The Hollywood Reporter Award Special 24B - August 21, 2023

The nominated men of this year’s Emmy season are going through it. In the final season of Barry, Bill Hader’s eponymous hitman is once again compartmentalizing his violence to an insane degree. Jason Segel’s therapist in Shrinking is flailing since the death of his wife. Jason Sudeikis’ Ted Lasso is maybe the patron saint of funny men with panic attacks, and Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy on The Bear is grappling with the suicide of his brother. Even Martin Short’s Oliver Putnam on Only Murders in the Building, though outwardly silly, wrestles with his relationship to his son — whose paternity is a question mark. And those are just the lead actors. We haven’t even gotten to the supporting players yet. The men who got the TV Academy’s attention in the…

LEAD ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES Sharon Horgan Bad Sisters The Irishwoman’s a first-time acting nominee for her Apple TV+ murder mystery’s rookie season, which received four noms (including for her writing). At 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, better than any of her competitors’ shows, it was released the longest ago. Elisabeth Moss The Handmaid’s Tale With this nom for her Hulu show’s penultimate season (which clocked in at a category-low 80 percent on RT), Moss’ portrayal of June has been a finalist four out five possible times (she and the show won for season one), but this time she’s its sole nominee. Keri Russell The Diplomat This veteran who picked up three noms for The Americans now adds a fourth for the first season of her Netflix show, on…

John Mulaney, 40, is a comedian, writer, producer and actor who already is one of the most popular and respected stand-ups in the business. He has to his name a Peabody Award and 20 Emmy nominations, two of which resulted in wins, and two of which are pending: best variety special (prerecorded) and best writing for a variety special, both for his fifth and latest stand-up special, John Mulaney: Baby J, which dropped on Netflix in April. Mulaney began working as a writer at SNL at just 25, co-creating, with Bill Hader, one of the show’s most beloved characters, Stefon. And he has often returned to the show to host it, becoming a member of its “Five-Timers Club.” He also occasionally acts in films and on TV programs, including on…

Crafting the farewell ensemble for Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge) — before she shoots up a yacht of murderous gays and tumbles into the sea to her untimely death in the season two finale of HBO’s The White Lotus — was a labor of love for costume designer Alex Bovaird, who has delighted in conjuring up Coolidge’s outfits since she first arrived at the White Lotus resort in Hawaii for season one. Bovaird reflects to THR on the surprisingly technical process of constructing Tanya’s final floral dress, which had to be re-created multiple times to be shot in the ocean, in a controlled tank and using stunt doubles.…

When Swarm co-creator Janine Nabers was on a closed set watching the pilot’s now-infamous sex scene where soon-to-be serial killer Dre (Dominique Fishback) creepily watches her sister Marissa (Chlöe Bailey) having sex with boyfriend Khalid (Damson Idris), she felt a sense of unease. She turned to fellow creator Donald Glover and said, “I’m so uncomfortable,” she remembers. “And he was like, ‘But you wrote it.’” Nabers is Emmy-nominated for writing that episode for the limited series. Titled “Stung,” it introduces the audience to the eerie universe of Dre, an obsessive fan of a Beyoncé-type pop star named Ni’Jah. After the death of Marissa — inspired by a real-life internet rumor about a woman who committed suicide after the release of Beyoncé’s Lemonade because it confirmed that the pop star had…

Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim is no stranger to bold-faced names, having worked with the likes of Al Gore, Barack Obama and Malala Yousafzai. But some three years ago, he found himself, as he says, “stuck.” “I wanted to do something different. I wanted to find joy in my work. I wanted to experiment and take some big risks,” says Guggenheim. At the time, he was reading Michael J. Fox’s autobiography, No Time Like the Future, and a light bulb went off. “I said, ‘Wow, this could be a wild ride.’ That was one of the first things I jotted in the margins of the book: ‘This could be a wild ride.’” Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, released via Apple TV+, is the story of Fox’s life and career told…