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

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…

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.…

This year’s contenders for outstanding stunt coordination and stunt performance are a healthy mix of Emmy veterans and first-time honorees, with CBS’ FBI: Most Wanted, Netflix’s Stranger Things and Disney+’s The Mandalorian earning two nominations each. Two teams from Stranger Things were nominated for outstanding stunt performance: Courtney Schwartz and Michelle Andrea Adams, who both earned their first Emmy noms, and Jahnel Curfman (previously twice nominated for Netflix’s Cobra Kai), Niko Dalman and Shannon Beshears (they each earned their first noms). FBI: Most Wanted and The Mandalorian also picked up stunt performance nods, with the former’s Chad Hessler earning his second. The latter’s team is composed of 2021 winner Lateef Crowder, first-time nominees Paul Darnell and Ryan Ryusaki and JJ Dashnaw, who also is nominated for his stunt coordination work…

It all started with music supervisor Tony Von Pervieux’s dream of working with pop music maestro Max Martin for an original Ted Lasso song — and ended with an emotional tearjerker that was so good Jason Sudeikis wrote a specific scene for the tune in the season three finale of the Apple TV+ comedy. This is the story behind Ted Lasso’s Emmy-nominated track “A Beautiful Game,” performed by Ed Sheeran and written by Sheeran, Martin and Foy Vance. A SONG IS BORN When Von Pervieux received the go-ahead from Ted Lasso producers to pursue an original song by Martin for the series, he had to pitch the five-time Grammy-winning producer, who has launched 25 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. “He has always been one of 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…

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…

For Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi, known professionally as Kid Cudi, Netflix’s animated music special Entergalactic offered more than just the opportunity to create visuals for his 2022 studio album of the same name. It was a break, says executive producer Karina Manashil, from the traditional process of a label giving an artist “two music videos, and you have to move on to the next.” Created by Mescudi and Kenya Barris, Entergalactic is a New York-set rom-com-style story with a painterly visual style that follows an artist named Jabari (voiced by Mescudi) as he attempts to balance his career and love with “It” girl Meadow (voiced by Jessica Williams). “Creating Entergalactic the [show] actually unlocked something for Kid Cudi, the artist,” says Manashil. “There’s often an expectation of the sound your…

In both series for which Nicholas Britell is nominated for outstanding music composition for a series Emmy, he scores a death. But those deaths could not be thematically more different. For Andor’s “Rix Road,” Britell composed a rousing funeral march played upon the passing of Maarva Andor (Fiona Shaw), music that is the galvanizing tune of a nascent rebellion. For “Connor’s Wedding” in Succession, he crafted the sounds of the confused emotions surrounding Logan Roy’s demise. “Maarva’s funeral represents almost a culmination — the seeds of rebellion are being birthed,” he says. “And Logan’s death and funeral in some sense really feels more like a huge ending.” Britell, already an Emmy winner in 2019 for Succession’s main title theme, walked THR through his process. What goes through your brain when…

Finding actors for Abbott Elementary’s coterie of impressive guest stars was no easy task for casting director Wendy O’Brien, who juggled A-list schedules, COVID-19 restrictions and child labor laws to help bring season two of the ABC sitcom to life. After the massive critical and commercial success of season one, securing interested talent was not the problem: “Part of the joy of season two was that Abbott had already exploded,” O’Brien explains. “We were having agents and actors reaching out to us saying they were fans of the show, if there was ever anything that they could be right for.” Creator Quinta Brunson had one actor in mind to play her character Janine’s mother, Vanetta: “Taraji [P. Henson] was a dream of Quinta’s,” O’Brien says. “But she’s extraordinarily busy. It’s…

Disney+’s Hocus Pocus 2 was an emotional homecoming for Emmy-nominated composer John Debney, who scored 1993’s Hocus Pocus in the early days of his career. “To be playing some of the themes that I had written as a kid, I almost wanted to cry. It was like having a baby and then not seeing it for 30 years, then finally holding that baby again,” says Debney, 67. “Performing those notes again, it was terribly — in the best way — emotionally deep.” But with the opportunity to revisit his past work came the unique challenge of having to reimagine it. For Hocus Pocus 2, Debney’s work would need to reflect a new story and audience — a process that allowed Debney to look back on his own journey as a…

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…

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…

You know when you’ve just finished an HBO series on Max — formerly HBO Max — and a featurette about the episode you just watched autoplays? Well, those little programs make up the bulk of the contenders in the Emmys shortform categories. Yes, basically: TV Academy voters will have to vote for their favorite shows that explain one of their other favorite shows. Take, for instance, the race for outstanding shortform nonfiction or reality series. The options include House of the Dragon: Inside the Episode, Succession: Controlling the Narrative, The Last of Us: Inside the Episode and The White Lotus: Unpacking the Episode. The only contender that doesn’t set out to do a deep dive into an HBO series nominated for outstanding drama is SNL Presents: Behind the Sketch, which…

It’s 2003 and Jay-Z is planning a farewell concert at Madison Square Garden to celebrate his retirement from music. But his bass player is unavailable. Adam Blackstone, a jack-of-all-trades who plays bass, drums, piano, organ, tuba and sousaphone — and is also a songwriter, producer, composer and everything else under the musical sun — is more than ready to step in. Twenty years later, Blackstone, now 40, is still working closely with Jay-Z; both are Emmy winners for last year’s hip-hop-heavy Super Bowl halftime show. And the musician who has helped everyone from Rihanna to Justin Timberlake shine is stepping into his own limelight. After winning an Emmy in 2022 for music direction, Blackstone is nominated again. This time, however, he’s a double nominee. Not only is he competing for…

When Kim Davis-Wagner and Justine Arteta signed on to cast the television adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s blockbuster rock ’n’ roll novel Daisy Jones & The Six, they knew they were up against the pressure of re-creating the magic of a beloved piece of IP — but they were also up against A Star Is Born. The Lady Gaga-starring musical drama hit theaters in 2018, and the industry was still captivated with the idea of seeing pop stars on the big screen. “The thinking was, there have to be other musicians [like Lady Gaga] who could be that good at acting,” says Arteta. “We knew that was possible, but really rare.” Instead, the duo — who have been working together for over 30 years, getting their start in music videos…

In Hulu’s Prey, the Emmynominated TV movie that serves as a prequel to the 1987 sci-fi thriller Predator, Amber Midthunder plays Naru, an 18th century Comanche woman in the Great Plains who encounters a fiendish alien that hunts humans for sport. While Dan Trachtenberg, who also received an Emmy nom for directing, loaded the telefilm with Easter eggs for fans of the Predator franchise, he also incorporated a reference to one of the most important camera setups in cinema history with this ode to John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), starring John Wayne. “It’s a seminal movie from a crafts perspective and has influenced every filmmaker who came after it,” says Trachtenberg, who modeled this shot of Naru leaving the confines of a Comanche teepee on the “doorway shot” from Ford’s…