Matthew Rhys’ golden moment has been a long time coming

If your social media algorithm today is wall-to-wall Matthew Rhys, congratulations. that’s a lovely place to be.

The beloved Welsh actor was the toast of the Emmys yesterday, winning two lead acting gongs for his comedy series Widow’s Bay and for his performance in the Netflix miniseries The Beast in Me.

It was a historical night as Rhys became not just the first man to win two lead acting Emmys in one year, but also as the only actor to win lead awards across the trifecta of comedy, drama and limited series. He had in 2018 collected an Emmy in the lead actor drama category for The Americans.

All that gold hardware is nice but the thing to take away from Rhys’ wins is the diversity of his talent.

Those three Emmy-winning performances – as a small town mayor contending with a supernatural threat, a secret Russian agent trying to reconcile his own violence, and as a sociopathic property developer and probable wife-killer – are all wildly different. And Rhys can do it all.

The Emmys might be a culmination, but they’re not the sum of his career, nor of a public persona that oozes openness, irreverence and easy charm. There’s also a lot to love in the fact the current king of American TV is a Welshman who hails from a country of three million people.

He might be the man of the moment but, as Rhys himself said during one of his speeches yesterday, he has been a working actor for 30 years.

He has been a regular presence on American TV for two decades, where he first gained notice as one of the main characters of the 2006 five-season drama Brothers & Sisters. Even among an ensemble cast which included Sally Field, Rachel Griffiths and Calista Flockhart, Rhys was able to break through.

Certainly enough that two years after that show finished, he found himself with a role of a lifetime, as a 1980s Russian KGB agent posing as a regular American dad while carrying out espionage activities in secret.

The Americans was a highly acclaimed series and a favourite of TV critics who championed the show at every opportunity. It had the thrills of a spy story but its deeper concerns were with a family unit that had been set up as a cover – in the show, Philip and Elizabeth were matched by the KGB – but had become a real one over the years.

It was about the compromises and conflicts in a marriage that extended past the personal into the geopolitical, and how to be a good parent when you barely know who you “really” are. Rhys’ character, Philip, was also challenged by the work he continued to do while growing sceptical of his indoctrination, in contrast with Elizabeth, who dogmatically maintained her faith in the mission.

The Americans is also where he met Keri Russell, his co-star and now romantic partner. Their chemistry was palpable on screen, and it clearly seeped into their real lives. They now live in Brooklyn with their son, born 10 years ago, and two children from Russell’s first marriage.

Part of Rhys’ appeal is his relationship with Russell, two actors who work at elite levels in TV but seem to be pretty regular people. She loves a beer, and he has a passion for boating – for years he restored a wooden 1939 Wheeler, which he then ran as a charter business, ferrying passengers in New York Harbour.

The pair gaze at each other lovingly on red carpets, and joke around in interviews. This year, they were deemed the first couple of the Emmys because between them, they were nominated in five categories – he for three, which also included executive producing Widow’s Bay, and she in two, as lead actress and executive producer of The Diplomat.

Russell lost both her races, but there’s an air of inevitability (hopefully), that her win will come, and after a TV career that has spanned three memorable characters (as Felicity, as Elizabeth Jennings and now as Kate Wyler in The Diplomat), she is definitely due one.

If nothing else, surely the fact there are now four Emmys in the Rhys/Russell household, and none of them are hers, is a little awkward. He had previously said he kept his 2018 trophy in the garage and was only going to bring it out once she had one too.

After his wins, Rhys revealed backstage with his trademark self-deprecating humour, that Russell had told him that if he won both, she wasn’t going home with him.

To that he said, “Fair enough”, and when someone remarked that he was a free man for the night, he replied, “I don’t know if I’m free, lonely, maybe”.

He also joked backstage that it was going be a “rough week” for Russell as their kids had “run a book” about their chances, and Rhys had bet on himself. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know if I am, to be perfectly honest,” before adding that Russell was a class act, the real winner and whispered that he believed she would triumph next year.

There may still be hell to pay – or maybe not, maybe it was agreed upon – because he didn’t thank her in either of his acceptance speeches.

He did make mention of another great love, Wales.

“Finally to the great and good people of Wales, who were as much a nurturer as anyone else. We are a small but mighty nation. This is incredible,” and then added in Welsh, “Diolch yn fawr iawn”, which translates to thank you.

At his Welsh-speaking schools back home, where fellow countryman Ioan Gruffudd also matriculated, Rhys had participated in drama productions and eisteddfods, before going on to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

He had looked up to giants of Welsh acting talent Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton as proof that there was a path for him, and started in theatre productions at the National Theatre, The Old Vic and Gielgud.

Rhys played Welsh icon poet Dylan Thomas twice, on stage in Under Milk Wood and on film in The Edge of Love.

He also has a long-held ambition to bring the story of Welsh rebel Owain Glyndwr, who fought against the English, to the screen. Compatriot and former flatmate Michael Sheen will play the hero on stage in Owain & Henry in November, and Rhys has joked the two could maybe share the role.

Maybe now with this increased attention, Rhys has new muscles he could flex. He’s definitely not work shy, and has a massive list of credits to his name.

If you’ve already burned through Widow’s Bay, The Americans and Brothers & Sisters, and want more Rhys in your life that a stream of Instagram reels can’t satisfy, there was also his two-season turn as a film noir version of Perry Mason, a memorable guest spot in Girls, as Darcy in Pride & Prejudice sequel Death Comes to Pemberley and films including The Post, Patagonia and Love & Other Disasters.

And here’s a hot tip, but only if you can find it online as it’s technically unavailable in Australia at present, and that’s The Wine Show, which was a chill docuseries featuring him and Matthew Goode drinking and learning about the nectar of the gods.

It’s the best kind of decompression TV, spent in the company of two charming blokes.