The all-new Hollywood Reporter offers unprecedented access to the people, studios, networks and agencies that create the magic in Hollywood. Published weekly, the oversized format includes exceptional photography and rich features.
Not every drama series can be like HBO’s epic fantasy Game of Thrones — a favorite of TV critics, viewers and, yes, TV Academy members. It led the Primetime and Creative Arts Emmy fields in total nominations for the past three years and in total wins in each of the last two, claiming the drama series prize in 2015 and 2016. But this year, it won’t receive any recognition after, well, abdicating the throne. Much has been made of HBO’s decision to bow GoT’s seventh season on July 16, missing the May 31 eligibility cutoff for Emmy noms. Now the question is: What drama series stands to benefit the most from the gaping hole left by GoT, if only for this year? A case could be made for each of…
COMEDY DRAMA LIMITED Damian Lewis BILLIONS (SHOWTIME) Lewis portrays hedge fund manager Bobby Axelrod, whose questionable — and likely illegal — methods are at odds with a U.S. district attorney (Paul Giamatti) hell-bent on taking him down. FAVORITE THING ABOUT HIS CHARACTER “Ax is a guy who treads a thin line between right and wrong, between ethical and unethical. There’s something heroic in his endeavors that I like about him. I’d love to spend an evening with him. I think there’s a great heart and soul in there, but he’s a badass, too. I like his quick-wittedness. I like his thinking. I like his ruthlessness. There’s a gangster in there, but also there’s a guy who has subscribed fully to the idea of the American dream — a blue-collar guy who…
ALEC BALDWIN Saturday Night Live (NBC) Baldwin appeared in so many episodes of SNL as Donald Trump that he bumped himself into the supporting actor in a comedy series category (from the more expected guest spot). His Trump is so good, many prognosticators have him favored to win. IDRIS ELBA Guerrilla (Showtime) Elba has five Emmy noms (four for his title role in BBC’s Luther and one guest nom for The Big C), but he’s looking to get a sixth for his role opposite Freida Pinto in John Ridley’s limited series about the black power movement in 1970s London. He just might sneak into a really tight race. RON CEPHAS JONES This Is Us (NBC) Jones stole viewers’ hearts as Randall’s (Sterling K. Brown) birth father on NBC’s breakout hit, but he also has stolen…
Footwear First Designing the color-coded uniforms for various classes of people in the totalitarian theocracy in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale presented several challenges for costume designer Ane Crabtree. Symbolism was paramount, since even the smallest details (like the handmaids’ laced boots) give viewers clues. “The boot symbolism, all the laces, shows a kind of mental oppression,” she says. “The wings, or bonnets, on the heads of the handmaids, as birthed by Margaret Atwood [who wrote the novel on which the series is based], were a way to control their gaze. It is also a kind of mind control — making them feel like little girls in bonnets to take away their power.” There was no shortage of source material for The Young Pope’s costume designer Carlo Poggioli, who referenced “paintings and sculptures from hundreds…
Hair and makeup departments made stunning moves this year, from reconstructing two very differentlooking actors — Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Flynn — into two iterations of Albert Einstein to reshaping the iconic Jessica Lange into an icon from another era, Joan Crawford. Not to be outdone, team Fargo’s handiwork buffed and polished Ewan McGregor into two very different-looking brothers. Perhaps no makeovers drew as much attention as the transformations of Alec Baldwin (into Donald Trump) and Melissa McCarthy (into Sean Spicer) during Saturday Night Live’s unforgettable 42nd season on NBC. So uncanny was Baldwin’s Trump that in February, Dominican Republic newspaper El Nacional mistakenly published a photo of the star in costume, instead of an actual photo of the president, to accompany a news story. “Alec showed me that and…
On series such as NBC’s This Is Us, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and HBO’s Westworld, storylines frequently jump from place to place and from one time period to another — presenting something of an obstacle course for their editors. They have to make all those jumps seamless while ensuring the audience can follow along without getting lost, which, in turn, often necessitates the effective use of flashbacks. Consider the ensemble drama This Is Us, which revolves around the life of the Pearson family: Rebecca and Jack and their children, Kate, Kevin and Randall. It follows the kids from birth through their childhood to their mid-30s. And that means weaving together multiple storylines that reveal the lives of each of the characters at crucial turning points. “The overarching goal is to…
