Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special 1B January 11, 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

The year 2020 accelerated plenty of uncomfortable trends in Hollywood: the shift from theatrical windows, the consolidation of corporate attention on streaming platforms and, perhaps most immutably, the steep decline of broadcast television. Sure, the death knell of the Big Four seems like it’s been ringing for a decade — but never as loudly as it has during the past 12 months. COVID-19 kneecapped pilot season, prompting diminished comedy and drama series loads for networks already more interested in reality, and NBC and ABC no longer even have dedicated executives. Instead, they’re overseen as smaller, decidedly less sexy parts of larger portfolios. But the pandemic, which hastened all of this, could also bring a silver lining. Broadcast series, long the ugly stepsiblings of awards season, were among the few projects…

In an otherwise bleak year, Netflix gifted its nearly 200 million subscribers with two vastly different reminders of Gillian Anderson’s talent. The first came early, with Anderson’s turn as a sex-therapist mom on the second season of the celebrated U.K. comedy series Sex Education; the second arrived at the year’s end, with the X-Files star portraying former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the Emmy-winning royal drama The Crown. For the actress, now 52, keeping the two straight wasn’t always easy. Let’s start with The Crown. Take me back to when this part was first mentioned to you. What was going through your head at the time? Pete [Morgan, the series’ creator] and I were just sitting around one day, and I think he asked me, just out of the…

The Shoggoths Arrive EPISODE 1, “SUNDOWN” Lovecraft Country got off to a running start with Atticus (Jonathan Majors), Leti (Jurnee Smollett) and George (Courtney B. Vance) encountering the horrors of racism and the supernatural on their trip to Ardham, Massachusetts. But no moment in the premiere better set the stage for the series than the Shoggoths, creatures taken from H.P. Lovecraft’s lore and blended with the concept of the vampire. Their arrival marked a shift for the characters’ understanding of their world, forcing them to confront cops, monsters, and cops that become monsters. For showrunner Misha Green, blending racial history and the supernatural wasn’t difficult. “For me, being such a big horror fan and genre fan, that stuff is always the metaphor and the layer on top of the truth…

Season two of hit Disney+ series The Mandalorian sees its two breakout stars, the title character bounty hunter (played by Pedro Pascal) and Grogu (better known on the internet as Baby Yoda), heading deeper into the Star Wars universe — and with greater exploration comes greater stunts. “We knew what we were getting into, but we couldn’t help it,” says Ryan Watson, the Emmy-winning stunt coordinator for the series, which saw its second season bring a “bigger scope of action” with harder fights, more complex sets and higher-flying villains. Watson, who won an Emmy for his work on The Mandalorian’s first season and handled stunts on Wonder Woman and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, says that despite his ample experience with bigbudget projects, “I call this a black-belt level…

Unfolding over the course of six tense installments, HBO’s The Undoing was a lightning rod of a whodunit, leaving viewers trying to guess the answer to the murderous riddle at the heart of the lives of Grace and Jonathan Fraser (played by executive producer Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, respectively) — even though those who knew the title of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s You Should Have Known, upon which the limited series was based, should have … well, known. For those who didn’t and went along for the ride, one lingering question remains: How did Kidman, Grant, executive producer David E. Kelley and director Susanne Bier craft such a compelling mystery when Grant’s Jonathan, the obvious suspect, was indeed the correct suspect? THR explores that question and more in the following…

Film Ensemble Sound of Metal SAG-AFTRA voters are enchanted by this tale of a heavy metal drummer who loses his hearing — and entranced with its stars, not just Riz Ahmed and Olivia Cooke but also Paul Raci, the hearing son of deaf parents, and deaf castmembers like Chelsea Lee and Shaheem Sanchez, who have done Q&As. Minari Few films have had SAG-AFTRA nomcom members cheering more than this Korean-language American production, and its Q&As were hits not just because of star Steven Yeun but also its sardonic 73-year-old vet Yuh-jung Youn (the film’s grandma) and precocious 8-year-old scene-stealer Alan Kim. Promising Young Woman Virtual attendance has been heavy for this film’s Q&As, where star Carey Mulligan and writer-director Emerald Fennell (who moonlights as The Crown’s Camilla Parker Bowles) were…

Noma Dumezweni THE UNDOING CHARACTER: HALEY FITZGERALD To play the unceremoniously frank defense attorney Haley on HBO’s The Undoing, Dumezweni realized she had to “dig deep” to tap the reserves of cool, steely assurance that fuels the character. “There were times it felt so intense,” Dumezweni says with a laugh. “I remember thinking I was going to be fired at one point. I have my sense of confidence, but I still worry about my work. Haley absolutely knows what she’s good at.” Dumezweni swiftly zeroed in on the fact that Haley’s “fucking great at her job.” She also realized that for a Black woman to operate at the top of her game in the wood-paneled environs of the Manhattan elite, she had to be unrestrained by niceties. “There’s got to…

The downfall of Billie Piper’s title character in I Hate Suzie comes courtesy of a dick pic. Moments into the first act of the cringey British dramedy, Suzie Pickles, a teen pop star turned middling actress, discovers she’s the victim of a phone hack — one replete with nude photos, the most incriminating of which depicts the protagonist holding a penis that (for reasons not immediately revealed) clearly belongs to a man who is not her husband. But even as illicit images loom over an eight-episode run that plays out like a sustained nervous breakdown, the specifics of her exploits go unseen. “I have done my fair share of sex scenes, and I’m just so bored of how disingenuous they are,” says Piper, who previously bared quite a bit in…

There isn’t one moment in particular that sold me on Ted Lasso … or maybe there are so many I can’t pick just one! That’s how much I love the show. It is an all-encompassing love now that has no beginning and no end. I don’t know why this moment sticks out, but the reveal that Ted is home baking those perfect biscuits every night just stayed with me on my first watch of the show. (I’m on my second now.) Something about that decision to bake them himself, and the decision to keep it a secret from Rebecca, just endeared him to me in a way I can’t even quantify. The reason wasn’t calculated. He wasn’t after anything. He just wanted to delight her with a baking gift that…

Film editor Michelle Tesoro likens constructing the tense chess matches in The Queen’s Gambit — Netflix’s limited series about fictional chess prodigy Beth Harmon, played by Anya Taylor-Joy — to cutting dialogue scenes, even though few words are spoken during the hushed games. Writer-director Scott Frank set a goal: Make the competitive matches dramatic, as well as something that both pros and the uninitiated could follow. To that end, chess consultants Bruce Pandolfini, who worked with exec producer William Horberg on 1993’s Searching for Bobby Fischer, and Garry Kasparov, a Russian chess grandmaster and former world champion, helped construct the chess sequences while training the actors to move the pieces as pros would. Tesoro — whose credits include the Ruth Bader Ginsburg drama On the Basis of Sex and episodes…

Never Have I Ever NETFLIX While eager to gather a diverse troupe for Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher’s series, casting directors Collin Daniel and Brett Greenstein quickly realized that until they had nailed down their series leads, there was no ensemble to assemble. “It was really about getting Devi and her mother cast, as they are the heart of the story,” says Greenstein. But filling the role of a Sherman Oaks-grown teenager of South Asian heritage proved harder than expected. “It was the biggest casting search we’ve ever done in our career,” says Daniel. “We actually hit the limit of how many emails Gmail can accept in a day.” After Kaling posted the open call on her social media and more than 13,000 submissions poured in, the duo discovered Toronto-based,…

If you’re a #TedLasso fan, you’re going to love this #UnlockingUs episode with #JasonSudeikis and @brendanhunting. If you haven’t watched yet — you will be a huge fan. Especially if you believe in awkward, brave and kind. Brené Brown OCT. 7 ON INSTAGRAM If you are a leader or might want to be one, watch “Ted Lasso” on Apple TV. James Comey DEC. 3 ON TWITTER Ted lasso is the best series in decades. @jasonsudeikis is brilliant at acting writing and producing. I think this is the perfect show for everyone Howie Mandel DEC. 29 ON TWITTER Okay I’m definitely late to the Ted Lasso train but hot damn this show is incredible. Wholesome, hilarious and sweet. Thanks for the rec, @MikeMcMahanTM! Jack Quaid DEC. 7 ON TWITTER…

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a fragile fault line in the global economic system, resulting in seismic disruptions to the flow of money across the world. Millions have lost jobs. We’re now living in the worst financial downturn since the Great Depression, and with mass fiscal instability comes mass migration: Nearly 16 million U.S. residents relocated during the height of lockdown in late spring as folks fled cities or moved in with their families. Starting over after bankruptcy and reduced stature was also one of this past year’s key themes onscreen. In film, sobering dramas like The Nest and Nomadland and the darkly comic French Exit study how people move forward (or don’t at all) when their identities vanish through loss of livelihood. On television, acclaimed series like Schitt’s Creek, Frayed…