Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special 21A, June 3, 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

This year, Regency romance Bridgerton bested The Queen’s Gambit, Tiger King and The Witcher to become Netflix’s most watched original program, hitting well over 80 million households within just a month of its debut. This came as a surprise to the streamer, which had projected a smaller audience for the series, despite its Shonda Rhimes pedigree and racially inclusive storytelling. Sure, sweeping (and chaste) costume dramas have traditionally defined prestige TV, but it seems even populist Netflix underestimated the far-reaching charms of a good bodice-ripper. Bridgerton’s inevitable backlash arrived almost as promptly, with detractors hoisting their proverbial glasses up the proverbial nasal bridge to declare the series — gasp! — historically inaccurate. Twitter threads and explainer pieces soon appeared scolding the show’s use of corsets-as-metaphor, its ahistorically vibrant costuming and…

Composing one iconic TV show theme song is difficult enough. Try making seven, each representing a different sitcom era and performed in an entirely different style. Oh, and they should all still feel unified … somehow. This was the task confronting songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez when tackling Disney+’s debut Marvel Cinematic Universe series WandaVision, a trippy exploration of grief that stylistically skips through TV history from the black-and-white 1950s I Love Lucy-era through early 2000s fourth-wall-breaking Modern Family-age. The duo, along with series director Matt Shakman, discuss pulling off the score and reveal some of their favorite themes of all time. Robert and Kristen, you’ve been writing songs for major theatrical films. How did you get involved with the series, and what excited you about it? ROBERT LOPEZ…

Snowfall FX When re-creating the style of South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s for FX’s Snowfall, Andrea Jackson and Debra Denson had to look no further than their own yearbooks for inspiration. “Andrea, myself and [co-creator] John Singleton were all raised in South Central L.A. during that time. So, it was a little easy for me on this one because I lived this,” Denson, who led the makeup department, tells THR. While the decade may be remembered most for big hair and bright colors, that wasn’t the right style for the story they were telling. “It’s not a big glam show,” Denson says. Details such as designs of tattoos, locations of piercings, length of acrylic nails and the size of a character’s Afro had to be precise to not…

SPINOFFS Saved by the Bell: The College Years (1993-1994) and Saved by the Bell: The New Class (1993-2000) TV MOVIES Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style (1992) and Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas (1994) THE ORIGINAL The original series ran Aug. 20, 1989, to May 22, 1993. It was based on the Disney Channel series Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which aired 1988 to 1989. NOVELS 21 novels were published by Boxtree Ltd. from 1992 to 1996. All were written by Beth Cruise. COMIC BOOKS In 1992, Harvey Comics published a seven-issue Saved by the Bell comic series. In 2014, Roar Comics launched a new series. THE MUSICAL Bayside! The Musical!, written and directed by Bob and Tobly McSmith, opened at NYC’s Theatre 80 in 2013.…

DICKINSON In the second season of the Apple TV+ series, Emily Dickinson (Hailee Steinfeld) and her family go to the opera in Boston to see La Traviata. “It’s an important episode because Emily conflates the character Violetta with [best friend, sister-in-law and romantic interest] Sue. That became a big production design idea,” explains production designer Neil Patel. “Sue’s set [her parlor at the Evergreens] echoes Violetta’s parlor in La Traviata.” The ornate set was built in the lobby of Loew’s Jersey Theatre, a movie palace-style theater in Jersey City that opened in 1929. “It was a real challenge to find this,” says Patel, who adds that they needed a location that resembled a 19th century opera house, with a horseshoe shape and the ability to build boxes with the appropriate…

LIMITED SERIES THE GOOD LORD BIRD Showtime This seven-episode series, based on James McBride’s 2013 novel, centers on John Brown’s attack on American slavery. Co-creator and co-EP Ethan Hawke received Golden Globe and SAG Award noms for his lead performance, while co-stars Daveed Diggs and Joshua Caleb Johnson were Critics Choice-nominated. The series rolled out in October and November, and it boasts a 98 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. SMALL AXE Amazon Steve McQueen’s five-part opus about London’s West Indian community — each co-written and directed by the 12 Years a Slave Oscar winner — has been treated as a single film (named best of the year by the L.A. Film Critics), five separate films (some on year-end top 10 lists) and a limited series (with a Golden Globe win for John…

At the core of NBC’s Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist are the “heart songs,” which reveal a character’s inner emotions — and can be seen and heard only by Zoey (Jane Levy). For two seasons, these ambitious musical performances have been brought to life by the actors under the guidance of a tireless team that includes choreographer Mandy Moore and DP Shasta Spahn, who have collaborated on more than 130 numbers together. The series, which shoots in Vancouver, has a warp-speed production schedule, requiring Moore and Spahn to work closely together in a unique dynamic with creator Austin Winsberg. The pair, who also each directed an episode in the second season, became so close that they even quarantined together during the pandemic. Recently, they hopped on the phone to speak with THR…

BAYSIDE HIGH From the very beginning, production designer Joseph Lucky knew he was performing an upgrade to the school. “That hallway and staircase that you see in every opening scene of the original, and the red lockers and orange classroom doors, I maintained throughout the new design,” he says. “We also kept Belding’s office very much the same for Principal Toddman, with some of the same furniture elements. It felt like it was such an original, nostalgic part of the original series, and funny in he might be [like], ‘Hey, how come I never got upgraded?’ “A lot of the banners I recreated from the original series,” Lucky continues. “They’re all hand-painted on butcher paper because it kind of feels like high schools would do that. We had guys painting…

To prepare to shoot Disney+’s miniseries WandaVision — which follows Marvel characters Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) through a series of sitcom environments from various decades — British DP Jess Hall admits he watched a lot of classic television, even digging up film prints from the original negative of a couple series like Bewitched and having them projected. In creating the nostalgia of these periods, Hall describes the look of WandaVision as a hybrid of very different looks, though also “something coherent because that’s one story.” To do this, he chose to use one type of camera, ARRI’s Alexa LF (large format), to shoot the series and then “create the different looks by using other elements of the cinematography, a combination of lighting, color science, framing, all…

DICKINSON: PARTY LIKE IT’S 1859 This behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the second season of Apple TV+’s hit includes revealing insights from creator Alena Smith, and is competing in the shortform animated category. AUNTY DONNA’S BIG OL’ HOUSE OF FUN Netflix’s six-part sketch series, produced by Ed Helms, stars Australian comedy troupe Aunty Donna — Broden Kelly, Mark Samual Bonanno and Zachary Ruane — and features a slew of guest stars including Helms, Ronny Chieng, Jack Quaid and “Weird Al” Yankovic. TOONING OUT THE NEWS Executive produced by Late Show host Stephen Colbert, this toon series features animated characters (led by an anchor named James Smartwood) parodying news stories and launched on Paramount+ in April 2020. A second season kicked off in March. POSE: IDENTITY, FAMILY, COMMUNITY Submitted in…

Wigfield’s idea involved getting the original crew on board with poking fun at their iconic characters, a proposition that initially made her nervous. “I have a fifth grader inside of me, who’s in love with Zack Morris and Slater, so for me, it was like, ‘I hope they like me and this weird idea I have,’ ” she says. “There was definitely a fear of, ‘What if none of them have a sense of humor?’ But they all got it right away and were excited to come back and be these characters again.” At modern-day Bayside High, the hallways look like time stood still, but within those corridors is a whole new world. Edgier, far more self-aware and single-cam, the latest outing at this fictitious school delivers those muchanticipated check-ins…

As Lexi Haddad-DeFabrizio, Josie Totah rules the school. Lexi is the most popular girl at Bayside High, and her take-no-prisoners wit means she often delivers the kind of biting punchlines that make or break a comedy. Aside from being assertive, beautiful and hilarious, Lexi is also trans. Here Totah, who also serves as an executive producer on the show, discusses the genesis of her groundbreaking role. What were the early conversations about Lexi’s character like? Tracey [Wigfield, the show’s cocreator] had these dreams of an aspirational character who was [like Mean Girls’] Regina George, but with a really authentic and unique past. I think her being trans, and her having this very unique experience, really gives weight to this trope in a way that you haven’t seen before. Seeing her…

Joi McMillon — the first Black woman to earn an Oscar nomination in film editing (alongside fellow editor Nat Sanders for Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight) — recently reteamed with her Florida State classmate Jenkins for his powerful Amazon limited series The Underground Railroad, based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The 10-episode series follows Cora Randall, played by Thuso Mbedu, a slave who flees her Georgia plantation using an underground train system. McMillon, who led a team of editors that also included Alex O’Flinn and Daniel Morfesis, spoke to THR about her biggest challenges, exploring Black mental health, and using Cora as a throughline. How did you approach the 10-episode arc? The thing we wanted to be sure of was translating how inventive the novel is to the screen. Our approach…

The first Emmy ever awarded for costume design went to Bob Mackie and his late partner (creatively and, later, romantically), Ray Aghayan, for their fanciful designs on NBC’s 1966 TV movie Alice Through the Looking Glass. They had been nominated a year prior for CBS’ Wonderful World of Burlesque II, which featured Lucille Ball in an elaborate butterfly costume. For some reason, the Emmys awarded no trophy in the category’s introductory year (then called “Individual Achievements in Art Direction and Allied Crafts — Costume Design”), but Looking Glass did win in 1967 (and was the only nominee). The production’s starry cast included the Smothers Brothers as Tweedledee and Tweedledum; Agnes Moorehead and Nanette Fabray as the Red Queen and the White Queen, respectively; Ricardo Montalbán as the White King; Jack…