race, the film given a last-minute release on the last day of eligibility after a surprise announcement just weeks ago.
