But Marty Hart’s self-deception, which is the show’s other psychological architecture, received less critical attention than Rust Cohle’s philosophy. This is partly because self-deception is less dramatic as a subject than nihilistic philosophy, and partly because Matthew McConaughey’s performance as Cohle was more overtly theatrical and therefore easier to write about. Harrelson’s performance as Hart was quieter and in some respects more sophisticated: the performance of a man who sincerely believes he is the normal one, the reasonable one, the one without the problems, while the camera consistently shows us evidence that he is not.
The specific quality that the performance required was the capacity to play sincerity as a form of blindness. Marty Hart is not a hypocrite — he doesn’t know he’s being hypocritical. He is a man whose self-image has been constructed so carefully that the gap between the image and the reality is genuinely invisible to him, even as it is completely visible to everyone around him and to the audience. Playing this requires the actor to commit fully to the self-image — to play Hart as if Hart’s version of himself were true — while simultaneously providing the audience with the evidence that it isn’t. The technique is subtle and difficult, and Harrelson executed it over eight episodes with consistent precision.
The Emmy nomination for the role — Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series — recognized what critics and audiences had observed. The nomination placed him in competition with his co-star McConaughey, who won the award, in a year when the competition in that category was particularly strong. The nomination was its own form of recognition: a confirmation that the ensemble achievement of True Detective was not only McConaughey’s achievement, that Hart was as essential to the show’s success as Cohle even if Hart’s quality was harder to articulate in the specific terms that Emmy campaigns tend to use.