is Emmy nominated this year for playing the titular antihero on the Netflix miniseries . But this isn’t the Irish actor’s first rodeo playing a murderous trickster. In 2010, he debuted on the BBC/Masterpiece Theatre’s as Jim Moriarty, the archnemesis and unhinged counterpart to the world’s most famous detective (played by Benedict Cumberbatch).
Moriarty toyed with Sherlock, sending him on a life-or-death crime-solving scavenger hunt across London before nearly blowing up him and John Watson at a pool, then entangling the sleuth in an attempted theft of the Crown Jewels. All the while, Scott’s performance veered unpredictably from calm and composed to uncontrolled screams — in keeping with his character’s madness. And the roller-coaster storyline wasn’t over with 2012’s climactic season-two finale “The Reichenbach Fall,” where Moriarty shot himself in the head as part of a scheme to blackmail Sherlock into jumping to his death to save his friends.
‘s review of season three noted that fans awaited the cliffhanger’s resolution with a “kids-on-Christmas-like anticipation” and added: “It does not disappoint.” That season’s finale equally shocked audiences when Moriarty — who was presumed dead — popped up on screens across England taunting, “Did you miss me?” After , which won nine Emmys in limited series or movie categories, Scott’s roles have moved beyond the villainy that first made him famous. The actor said on a recent Roundtable t.