Everymom Becky Ann Baker Shines in ‘Girls’

Emmy voters, Becky Ann Baker is playing your mother in HBO’s Girls. Nominate your mother, please.

HBO’s Girls will wrap up its 6-year run next year. As it readies for its end, the writing team, including star/director Lena Dunham, has given each Girls actor a beautiful gift of at least one major, memorable scene in its most recent season. Perhaps no one on the show has benefitted quite as much from this renewed sense of clarity and excellence as actress Becky Ann Baker. Baker plays Loreen Horvath, mother to Hannah Horvath (Dunham) and wife to newly outed gay man Tad (Peter Scolari). This surprising turn – and Loreen’s varied reactions to it – elevates Becky Ann Baker to MVM status: Most Valuable Mom.

Having a daughter that’s similar age helps, but it’s also, I think, that openness that Lena works with has made it so easy to make ourselves feel like we’re mom and daughter. We talk to each other, we gossip, in a way that informs that relationship. – Becky Ann Baker

Becky Ann Baker has several epic scenes in season five, mostly centering around a girl’s weekend Loreen and Hannah embark upon in Girls’ “Queen for Two Days.” One scene in particular is a prime example of Baker’s range as an actress. Loreen listens to a table full of bitter and troubled women talk about their middle-aged romantic lives. Baker has few lines, but the performance is uniquely in her face, reacting to all of the trauma and distress around her.

This is a classic scene from a classic actress who deserves an Emmy nomination for Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.

Read Clarence’s full interview with Becky Ann Baker at AwardsDaily TV.