San Leandro, Calif. — Indian actress Nimrat Kaur, Indian American actress Sakina Jaffrey and Indian American actor Kunal Nayyar have each been nominated for prestigious 2015 Screen Actors Guild Awards along with the ensemble casts of their respective TV shows.
Kaur and the cast of “Homeland” are up against Jaffrey and the cast of “House of Cards,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “Downton Abbey” and “Game of Thrones” in the Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series category.
Kaur, best known for her debut in Ritesh Batra’s “The Lunchbox,” appears in season four of Showtime’s thriller drama series “Homeland.” Vogue magazine calls her “the actress you love to hate” for her vivid portrayal of Tasneem Qureshi, an “insidious and smug” Pakistani ISI agent who plots against Claire Danes’s lead character of Carrie Mathison. Kaur told the magazine that her favorite aspect of being a part of the critically acclaimed show was playing “a woman in a position of power in such a patriarchal society … That was a very exciting space to explore, as an actor.”
Sakina Jaffrey played White House Chief of Staff Linda Vasquez on season one of “House of Cards,” the popular political drama created by Netflix starring Kevin Spacey. She now appears on season two of the FOX fantasy show “Sleepy Hollow” as strict small town sheriff Leena Reyes.
Kunal Nayyar and the costars of CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory” are also up for a SAG ensemble award in the comedy category.
The SAG Awards, which honor excellence in acting for films and television, will be presented Jan. 25 on TNT and TBS.