A few years back, Dale Dickey walked into a department store looking for a dress. She was wearing what she usually wears — T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, no makeup — and a salesperson gave her the once-over and redirected her. You want to go downstairs.
I’m like, no, actually, I’m looking for a dress. Got a credit card and everything.” She tells the story with her signature rasp and infectious smile, encased in a talented aura. However, it is also, in miniature, like her more than four-decade-long career: being told which floor she belongs on, but still going where she wants to go anyway.
This summer, roughly 75 films in and after countless television roles, Dickey received the first Emmy nomination of her career for Apple TV’s horror comedy “Widow’s Bay.” But, once again, her reaction was not vindication. It was merely a logistics problem. It’s just not something that I thought was ever sort of in my realm.” She is also clear that the timing of this recognition is the gift.
Had it come when I was younger, I would have run away. It would have been too much. Now I’m older, more settled, and it’s like, OK, this will be fun.
I can go to the party and enjoy myself.” She takes real pleasure in looking around the nominee list and finding company — the veterans, lifers and fellow journeyman actors like Jeff Kober, guest drama actor nominee for “The Pitt,” who has been visible for decades without ever being counted for awards. The pathway was not easy, but it never is. On Zoom from her apartment in Los Angeles, Dickey talks about spending about 11 years in New York before relocating West, freelancing and, in her phrase, “pounding the pavement.” She struggled with representation upon arrival.
I was not pretty enough this way. I wasn’t quirky enough that way.” It was six-time Emmy-winning veteran actress Tyne Daly, one of the first people she ever worked with, who gave her the Hollywood forecast that turned out to be right. Los Angeles didn’t solve it either.
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