Sam Nivola gives awkward young men a sweetness that makes their uncertainty worth watching. We rate the restraint in Phony, though its thin relationships show how much he still needs from the writing.
Fi1m perspective
In Phony (2026), Sonny's nervousness has a sweetness that stops him becoming just another awkward teenager. Sam Nivola gives him enough feeling to hold our attention without leaning on the puzzle. We warmed to Sonny because his uncertainty felt familiar, and Nivola never seemed to be pleading with us to take his side. He is the strongest reason to watch Nick Paley's likeable but uneven mystery-comedy. There is enough feeling in the performance to make the thinly written relationships frustrating: we care about the boy trying to manage them.
Nivola's feature debut in Noah Baumbach's White Noise (2022) gave him dialogue-heavy family scenes as Heinrich Gladney, which he handled with an unforced delivery. Lee Polk in William Oldroyd's Eileen (2023) was a supporting part in a film whose patient study of longing works better than its abrupt final stretch. The larger television roles, Will Winbury in The Perfect Couple (2024) and Lochlan Ratliff in the third series of The White Lotus (2025), brought more attention without breaking the pattern. There is a recognisable thread here: young men who want approval and have trouble knowing how to get it.
Phony makes that familiar casting more demanding by putting Sonny at the centre, alongside Connie Britton. Nivola can move from everyday teenage awkwardness into greater anxiety without making the change feel like a different performance. That ability matters in a series trying to balance growing up with a mystery, although the writing does not always manage the balance. Its mother-son relationship is underwritten, which leaves the puzzle short of the feeling it needs. The extra attention on Sonny only makes that weakness harder to overlook.
The reservation is how often these parts ask for the same sort of young man. Awkwardness, insecurity and the wish to belong give Nivola plenty to play, but repeating them will not tell us much more about him. We would like to see him given someone who is not waiting for another person's approval. For now, Phony is worth trying for his performance, with modest expectations of the mystery.
Biography
Sam Nivola is a British-American actor. He was born on 26 September 2003 in London and is the son of actors Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola. He attended Saint Ann's School and Columbia University.
Nivola's screen credits include roles in the films White Noise (2022) as Heinrich Gladney, Eileen (2023) as Lee Polk, and Maestro (2023) as Alexander Bernstein. On television he has appeared in The Pursuit of Love (2021) and The Perfect Couple (2024), and as Lochlan Ratliff in season three of The White Lotus (2025).
