Innholdsfortegnelse for Emmy Special Issue 26A August 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

A shot rang out! Echoing around the halls of the Television Academy, it was the sound of the true-crime documentary — once the darling of nonfiction TV voters — taking a bullet to the chest and collapsing in a pool of indifference. A little cliched, perhaps. But then again, maybe that’s why Emmy voters appear to have fallen out of love with true-crime programming. Recent years have seen a glut of articles and trend pieces proclaiming it a golden age for documentaries revisiting gruesome cold cases. And as their numbers and ratings have increased, the TV Academy has rewarded the best of those efforts: In three of the past four years, true-crime stories claimed the Emmy for outstanding documentary or nonfiction series. In 2015, it was the controversial Robert Durst…

It’s unusual for a show that was shut out of Emmy nominations for its first season to garner much of anything for its second. But Amazon’s Fleabag, from the mind of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is no ordinary show. The comedy, centered on a dry-witted, angry woman (called Fleabag) who, after the death of her friend, is struggling to find her way in London, landed a huge 11 noms. Waller-Bridge, 34, not only created the series (based on her one-woman play) but also writes and stars. She spoke to THR about her fourth-wall-busting breakthrough, how the “hot priest” arc came about and whether there’s any chance she’ll continue the series. What was the biggest change you focused on in the second season? The first and most important thing that was troubling me…

The first season of Netflix’s Russian Doll consisted of eight episodes — but for Natasha Lyonne and fellow co-creators Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland, the half-hour dark comedy would be defined by narrative loops. Specifically, which time loop protagonist Nadia Vulvokov, a coder played by Lyonne, was experiencing while reliving the night of her 36th birthday after dying and coming back to life on repeat. When it came to plotting the continuity of such a mindbending concept (one that takes inspiration from Lyonne’s true story), the all-female writers room devised an intricate web of interconnected storyboards for Nadia’s adventures. “There were boards and strings — the writers room looked like Homeland or A Beautiful Mind,” says Lyonne. Before stepping back into a looping session for the forthcoming second season, Lyonne…

The comedy series category’s lone broadcast nominee boasts a high concept that would raise eyebrows even at a cable network or streamer — a group of misfits (played by Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil and Manny Jacinto) grapple with moral philosophy and metaphysics in the afterlife — and yet finds itself oddly resonant in the national discourse (the Peabody Awards honored it as “our favorite contemporary morality play” earlier this year). Creator and executive producer Michael Schur, 43, took a break from directing the series finale in Los Angeles to talk about the NBC show’s accidental timeliness, the surprising ways it’s been received (it earned five nominations this year, including its first series nom) and his decision to end it all after the fourth season. Has…

There are underdog stories and then there’s Schitt’s Creek. The Canadian comedy has called the relatively obscure Pop TV network home for five seasons, building a fan base through word-of-mouth and Netflix rewatches before bursting onto the scene this awards season with three nominations. It’s fitting, since the show follows the eccentric Rose family — a wealthy, out-of-touch brood exiled to the Podunk town of Schitt’s Creek once their well has run dry — who also bring change to the spot they eventually learn to call home. Co-creator, showrunner and star Dan Levy, the 35-year-old son of the show’s nominated lead actor Eugene Levy, spoke to THR about the series’ long-awaited moment in the spotlight, its meme-worthy moments and the choice to end with season six. What’s it been like…

The Veep series finale pulled no punches, and Tony Hale’s character, Gary Walsh, was dealt the heaviest blow. Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) ultimately threw her loyal, long-suffering bag man under the campaign bus, and now, Hale fans may not be able to look at a handful of almonds — the proffered snack so cruelly rejected by Selina — without tearing up. “Six almonds will never be the same,” the two-time Emmy winner tells THR with a laugh. Though Gary’s efforts might have been thankless, Hale, 48, has earned a supporting actor nom for his role on the HBO show’s seventh and final season. In the run-up to the ceremony, he discussed Gary’s melancholic fate and his new Netflix kids series, Archibald’s Next Big Thing. Have you received emotional fan responses…

Ask Alec Berg if he felt any pressure to deliver on the dreaded “second season of a critically beloved show” — in this case Barry, which he co-created with star Bill Hader — and he shrugs. “The first show that I was in charge of as a writer was the last couple seasons of Seinfeld, where there were 35 million people watching every week,” he says, laughing. “I’m never going to feel pressure like that again.” Fair, but it’s worth pointing out that in its first season, HBO’s dark comedy about an aspiring actor slash accomplished hit man was nominated for 13 Emmys, one more than Seinfeld in its best year. And the second season did it two better — including acting nominations for all five series regulars. Berg, 49,…

Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband, Daniel Palladino, already were well into production on season two of their Amazon comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel when the series became 2018’s awards darling. “It would’ve been a little rough to reshoot half the season if season one hadn’t really worked,” says Sherman-Palladino. “The nice thing is we didn’t actually have that hanging over our heads. We only had that terrible, horrible pain and pressure for season three.” With Emmy, Golden Globe and a bevy of guild wins for season one and seven Emmy nominations for season two, the pressure is on. THR spoke with the showrunners about the biggest challenges they faced in the series’ second season: filming in Paris and re-creating the Catskills resorts of the ’50s in 2019. Midge blew up…

After seven seasons and 68 Emmy nominations, Veep signed off with a tragic and universally praised series finale for Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her Washington gang. The final campaign nabbed nine noms, and the once-tough decision to wrap the HBO political comedy has only been further validated by the current election season. “I think this is going to be a brutal, brutal election,” says showrunner David Mandel. “These last weeks, the rampant and open racism is so much worse than anything we ever did on the show. It speaks to why the show had to end.” Though the time-jumping finale concluded with a funeral for former President Meyer, it also introduced the historic two-term President Richard Splett (Sam Richardson) as a hopeful nod to the country’s political future. “I…

Three of John Lithgow’s six Emmy Awards have come from a single job: playing the lead role on the comedy series 3rd Rock From the Sun. For an actor with a stunningly long career that spans everything from theater (he’s won two Tonys) to film and even voicing Yoda in an NPR adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back, playing the character Dick Solomon on Sun was a career favorite. “Six years of uninterrupted laughter and the most exhilarating collaboration I’ve ever been involved in between actors and writers,” is how Lithgow describes it to THR. “To me it was the perfect balance between smart and stupid — which, when you think about it, is at the very heart of comedy.” The sitcom’s premise had a group of aliens being sent…