Innholdsfortegnelse for Award Special 3 37C November 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

Merritt Wever remembers exactly where she was when she first read the scripts for Netflix’s limited series Unbelievable, which premiered Sept. 13. “I was on a plane, and I remember my cheeks flushed and my skin got red and something in me, like an engine, started going,” the 39-year-old says. “I didn’t realize, until recently, that maybe part of what that was was anger.” Wever stars as Karen Duvall and serves as one half of the series’ dynamic detective duo, opposite Toni Collette’s Grace Rasmussen. In a heart-wrenching storyline inspired by a real series of rape cases in Washington and Colorado, the two detectives team up when they realize the similarities between their open cases. The series begins following a young woman named Marie (Kaitlyn Dever), who is accused of…

MILEY CYRUS Cyrus didn’t have to stretch too far to play Ashley O, a pop singer with a massive following in “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too.” The story sees Ashley trapped in a AI doll named “Ashley Too” after she’s put into a coma, requiring the help of a teenage fan to bust her out of her futuristic prison. TOPHER GRACE In “Smithereens,” the second episode of the fifth season, Grace plays Billy Bauer, the founder of a social media company whose silent retreat is interrupted by a phone call from a desperate man. Charlie Brooker has said the character is loosely inspired by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. ANDREW SCOTT In a role that was very different from his fan-favorite Fleabag performance as Hot Priest (but still as intense), Scott…

DICKINSON (APPLE TV+) Apple TV+’s purported comic bildungsroman is a deliriously — and often uncomfortably — revisionist take on poet Emily Dickinson’s youth. The series comes off as a reductive, overly metaphoric and pseudofeminist appropriation of Dickinson’s biography. In wanting to be a serious teen drama and a black comedy simultaneously, the half-hour show instead comes off as tonally incongruous, awash in wry hipster flatness. — ROBYN BAHR HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL: THE MUSICAL: THE SERIES (DISNEY+) The show tells you everything you need to know in its wink-wink title. One part bloated gobbledygook, two parts meta satire, this funny/kitschy mockumentary series resides somewhere between spinoff, reboot and self-parody. Either way, it’s another classic ouroboros from the House of Mouse, which plumes itself with audience nostalgia. Thankfully, it’s bright enough ……

TELEVISION Back to Life (Showtime) This British “humiliation comedy” from Fleabag’s producers was co-written by and stars Daisy Haggard as a woman recently released from years in prison trying to readjust to civilian life. His Dark Materials (HBO) This series, based on Philip Pullman’s fantasy novels about humans and the animal companions who reflect their souls, stars Dafne Keene, Ruth Wilson, Anne-Marie Duff and Clarke Peters. The Morning Show (Apple TV+) The HFPA loves big names, and few are bigger than this workplace drama’s Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. Members won’t snub Apple’s new streaming service, will they? Russian Doll (Netflix) Natasha Lyonne is the multihyphenate behind — and in front of — the camera in this dramedy about a woman experiencing the same events over and over…

COBIE SMULDERS STUMPTOWN After years of proving her comedy chops on How I Met Your Mother and showcasing her badass side in the Avengers franchise, Smulders marries the two personas as hardheaded and tough private investigator Dex Parios on ABC’s Stumptown. FIONA SHAW KILLING EVE Veteran actress Shaw earned her first Emmy nomination this year for playing Carolyn Martens, the former head of MI6’s Russian desk and Eve Polastri’s boss on Killing Eve. Audiences may never be sure which side she’s on, but her performance never disappoints. SANDRA OH KILLING EVE With a Golden Globe and SAG Award already under her belt, Oh has received universal praise for her portrayal of a dedicated — if not obsessed — intelligence officer caught in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a lethal…

Known as much for his chameleonic coif as his absurdist slant, Julio Torres is sporting hair color that looks a lot like the grapefruit juice he’s sipping in the soft light of this Greenpoint bar. We’re a few blocks from Los Espookys’ Brooklyn writers room, and the 32-year-old comedian, who originally is from El Salvador, is recapping what’s been a pretty wild year. He left his writing gig on Saturday Night Live after a string of beloved sketches to deliver HBO its first Spanish-language comedy, Los Espookys, which follows a group of horror-enthusiast friends in an unnamed Latin American country, and the avant-garde special My Favorite Shapes — about, well, his favorite shapes. Can you talk to me about how you make jokes land in Spanish and English? Ana [Fabrega]…

BATWOMAN (THE CW) The series introduces Kate Kane (Ruby Rose), daughter of Gotham royalty. Her father, Jacob Kane (Dougray Scott), runs a private security force tasked with protecting Gotham after the mysterious disappearance, three years earlier, of Batman. For all the pre-premiere emphasis on the things that make this heroine different — She’s gay! She might be Jewish! — what’s most immediately apparent about Batwoman is how limitedly distinctive it is. — DANIEL FIENBERG THE MANDALORIAN (DISNEY+) The first live-action Star Wars series is set after the fall of the empire, but it’s a world filled with things even the most casual fans will recognize, and the pilot is designed more than anything to be comforting and not off-putting. Since The Mandalorian doesn’t have characters we’ve met previously in the…

When The Americans wrapped its six-season run in 2018, Joel Fields and his writing partner, Joe Weisberg, signed a lease on an airy Tribeca office space where they could catch their breath and consider potential next steps. Finding the right follow-up to the critically adored FX spy drama was, naturally, quite intimidating. But within a month of their victory lap, an Emmy win for writing, Fields deferred his planned break and boarded FX miniseries Fosse/Verdon on the eve of production. The decision sent him right back to where he’d spent the previous six years, overseeing the production of a meticulous period piece — this time swapping the Cold War for Cabaret. “My plan after The Americans was to take a year, really focus on development, write and see what came…

Black Mirror never shies away from evocative plotlines, but chatter about this summer’s “Striking Vipers” episode was fervid — even by its own standards. The season five opener of Charlie Brooker’s Netflix series saw Anthony Mackie explore virtual gaming on an extremely intimate level while addressing issues of sexuality and infidelity (and spawning countless think pieces). The episode centers on two longtime platonic friends, Danny (Mackie) and Karl (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who find themselves pushing the boundaries of their relationship while plugged into a VR version of a Mortal Kombat-inspired video game they played in their college days. The 41-year-old Avengers star talked with THR about how growing up in the South and studying drama at Juilliard primed him to tackle a role that challenges modern perceptions of sexuality during…

Inside a former factory a short drive from the Welsh capital of Cardiff, locations from the magical, alternative world of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials have been continuously designed, built, knocked down and rebuilt since early 2018. The 250,000-square-foot Wolf Studios Wales — ironically, the former site of a Nippon factory, which made glass for traditional TVs and closed in 2005 (blame the rise of flat-screen TVs) — was opened specifically to house HBO/BBC’s ambitiously grandiose retelling of the author’s trilogy. Adapted by Jack Thorne, the show centers on a young orphan girl moving through a world in which all humans have animal companions that represent an external soul. The eight-episode first season, which stars Ruth Wilson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, James McAvoy and Dafne Keen in the central role of Lyra…