Those two films are among the standouts in a career that has also seen her serve as director of photography on “Fruitvale Station,” “Dope” and “Seberg,” and that has now expanded to include her feature directorial debut, “The Fire Inside.” The Amazon MGM Studios release stars Ryan Destiny as real-lifebOlympic boxer Claressa Shields, the first woman to win a gold medal for the U.S. and the only American boxer to take the gold in successive games. Written and produced by Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight,” “The Underground Railroad”), the film costars Brian Tyree Henry as Shields’ coach, Jason Crutchfield, and is as concerned with Shields’ life outside the ring after the gold as it is with her pugilistic exploits.

A month after the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Morrison served as the filmmaker spotlight conversation at TheWrap’s annual business conference, TheGrill — and offstage, she spoke about her days at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied photography and film, and at the American Film Institute, where she received a Masters of Fine Arts in cinematography.

At what point did you decide you wanted to get into film? And why?
For me, it started in photography, and it was early. I think I was 6, 7, 8 years old. My mom had an old Olympus camera, and half the pictures of the family are from the point of view of a 7-year-old. (Laughs)

As early as high school, I would shut myself up in the darkroom, listen to my brooding teen-angst music and print photographs. So when I was applying to colleges, I applied to all the safe schools — ambitious but safe in terms of not being art schools — but I also applied to RISD and Tisch and some art schools. When I got into Tisch for photo, that was a no-brainer for me. And then, quickly, I got interested in cinematography, but at the time, there wasn’t a cinematography undergrad (program).

But you did study film at NYU.
Yeah, I ended up convincing everybody to let me double major in photo and film, which they said was crazy. (Laughs) They were maybe a little bit right. I managed it, but I was spread really thin.

And did you come out of those four years thinking that your future was in film more than photography?
No. Interestingly, I was taking my photo portfolio around by day and sending out my film reel by night. I loved it all and took any and every job that had anything to do with the camera. And at some point, maybe a few years down the line, the advice I was given was, “You really have to pick a career.” They are incredibly different. The type of photography I was interested in was very much photojournalism, even conflict photography. It was very documentary-style. I loved Robert Capa and Mary Ellen Mark and I was inspired by a lot of the Farm Security Administration photographers.

One of the things that I loved about film was the power of the story to build empathy and to have this entirely transformative experience. I would come out of the movie theater after a potent film and feel like I had lived another life. And as much as I loved photography, it still felt a little bit like I was looking at something, I wasn’t living it.

I think the secondary but maybe even more powerful thing was that I love to collaborate. The type of photography I was interested in was a very individualist and probably lonely career. And by choosing film, I was choosing a life of collaboration. I think, ultimately, I chose film because I wanted to be able to make things with other people.

Between NYU and AFI, you worked as a cinematographer for a while, didn’t you?
Yeah. For a minute, I was doing really interesting documentaries. I shot a documentary about an orphanage in Odessa in Ukraine. I shot in Argentina. I was getting to travel and shoot. I was living the dream. And then that first internet bubble burst, and anybody who wasn’t firmly planted in the space was out of work. To make a living, I started to get pulled into reality television, and I knew that if I didn’t do something drastic, I was gonna end up there. It was so close to the thing I loved, and yet so not what I wanted to do. So I applied to AFI, which was this mecca for cinematography. I figured if I got in, it would shake things up.

Cinematography is a famously male environment. Were there a lot of other women in the program?
No. There were six of us, I think, in a class of 28. That’s still statistically higher than our percentage in (Hollywood), but it’s obviously quite low. Even in photography, women have always been the exception to the rule, which never made any sense to me. Our currency is human emotion. If you think of what women do particularly well, it’s empathy and emotion. And so I think we’re quite predisposed to be good as storytellers and filmmakers and cinematographers.

How did AFI transform your career?
AFI is and was incredibly technical in all the best possible ways. I had some technical know-how going in, but it really bolstered my confidence. Especially as a woman in this industry, you have to be confident. This is a medium that’s entirely subjective. There are no actual rights and wrongs. So you have to let your gut drive the machine, and then people will follow. It’s a sad double standard: The second a woman second-guesses herself even for a millisecond, she’s quick to be labeled indecisive. So for me to come out of AFI with confidence was huge.

How did you get that confidence?
I guess through the process of making things, failing, picking yourself up, making more things, getting better. From a technical perspective, I experimented with every type of camera, every type of lens, every type of process. Really trying to throw all the different techniques at the wall and see what stuck. We would light for each other, we would gaff for each other, we would grip for each other. You have that experience of kind of playing every role on set, which I think is quite helpful later on because you understand what the team is comprised of and what each person is responsible for.

Did you get out and then think, Oh wow, I really have to go to work now to…
To pay for it? Yeah. I mean, that’s the thing. It’s a huge caveat. I came out with a good amount of debt, as did many of my friends. A lot of people fell back into the thing that they were trying to get away from ’cause that’s the quickest way to pay off that debt. I fell back into reality television for two, maybe two-and-a-half years after graduating, because I had to get out from under the crippling debt. The moment I’d paid off the private loans, I said to myself, “I’m never doing this again.” And I picked up a film camera again.

But, you know, when I went to school, that was one of the only ways you could get hands-on experience making movies. And I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think film school is great for some people, especially people who need accountability, like homework assignments. Or people who want to cut out all the other noise and say, “I’m gonna focus on this for two years.” But it’s not a necessity in the same way it used to be.

I mean, look at what Sean Baker did with an iPhone for Tangerine. And a step up from an iPhone, there are $6,000 cam- eras that can make beautiful films now. So there’s a whole other path that wasn’t avail- able to me when I was coming up. That’s to spend the money you were gonna spend on film school and buy yourself a camera and some lights and just go make lots of movies. I don’t think it’s a one-size-fits-all solution, but I think for some people, it’s amazing.

When you left reality TV for good and focused on film, did you have trouble being taken seriously because of your gender?
I mean, on the one hand, you never know why your phone doesn’t ring. I only actually know my own successes, I guess. But I know that I’ve definitely had no short- age of stories like when we were doing the pickups for “Black Panther,” the first AD and I were in a minivan, and the Teamster wasn’t leaving for the set. I looked at him like, “We’ve got to go.” And he’s like, “I’m waiting for the first AD and the DP.” We’re like, “That’s us, dude.” That’s basically still a day in my life, but you have to not take that personally and keep pushing through.

You’ve now directed your first feature. Did you direct at all when you were in school?
No, no. I was very focused on cinematography. I’m an anomaly, I’m sure, but I never set out to direct. I’ve never liked having the attention on me. It took every director I ever shot for telling me that I should be directing to finally let it percolate to where I would consider it for myself.

You turned to directing after you received American Society of Cinematographers and Oscar nominations for “Mudbound” and after you shot “Black Panther.” Was there a reason for that timing?
I spent a year after the nomination and after “Black Panther” reading scripts to shoot that weren’t as good as either “Black Panther” or “Mudbound.” Basically, every script I read felt like a step backwards. And so I figured it was better to start from scratch and try something new than to go backwards.

What was it about the story of “The Fire Inside” that made you think it was the film to launch your feature-directing career?
“The Fire Inside” is the story of an incredible female boxer named Claressa Shields. Nobody knows who she is. She’s one of the greatest female athletes ever and I had no idea who she was, and Barry (Jenkins) didn’t know who she was. I think there was something wrong about that. Also, as a female boxer, she’s by definition the exception to the rule — which, as we were just speaking about, I’m quite used to being as well. The idea that it’s not enough to be good at your craft, you also have to know how to look, how to act, how to fit other people’s perception of you. I’ve had to walk that line, too, so I saw some of myself in that story.

Were there moments making the movie where you thought, Nothing I’ve done or studied has prepared me for this?
To be honest, it wasn’t in the making of the film. When we were making the film, we got caught in a pandemic and some other things, but the making went incredibly smoothly and was really just a joy. There was so much respect and love for one another, and we all had a great time making the film. It was more the idea that directing can be a lonely profession. You’re the one carrying this boulder up a hill for years sometimes — the singular person championing a project from beginning to end. That was new to me.

Are you now thinking about directing more movies, or do you want to go back to being a cinematographer for a bit?
I had such a great first experience making the film, I probably do have the directing bug. Ask me again after the second film — but right now, I think the focus is probably going to be on directing long form. I still love shooting, and so my hope is to keep shooting commercials, because then I can keep playing with gear. It’s still such a part of who I am, but I think I’ll be dipping in and out of it, as opposed to doing longer-form projects that would take me out of directing for too long.

Read more of TheWrap’s College Issue here.

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“I said to my friends, ‘I’m not getting it this year, it’s going to Jimmy,’” Belli said, laughing.

But to her shock, it didn’t go to Jimmy. Instead, Belli landed her third consecutive nomination for comedy directing, making her only the second woman to ever score three in a row in the category. (The first was Amy Sherman-Palladino for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”in 2018, 2019 and 2020.)

The nomination was one of the surprises of this year’s Emmy class. And it drew attention to the Television Academy rule that if more than 5% of the entries in the Outstanding Comedy Series category are from multi-cam shows, at least one nomination will go to a show from that genre, which is responsible for eight of the 10 biggest Emmy-winning comedies ever, including “Frasier,” “Modern Family,” “All in the Family,” “Cheers” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”  

Belli, who came to sitcom directing in the late 1980s after years in the theater, embraces the format that she says comes with its own specific requirements. “It is its own beast, because the rules for comedy and the rules for filming it are different,” she said. “In terms of the rules for comedy, it’s jokier. We’re looking for that laugh, we expect that kind of response and the artists themselves feed off that response.

“The thing that I love, and it’ll probably always bring me back to the multi-camera arena, is there’s no comparison to a live audience really laughing.”

“The Ms. Pat Show,” a family sitcom based on the real life of comedian Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams, is filmed in front of an audience in Atlanta, though it occasionally uses other locations. “Debbie Allen set the standard with the pilot, to say that we don’t have to be in the studio,” Belli said. “I’ve shot on a basketball court in Studio City, at a nearby park, at an auto repair shop outside the CBS gates. There’s a lot we can do to give it more production value and make it friendly for people who are used to watching single-camera shows, while keeping the humor of the multi-cam space.”

The episode for which Belli was nominated has fun with the format: “I’m Your Pappy”  opens with a black-and-white sequence that mocks the classic sitcom. “Why am I saying fudge?” wonders Ms. Pat, who intended to use a far coarser epithet that also begins with f-u.

“There were two people I wrote to immediately after I got the nomination,” she said. “[Show cocreator] Jordan [E. Cooper] and Pat and the BET people, we were all talking, but the other two people on my crew that I wrote to immediately were the costume designer and the music editor. That piece of music for the black-and-white piece was perfect, and so were the costumes. I mean, anybody who’s seen an episode of ‘Leave It to Beaver’ would go, ‘Oh, yeah!’”

But the playful shift from a ’50s style show to a modern one was not what Belli mentioned when asked about the episode’s biggest challenge. “A baby being born live in front of a TV audience?” she said, referencing a lengthy sequence in which the girlfriend of the family’s teenage son gives birth on the couch during a snow- storm. “I think so.” (The production looked into using a real baby but opted for a prosthetic infant instead.)

As usual, the episode deals with social and racial issues in between the jokes — a major attraction for Belli, a governor in the Television Academy who is one of the few women recognized in a category that has given less than 10% of its nominations to female directors. (In the last five years, the number has improved to more than 35% for women.) She has also spent much of her career working on multi-ethnic and Black-centered shows. “It’s my job to seek information and tell a story as authentically as I can,” she said.

And although multi-cam shows are far less prevalent than they once were, outnumbered by single-cam shows that aren’t exactly chasing laughs, Belli is a staunch defender of the genre. (In fact, she cowrote a book on it: “The Sitcom Career Book.”)

“I’ve been here long enough to know it goes through cycles,” she said. “I think [multi-cam] is here to stay. I think it’ll morph into certain things, and hopefully it’ll only get better. And in today’s economy, it is cheaper.” She laughed. “So I hope it lives long and prospers. I’m honored to be in that space.”

A version of this story first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Who Is Mary Lou Belli and Why Does She Keep Getting Emmy Nominations? appeared first on TheWrap.

But there were also variety specials (“Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall,” “Sills and Burnett at the Met”), dramas (“6 Rms Riv Vu,” “Friendly Fire,” “Law & Order: SVU”) and comedies (“The Larry Sanders Show,” “Mad About You”). And now, at the age of 91, one of the most beloved entertainers of the television age has been nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for the Apple TV+ comedy “Palm Royale,” in which she steals more than a few scenes as Norma Dellacorte, a rich society dame who spends a third of the season in a coma and then another big chunk of it conscious but unable to talk except in grunts and squawks.

The show’s 11 nominations include lead actress Kristen Wiig, who plays a desperate social climber in 1969 Palm Beach who is anxious to claim the inheritance of Norma, her husband’s aunt. Signing on to play the part, said this year’s oldest and most beloved nominee, was a no-brainer.

At this point in your career, has what you’re looking for in projects changed?
Not really. Everything that I’ve tried to do — some have been successful and some not — I’ve wanted to do it because I thought it would be fun. And for the most part, it has been. And that’s one of the reasons I was so happy to be offered the job in “Palm Royale.” All I had to do was hear who was gonna be in it: Kristen Wiig and Allison Janney and Laura Dern and Ricky Martin and Leslie Bibb and Julia Duffy…. Not even knowing what I was gonna do, I said, I wanna be in it.

That’s good, because “your character is in a coma for the first four episodes” isn’t the most enticing pitch.
I know! (Laughs) Well, they told me that after I said yes. They said that I’m kind of the matriarch of this whole Palm Royale situation, but I’m in a coma for several episodes.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: It was really funny. I’d be in bed and I’d get up at five in the morning and go to the studio, go to the makeup trailer, get into my costume and go right back to bed. That’s quite a good gig.

When the character comes out of the coma, she speaks in grunts and groans. Did you come up with those on your own?
Yeah. You can’t write that stuff. I said, “What do I do?” And they said, “Just try to talk, but it comes out as gibberish.” And so I said, “OK, I’ll do gibberish. And I really enjoyed doing that ‘cause I never quite knew what was gonna come out of my mouth.

Including something that sounds like your famous Tarzan yell.
That was not intentional! It just came out. At one point I said, “Should we do that again?” And they said, “No, leave it in.” What the heck?

One of the things that’s so great about it is that when we meet Norma, she’s in a coma and she’s played by Carol Burnett, so we’re guaranteed to have sympathy towards her. And then once she wakes up, the show gradually strips away all of our sympathy.
I know! (Laughs)

Was that a fun transition to make?
Oh, definitely. It’s a lot of fun playing a villain. Like Miss Hannigan (in Annie). And in Law & Order: SVU, I was a villain. In fact, I think I killed a few people. It’s fun to do that, and I’ve been so lucky ’cause I’ve been able to do so many different things. And it’s still happening. I’m amazed at my age, but I’m happy. I’ve got all my parts, my hips and my knees, and I think I’ve got my brain.

In the last episode, you have a conversation with Ricky Martin’s character about how terrible it is to grow old. I watched that wondering if any of your own feelings were in there. But I don’t think you’re weary or embittered the way she is at all.
Not at all. And also, people treat her differently. I’m not treated the way she is. So I have no bitterness about getting older. I mean, hey, what’s the alternative?

In that final episode, there’s also a huge bombshell when we learn Norma’s true identity.
Yeah. I never knew that until, like, halfway through. And then (showrunner) Abe (Sylvia) said, “She’s not really who she pretends to be.” I go, “Oh, that’s kind of fun. So I guess I’m Agnes, right?” We’ll find out in the second season just who and what Agnes is and what she did.

“Palm Royale” is set in the late 1960s and one of the points of the show was how tumultuous that time was politically and socially. For you, that was a time when “The Carol Burnett Show”was rolling and things were going well. Do you remember that era as being tumultuous?
Definitely. And we didn’t discuss it, but we just went ahead and did sketches where nothing was topical. Because I just wanted it to be the V words — variety and even vaudeville — and I wanted it to stand the test of time.

Once in a while we might do something a little political, but it wasn’t our deal. You know, ours was just to make people laugh, to do movie takeoffs and certain characters like Mrs. Higgins and Mr. Tudball and Eunice and the family that people could identify with. And I think that’s one of the reasons that our show is still running. You know, we’re on Me TV, and people YouTube us. (Pauses) I’m so excited about this. Do you ever watch TCM?

Sure.
I’m on it all the time, because I was raised in the ’40s and ’50s going to movies with my grandmother. And recently my husband and I were at a function where Dave Karger, who is one of the hosts of TCM, was a moderator. We met him and I said, “Oh, I watch you all the time.” And my husband Brian said, “We have an idea. What if you show the full movie, say, of “Mildred Pierce” and then show “The Carol Burnett Show” takeoff of it? And they jumped at the idea.

So I’m gonna be interviewed by him in September, and then they’re gonna show these takeoffs in December. We’re showing “Double Indemnity,” “Gone With the Wind,” “A Stolen Life,” “Torch Song,” “Mildred Pierce” … They’re gonna show “Double Indemnity” with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, and then show the takeoff we did with Steve Lawrence called “Double Calamity.” I’m really excited about that because one of my favorite things that we always did on my show was the movie takeoffs. I’ve wanted to do something like that for so long, and I didn’t think they would ever go for it.

What else do you have in the works?
We’re developing a series with Apple TV based on the famous rehearsal club in New York in the 1950s. A movie was written about it years ago called “Stage Door” with Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. It’s based on where I first moved when I went to New York. I lived in this building with 25 other women. It was a safe haven for all of us who wanted to be in show business, and it was sponsored by wealthy ladies in New York so that the rent was only $18 a week, room and board.

I lived in one room with four other girls. We each had a cot and a dresser, and we shared one bathroom and one closet, so you can imagine. But everybody rooted for everybody. I remember one time I got four other girls together, and we each put in $5 to buy an audition dress. We went to Bloomingdale’s and we found an orange dress that would work for all of us, because we wanted something that would stand out. If we had an audition, we’d sign up and get the dress, wear it for the audition, then be responsible for having it cleaned and hung back up in the closet for the next girl.

It was just a wonderful time in the ’50s when I first got there. So we’re gonna develop a series featuring all the different girls and their stories. I’ll be helping create that, and I’ll be behind the scenes. (Laughs) Thank God I’m healthy enough to work when it’s offered and when I think it’s gonna be fun.

This story first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Carol Burnett at 91: ‘I’ve Got My Hips and My Knees and I Think I’ve Got My Brain’ appeared first on TheWrap.

None of this was preparation for “The Traitors,” the Peacock reality show in which Cumming struts through a Scottish castle in fabulous outfits and presides over a game in which contestants, many of them veterans of other reality shows, aim to uncover the identity of “traitors” in their midst before they’re “murdered” by those traitors. The show’s four Emmy nominations for its second season include Outstanding Reality Competition Program and a hosting nod for Cumming, who is positively delicious as a campy overlord.

When I saw you playing the Master of Ceremonies in “Cabaret”on Broadway in 1998, I would never have thought, “That guy should host a reality show.”
(Laughs)

Granted, reality shows didn’t really exist back then. But was something like this ever part of your career ambitions?
No. I wouldn’t have envisioned it even three years ago. It’s kind of indicative of how I’ve gone about my career: I’ve always been eclectic and done weird, left-field things, but I’ve also stayed open to new things and new people and new places. I just went with my gut. And as you say, who would’ve thunk it?

What made you want to do it?
It’s based on a Dutch TV show, which compared to our version was a very toned-down, bare-bones kind of version. But I was intrigued by the show and intrigued by why they wanted me, because the host of the Dutch one wasn’t at all a character like I’m playing. And when I had a meeting with the producers, I realized they wanted me to camp it up and be a conduit to creating a slightly heightened reality, a Gothic sort of thing. So when I realized that’s what they wanted, I ran with it.

It strikes me that you could make “The Traitors” and play it very straight, no pun intended. If you get somebody like Jeff Probst to host and do the competition, it would still work as a reality competition show. But the campy Gothic attitude of your version is so integral to the show.
Yeah. And the fact that it’s in a castle in Scotland, which is a very theatrical country. So you’re already creating an atmosphere and upping the ante. I think it’s hilarious that I’m in the American version of the show, and the British version (which premiered three months before the U.S. version) is less camp than ours. (Laughs) That must be a first.

Did you immediately know how you wanted to play the role of host?
Not immediately. We had a couple of chats, and I said something about being a James Bond villain. I said, “Oh, maybe I should bring my dog and pat her.” That’s how Lala got the job. I told them I wanted to be a dandy Scottish laird who’s the ruler of his fiefdom.

I feel like the upped the ante on your outfits for the second season.
Yes. When you start something, everyone’s very nervous. It was new and it was a bit heightened and a bit camp and a bit unusual as a show. So everyone was stressed and thinking, How’s this gonna go down? And when everybody realized after the first season that people really responded to all those things – how I looked, the dandiness of it, the theatricality of it, the Gothic-ness of it – then everyone relaxed in the second season and we were able to go for it a bit more. And we really hit our stride, I think.

I love the fact that people do these “Traitors” parties in their houses and someone dresses up as me. (Laughs) It’s spawned this whole subculture of people dressing up in funny tartans and rolling their r’s and things like that. I just think it’s such fun.

And did you practice saying the words traitor and murder with the right amount of hissy venom?
Well, I’m doing a theatrical version of hosting a show and I thought about my voice in the same way. I don’t speak like that normally. So things like traitor and murder, I hit those to add to the immersive experience of watching the show. It’s like Catherine O’Hara playing Moira Rose on “Schitt’s Creek.” Someone said in an Instagram post that it’s me as Moira Rose playing Alan Cumming in “The Traitors.” (Laughs)

Do the contestants ever see you not in character?

I really try to avoid that. Especially this last season, I really made sure they didn’t. Occasionally I would be arriving in the morning with Lala and our paths might have crossed a couple of times. Or I’d be out taking Lala for a walk and they might be filming a bit and I would see them. But now I’m very conscious of it. Like when I leave my room, I would take the back stairs if they’re anywhere near. I think it’s really important that I maintain this distance and stay in this sort of daddy character. I sometimes see them after they’ve been murdered and booted out, when they come back to do their interviews.  

This last lot, Season 2, they all came to New York to do some press thing and we went to my bar. I have club here called Club Cumming in the East Village and they all went there for drinks. I came down towards the end and I was like, “You have received the most votes and are banished from the game!” And then we all went back in and had many more drinks. It was such fun. It’s sort of like seeing your teacher during the school holidays or something. Or when you see your therapist on the street and you’ve never seen them standing up before.

Are you familiar with the contestants’ backgrounds before they come on the show?
No, I’m really not. I’ve never watched those shows. Some come into the cultural zeitgeist, but just a few. Out of this last batch, I only knew three or four. But that show that (“Traitors” Season 2 contestants) CT and Johnny Bananas were on, “The Challenge?” It’s been on for 20 years, and I’d never heard of it. It’s so ridiculous. It makes me realize that there’s just too much TV.

A version of this story first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post No, Alan Cumming Didn’t Expect to Become a Reality Star, Either: ‘Who Would’ve Thunk It?’ appeared first on TheWrap.

The Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series category, for instance, dropped from 23 submissions last year to 11 this year, which puts it in line to drop from five to three nominees; Outstanding Directing for a Variety Series dropped from 21 to 14, which should cut its nominees from five to four.

As for the Outstanding Scripted Variety Show category – well, that’s a real mess, and it’ll be the first of our burning questions about this year’s variety categories.  

What’s the deal with the scripted variety category? How many nominees will it have? And how long can the category last?
According to Emmy rules, the Outstanding Scripted Variety Series category – and its predecessor, Outstanding Variety Sketch Series – has been facing the chopping block for years. If a category has fewer than 25 eligible entries for two consecutive years, as scripted variety and variety sketch have for more than a decade, it can be eliminated and folded into a related category. The Academy briefly merged sketch and talk shows a couple of years ago, but the outcry was so big that it reversed the decision almost immediately.

Since then, it has changed some category names and reclassified “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” from a talk show to a scripted variety show, giving “Saturday Night Live” a formidable rival in the category it had won for six years in a row.

Still, the category is now skimpier than ever. The Television Academy’s rules specify that for categories with between eight and 20 entries, the number of nominees is determined by dividing the number submissions by four and rounding to the nearest whole number – which basically means that 18 or 19 entries get you five nominees, 14 through 17 get you four, 10 through 13 get you three and eight or nine get you two …

For the last four years, the scripted variety and variety sketch categories have had between eight and 14 submissions and either two or three nominees, with “Saturday Night Live” the only common denominator.

But if there are fewer than eight nominees, the category is taken off the ballot and voting is put in the hands of a panel made up of volunteers who promise to watch all of the submissions. This year, that has happened to the scripted variety category. After regular Emmy nomination voting has closed, a panel of volunteers will watch all the submissions – “SNL,” “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” “After Midnight,” “Painting With John” and probably not much else – and vote whether or not each one deserves to be nominated.

No more than two shows can be nominated, and a program is eliminated from contention if it doesn’t receive at least 70% approval from the panel. (Perhaps to stave off disaster, that threshold was changed from 90% to 70% only days before voting began.) If only one show makes the cut, it’ll be declared the winner on the spot.  

As for how long the category can last, who the hell knows? It could have been killed or merged a few years ago, and things are now getting worse both for scripted variety programs and for talk shows. But the Emmys couldn’t do away with them in the past, so the category will probably just keep morphing and changing its name as long as they keep giving out Emmys.

Since the category’s not going anywhere this year, can John Oliver keep winning?
The variety and talk categories are known for long winning streaks, but “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” is on an awfully impressive run. It won in the Outstanding Variety Talk Series category for seven straight years between 2016 and 2022 — and then, when the Television Academy moved it into the newly created Outstanding Scripted Variety Series category last year and put it up against the winningest show in Emmy history, “Saturday Night Live,” it won again. It’s now two wins shy of the longest streak ever, which belongs to “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” with its 10 consecutive wins in Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series (nine wins) and Outstanding Variety Series (one win). 

Given the paucity of contenders in this category, it’ll probably come down to Oliver vs. “Saturday Night Live” once more. Oliver’s streak has to end at some point, but it’s hard to pick against him without strong evidence that voters are getting tired of “Last Week Tonight.” In fact, it probably makes more sense to think that maybe the streak will get to nine this year and then end next year, just before it ties the record, at the hands of the 50th anniversary season of “SNL.”

Is the Outstanding Talk Series category in better shape?
Yes, but only slightly. The category has had a full slate of five nominees for the last four years, but it’s going to fall short this year because it only had 14 submissions. Emmy math says that means four nominees, and history suggests those will be “The Daily Show,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and probably “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” all past nominees.

But that wouldn’t leave room for newcomers like “Hot Ones” or “John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA” or old timers like “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” or “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

Is a part-time host enough to keep “The Daily Show” in the winners’ circle?
The exit of “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” from the Outstanding Variety Talk Series category last year came as a huge relief to all the talk-show hosts who’d put on shows five nights a week only to lose to the guy who’d do less than two dozen a year.  But the award went to the last show besides Oliver’s to win: “The Daily Show,” which in the intervening years had changed hosts from Jon Stewart to Trevor Noah.

So “The Daily Show” comes into this year’s Emmy race as the defending champion — except that it’s no longer Noah’s show, but one led by a rotating cast of guest hosts. You’d think that a shifting slate of 12 different hosts during the eligibility period would hurt the show’s Emmy chances for a repeat — but one of those guests is Jon Stewart, who has returned once a week to the show he led to its first 10 wins in the category. His 2024 return, even if it’s part time, could be the key to its Emmy hopes.

Besides awards shows and the Super Bowl halftime show, what else can break into the live variety special category?
Even more than usual, the Outstanding Variety Special (Live) category seems to be the province of awards shows: The Oscars, the Grammys, the Tonys, the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, the CMA Awards, the BET Awards…  The Super Bowl halftime show is always a lock, as it will be for this year’s show starring Usher, but what else? There’s J-Lo’s live Apple Music concert, maybe. Katt Williams live standup special? Ryan Seacrest and the ghost of Dick Clark ringing in the New Year? And did enough people actually like the Tom Brady roast? We’ll see.

Will music or comedy rule in the Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded) category?
In recent years, voters in this category have nominated comedy specials about twice as often as music specials — though the slate each year is generally a mixture of the two, with a tribute or two thrown in. This year the comics include Dave Chappelle (he’s controversial, but he’s got five noms in the category in the last six years), Mike Birbiglia, Alex Edelman, Ricky Gervais, Kevin Hart, Trevor Noah, Amy Schumer and Ramy Youssef, among others. Musical entries come from Billy Joel (will he get sympathy votes for CBS cutting off the first broadcast in the middle of “Piano Man?”), Elton John, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Barry Manilow and the Grammy salute to hip-hop.

The safest bet is to pick two from column A (comics), one from column B (musical specials) and then throw in a tribute (Dick Van Dyke, “The Tonight Show” 10th anniversary or the Kennedy Center Honors) and something that mixes it all together, like “Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas.” But this is the most robust of the variety categories, so there’s an awful lot to choose from.

Why isn’t Taylor Swift eligible?
“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour”was one of the events of the year, both the concert tour and the three-hour film of her Los Angeles concerts that played in theaters last fall and in an extended cut (“Taylor’s Version”) on Disney+ in March. In February, the Taylor Swift Museum (apparently there is such a thing) tweeted that “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” was “officially eligible for Emmy consideration.”

But sorry Swifties, Disney says it ain’t so, and the only mention of Swift anywhere on the Emmy ballot comes in the capsule description of the Grammy Awards. The bottom line is simple: You can get away with a limited theatrical release and still retain Emmy eligibility, but a 91-day release in up to 3,855 theaters? No way.

A version of this story first appeared in the Comedy Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Burning Questions About John Oliver, Jon Stewart and the Emmys’ Messy Variety Categories appeared first on TheWrap.

A while after he gave Urbanski that wishlist, the two men were on a plane together. Urbanski was perusing a script. “What are you reading?” Oldman asked him.

“I’m reading a character who’s about to become your new best friend,” Urbanski said. “I won’t say anything more than that.”

The new best friend, it turned out, was Jackson Lamb, a rumpled and grumpy British intelligence agent who presides over a motley crew of discredited spies who’ve been reassigned to the bottom of the barrel at MI-5: Slough House. That’s where agents who’ve screwed up badly go to be verbally abused and given lousy assignments by Lamb. 

The role was delicious, funny and touching, because of course the misfits at Slough House — or “Slow Horses,” the derisive nickname that gave the show its name — turn out to be capable agents under the tutelage of a brilliant boss. The role, for which Oldman is now Emmy-nominated in the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series category, lets the actor wear the same clothes almost every episode, and he never has to worry about spending time in the makeup chair or getting in shape for a new season. Hell, he barely has to cut or comb his hair, and he certainly doesn’t have to wash it. 

Essentially, “Slow Horses,” based on a series of novels by Mick Herron, was that checklist he’d given Urbanski as a guide to the remainder of his career. As he began to navigate his 60s and his fifth decade as an actor, the man known for his fierce performances in “Sid and Nancy,” “Prick Up Your Ears,” “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” “True Romance” and many more was going into his final act as a slovenly grump who farts ferociously and never changes his raincoat.

And he was loving it.

“He’s got no filter, he doesn’t care about being judged and there’s really nothing to lose,” Oldman said with a grin. “There’s something very freeing and liberating about playing someone who really doesn’t give a f–k.”

*

Oldman sat on a couch in a sleekly appointed house above Beverly Hills. His suit was pale linen, casual but stylish; his striped socks added a touch of color above his cream-colored, elegantly detailed brogues. He was sharp in a not-trying-very-hard kind of way. And yet, Jackson Lamb was peeking out all around the edges. The hair was long and tangled, albeit cleaner than Lamb would have it. The T-shirt, an off shade of blue, was a little ragged around the neck. And when he leaned back on the couch, a visible potbelly protruded above his belt.

The actor, it turned out, was on a break in the middle of shooting Season 5 of the Apple TV+ series. And if we always hear about stars getting in shape for a role, this is the kind of series where you might want to get out of shape before reporting to the set, right?

“Yeah, I suppose so,” he said, laughing and patting his belly. “I gained a few pounds for ‘Mank’ and this followed shortly after, and obviously the character is unhealthy and has let himself go. So I’ve sort of been carrying it around.” He glanced at his waist and shrugged. “It, and the hair. And when I’m not on the set, it just is what it is.” A grin. “It doesn’t work with every outfit.”

But it works with Lamb’s shabby outfits, which include a wrinkled shirt, a half-hearted tie and the same ragged raincoat no matter the weather. “I’m so thankful to be able to come in and throw on these old clothes that never change,” Oldman added. “I’ve got the same shoes I’ve been wearing since Episode 1. It’s quite fun to almost be in your own clothes, you know?”

Of course, there’s more to Lamb than the clothes, which in a way are an act of deliberate camouflage. “The whole thing with the greasy hair and not bathing very often and having holes in his socks — it’s all designed to make people underestimate him,” he noted. But Herron’s books aren’t big on explaining how Lamb got that way — and when Oldman went to the writer early in pre-production to ask questions, Herron told him that if it wasn’t on the page, he didn’t really have an answer.

“So I just went away and made my own little bible,” Oldman recalled. “I said, ‘Do you think he was married, and the pressure of the job and the nature of the work was such that it sort of disintegrated?’ ‘Yeah, maybe.’” He laughed. “You just have to go away and put your own spin on it. But what’s there on the page is terrific.”

Because each new season covers one of Herron’s Slough House books, Oldman said he reads the appropriate book prior to filming and often asks showrunner Will Smith if he can incorporate favorite lines into the scripts. The idea is to find that fine line between drama and humor, which has always been a key ingredient of “Slow Horses.”

“I think we walk the knife’s edge very well,” he said. “How much of the drama do you emphasize? How much of the comedy do you play up? Do you make the drama a little more like ‘Killing Eve,’ which is ever so slightly heightened, or do you go very real with the drama and make the humor more incidental? I think that’s where we kind of came down: There’s a lot of humor in the show, but we can’t ask for a laugh.”

Of course, any discussion of the humor in “Slow Horses” has to circle around to Lamb’s farts, which get a juicy place of honor at least once per season. Given that Oldman is a key creative participant in the show, the question was inescapable: Do they give him input into the volume and tone of his gas?

“I’m a fart consultant,” he said immediately. “It sounds ridiculous, but we do have emails going back and forth where we talk about the frequency and robustness.” He laughed. “I mean, come on: If we’re in the back of a Rolls-Royce, that is really good leather we’re talking about. We need a more robust fart and we should put a little echo on that one.”

Season 5, he promised, is particularly strong in the flatulence department. “It’s a three-fart season,” Oldman revealed. “I’ve got three crackers coming up, if you like that kind of thing.”

*

There was a time in Oldman’s career when you wouldn’t have pictured him in a long-running television program of any kind. Born in Southeast London, the son of an alcoholic welder who left the family when Oldman was just 7, he went to drama school and acted on the stage before bursting onto movie screens.

He was fearsomely talented and often ferocious on screen, moving into high-profile roles with Oliver Stone (“JFK”), Francis Ford Coppola (“Bram Stoker’s Dracula”), Tony Scott (“True Romance”) and, later, the “Harry Potter” and “Dark Knight” series. Odd roles aside, he was not the kind of actor you’d expect to find on the small screen.

“Early on, there was a sort of snobbishness, wasn’t there, about television?” he said. “You were either a movie actor or you were a television actor. And like theater people who looked down on movie actors, the movie actors looked down on TV actors. Even though there were great one-offs on television, we tended to look down on television.” He shrugged. “Now everybody wants to get in the game. They all want a show. We’re in this golden age of it now, aren’t we?”

As for Oldman’s own golden age, everybody has their own favorites: yours might include “Air Force One” or “The Contender,” mine might be “True Romance” or “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” and Oldman’s own favorites… well, those would be the ones he had the most fun making. 

“You know the end result, but for me, the process of doing it is what I remember,” he said. He mentioned “JFK,” for which Stone gave him plane tickets and a per diem and asked him to go to Dallas and New Orleans and do his own research into Lee Harvey Oswald; “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” which involved months of rehearsal at Coppola’s estate in Northern California wine country; “Hannibal,” where he loved Ridley Scott’s energy and pace; David Fincher’s “Mank”; and Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope,” in which he has a small but crucial role as John Cheever in the Italian director’s rapturous film that premiered in Cannes. “Watching him work was just extraordinary,” he said, imitating how Sorrentino would pace the set looking for inspiration.

Oldman has talked recently about retiring — but when you hear him rhapsodize about Sorrentino or “Slow Horses,” it’s hard to imagine he’s at a point where he might walk away.

“Well, it’s on the horizon,” said Oldman, who turned 66 in March. “I mean, I do like what I do, but I am creative in other things, like photography. The good thing is that we shoot 12 episodes and they break it up into two seasons of six, so you have seven or eight months off. I really do enjoy the downtime, when I can take pictures.”

“What has happened is there were periods when I wished the material had been better. You know, it is a job and you have to put kids through school and put food on the table and pay the mortgage. And there were times when the work I was doing was really removed from what I wanted to do. I just started to resent it and thought, Oh, I’ll just pack it in. I’m done with it.” (Oldman didn’t say which films he was talking about, though he has said he was unsatisfied with his performance in the “Harry Potter” films in the past.) “I’d give it my best, but I just really wasn’t enjoying the material.”

“Now I have a renewed energy. But, God willing, I don’t know if I want to be doing it when I’m 80.” Another shrug. “It’s very selfish being an artist or an actor. You’ve got this vision and you sacrifice a lot of things. So now there are photographs I’d like to take, and there are books I’ve never read and films that I want to see and all sorts of things I might want to do. It’s not stopping being creative, it’s just slowing everything else down.”

He stood up and stretched, then started to leave with his wife, Gisele Schmidt. On his way across the living room, he stopped and turned. “But we’ll see,” he said with a smile. “As long as Apple keeps writing the checks, I’ll keep playing Jackson.”

This story first appeared in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post How Gary Oldman Landed His Dream Role as a Farting Slob in ‘Slow Horses’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

But Apple TV’s “STEVE! (martin)” is really two separate films: one that uses archival footage and voiceovers to chart Martin’s formative years as perhaps the first stand-up to reach true rock star status, the second a fly-on-the-wall look at a more contented man with a hit TV show (“Only Murders In the Building”) and a young family.

TheWrap: One of the things that may be eye-opening to people who weren’t around in the 1970s is just how unprecedented Steve Martin’s stand-up fame was — and how he became a huge star with humor that seemed totally silly but was carefully thought out.

Morgan Neville: Yeah, he was trying to understand the philosophy of comedy. He was so smart about being stupid. (Laughs) And I don’t think Steve really remembered what a phenomenon it was. He says in the second film, “I feel like my whole stand-up career was a blip or a footnote,” which is kind of crazy because he totally changed the business of stand-up.

How’d you come to this project?

There was a producer that lives in Steve’s building in New York. He would see Steve in the elevator every few months and occasionally he’d say, “Hey, Steve, would you ever make a documentary?” And Steve would say, “No.” And then three years ago he saw him in the elevator and Steve said, “Maybe.”

That producer called somebody I know who mentioned that to me. And so I met with Steve. And at the end of that meeting — which was not really about the documentary, it was like a sniff test on each other to see if we got along — he just said, “OK, let’s do it.” That was it. It was not a big thing, and it was all Steve. I’ve never met or talked to Steve’s agents or managers. It was just him.

Did you have an immediate sense that you wanted to make it as two separate and distinct films?

Not at all. It was me just gathering stuff. When I go into a project, I try to have no preconceptions and no agenda. I just want to talk as much as I can and film as much as I can and see what my experience is. It was six months of working on it before I realized, everything’s going in two different directions, so let’s it keep going that way rather than trying to hold it together. I told him, “Oh, by the way, Steve, I think I’m making two different films.” I think the extent of the conversation was Steve saying, “OK, if that’s what you think, sounds good.”

What was the initial process like?

I would go to his place with a tape recorder and just talk to him. I did that for hours and hours and hours, which is both me getting material but also seeing how he sees his story and how he talks. And building a relationship between us. I don’t go in with a list of questions. I have questions because I’ve been following him for a long time, but what I like about doing audio(-only interviews) is that we have time. If you want to talk about Aboriginal art, that’s fine. We can take the time to talk about anything.

So I did that for a couple of months before we started shooting. And then I think in July of ’21 we were coming out of COVID, and Steve said, “Marty (Short) and I are gonna go back on the road. We’re gonna get together and start to work on material again. Do you want to film that?” I said, “Yes, yes, I do!” That was the first shoot, and it was one of the most fun shoots I’ve ever done.

Over his career, he hasn’t been known for opening up about personal matters. Did you have to get through his guard?

Yes and no. I mean, Steve was famously private and reserved. But (New Yorker writer and Martin’s friend) Adam Gopnik says in the second film that Steve’s changed more than anybody he’s ever met. I do think Steve is very different now than he was 25, 35 years ago, and he seemed pretty willing to talk about anything. On a project like this, it does become like a therapeutic relationship, where you’re talking to people about their issues and the things they’ve worked on in their lives. And Steve, who’s done a lot of therapy, understands that.

This story first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Why Morgan Neville’s Steve Martin Documentary Is Two Films in One appeared first on TheWrap.

But none of those were as big and wild as Element’s third nominated film, Lanthimos’ “Poor Things,” a historical romp about a beautiful but childlike Frankenstein creature named Bella (Emma Stone) that takes place in a mock Victorian landscape and was made on a budget of a reported $35 million. It ultimately garnered 11 Oscar nominations, second only to “Oppenheimer.”

“It was by far the biggest thing we’d done,” producer Ed Guiney said after previously earning nominations for both “Room” and “The Favourite.” “Yorgos wanted to build the world — create Bella’s world, if you like, so that you’re seeing something that isn’t a reality. I guess it’s seen almost through her eyes, if that makes sense.”

It might not make complete sense — Bella was reanimated by putting an infant’s brain into a dead woman’s body, after all — but “Poor Things” is ravishing and ridiculous, an ode to freedom from the Greek director of such delicious slices of surreal social commentary as “The Lobster,” “The Favourite” and the surprise Oscar nominee that put him on the map, 2009’s “Dogtooth.”

That last film was what attracted Element Pictures cofounders Guiney and Andrew Lowe, who met with Lanthimos when he announced that he wanted to make his next film in English. “He came to London and made the rounds and met everybody, and an exec working for us met him initially and then introduced him to us,” Lowe said. “We started a conversation that led to him being attached to ‘The Favourite,’ which at the time was a project called ‘The Balance of Power.’ But that was six or seven years before we made the film.”

They then began putting together “The Lobster.” And around that time, Lanthimos also mentioned that he wanted to adapt the 1992 novel “Poor Things.” “I think he’d met (author) Alasdair Gray around 2009, before ‘Dogtooth’ became a thing, really,” Guiney said. “He was looking for someone to help him with the project, and we knew enough about him at that point to be absolutely enthusiastic in wanting to help him in any way we could. And so we signed up, I guess, without knowing how we would pull it off.”

He laughed, adding, “At that point, we were quite early in our careers, so maybe if one had been rational about it, it wouldn’t have been a thing to pursue. But we were in love with working with him, so we dove in and built it over time as we did other movies.”

The two keys to getting “Poor Things” off the ground, Guiney noted, were the success of “The Favourite,” which made almost $100 million on a $15 million budget and received 10 Oscar nominations; and the fact that Stone signed on to star as Bella and also serve as a producer. “Those were the things that turned it from a pipe dream into a reality,” he said. “But that took a moment.”

“Ignorance was bliss,” Lowe said. “None of us had made a film of this scale before, so while we understood it was big, we didn’t really appreciate how big it would be. But we had the advantage of having had a great relationship with Searchlight on ‘The Favourite’ and we knew they had an option to do Yorgos’ next thing. Initially, we thought, let’s try to double the budget of ‘The Favourite.’ That was the number to aim for, and it crept up from there as we learned more about the challenges of actually making the film.” (The final budget of “Poor Things” was reportedly around $35 million, with a worldwide gross approaching $100 million.)

“We came to it with a lot of fear, but also a lot of excitement,” Guiney said. “And because we were all coming to it with a certain amount of naïveté, we were able to really stretch the budget. I think we approached it from an independent mentality rather than an experienced mentality.” During COVID, they assembled a design team to come up with ideas for the world while simultaneously figuring out a budget. Filming in Budapest – where they took over most of the city’s major soundstages – was a big help: “It probably would have been double the price if we did it in the U.K.”

Lanthimos, meanwhile, remains as idiosyncratic as ever. “He’s obviously evolved,” Lowe said, “and arguably he’s a more confident person, as anyone who ages 12 years and has a lot of professional success is likely to be.”

“But the thing that really struck us when we first met him was his singularity and his clarity of thought,” he concluded. “He is very clear about what he wants and he has exacting standards for himself and everyone he works with. It was part of what attracted us to him in the first place, and those traits all describe him today, too.”

“Poor Things” is now playing in theaters.

A version of this story first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Inside the Wacky World of Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘Poor Things’ With His Irish Producers appeared first on TheWrap.

“American Fiction” writer and director Cord Jefferson was driving in the rain in Los Angeles while doing a joint Zoom interview with “Past Lives” writer and director Celine Song when he asked that question, his phone attached to his dashboard and his eyes darting across the wet L.A. streets ahead of him.

Song immediately groaned and scolded Jefferson. “I don’t like morbid jokes like this,” she said with a grimace — and, to be fair, just a bit of a smile. “I don’t know why you’re laughing. I’m not laughing.”

Jefferson and Song may not share the same sense of humor, but they’re linked in other ways. When “American Fiction” and “Past Lives” were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture this year, they joined a storied lineup of directors whose first films were nominated for the top Oscar, including Orson Welles for “Citizen Kane,” Jordan Peele for “Get Out,” Sidney Lumet for “12 Angry Men,” Todd Field for “In the Bedroom,” Mike Nichols for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and Greta Gerwig for “Lady Bird,” as well as Best Picture winners Sam Mendes for “American Beauty,” Kevin Costner for “Dances With Wolves,” Rob Marshall for “Chicago” and James L. Brooks for “Terms of Endearment.”

Jefferson had begun his career as a journalist and then became a television writer, winning an Emmy for “Watchmen,” before he adapted Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure”and landed five Oscar nominations for the pointed comedy starring Jeffrey Wright as an author fed up with being pigeonholed by his race. Song, who was born in South Korea, had been a playwright before making her directorial debut with a gentle story about a woman who is reunited with her childhood sweetheart more than two decades after leaving Korea.

“American Fiction,” which won the audience award at the Toronto Film Festival, and “Past Lives,” which premiered in January 2023 at Sundance and won the Gotham Award as the year’s best indie film, are two of the best surprises of the last year in cinema. The filmmakers talked about their work with TheWrap—and for the record, Jefferson made it to his destination intact.

How are you holding up in your first awards season?
CELINE SONG For me, it being the first time is a source of great energy. I find that I have more energy and passion for it than I could have ever expected. Also, part of it that I really love is getting to hang out with other filmmakers who made great films this year. There is a part of the being in the room makes me feel like a part of a community in that way. I’ve been really surprised by my own ability to hold up, you know? What about you, Cord?

CORD JEFFERSON That’s exactly what I was gonna say. I’ve been sick probably more than I’ve ever been sick in my adult life for the past few months. I was constantly getting colds and bronchitis from all the travel and everything. But it’s all worth it. It’s the ability to sit down with other artists whose work I really love. I was just in London for a thing, and I was talking to Jonathan Glazer. I got to tell him that I’m obsessed with his movie Sexy Beast. And I get to meet Celine and talk to Celine about her work and my work. That, to me, makes it all worthwhile.

Yes, it’s a little exhausting. But I always just try to remind myself that I put out a film and people still want to talk about it several months after it’s been out. That is certainly preferable to putting out a movie and having nobody interested in it a few months after it’s been out.

As first-time directors, what came most easily to you and what was the trickiest to learn?
JEFFERSON For me, I don’t know if any part of it was easy. But I would say the thing that I didn’t realize before I started directing was that in some ways I’d already been directing when I was writing. When I was writing scenes, I was thinking, What are these people gonna be wearing in this scene? How do I want the actors to walk around this space? How do I want them to enunciate these lines? How do I want them to tell this joke? I was already thinking about how I would direct this. The difference was that when I was working on TV shows, I would just then hand off the script to somebody else and they would execute their vision, and my vision would just go away.

And I would say that the biggest challenge would be that it was never my responsibility to market the thing. I’ve worked in entertainment since 2014. For my entire career, I worked in the writer’s room. I helped the showrunner execute their vision and then I packed up my stuff and I left. And once the show was on the air, that was the showrunner and the actors and everybody else’s responsibility. And so, for me, this entire process of being out on the road and marketing a thing and helping sell it to audiences, that is all brand new. I don’t know that it’s necessarily more difficult than making the movie, but it is a brand new element to the job that I had never encountered before.

SONG To me, the thing that came really easily is the thing that I’ve done the longest, which is the story, character, dialogue, working with actors and blocking. That’s all part of my work as a playwright, so that’s the part that I could always hold onto.

And what is difficult is the uncertainty, knowing that it’s my first movie that I’m directing. I talk about it as a dragon that I’m slaying every day, which is the feeling of not knowing how we’re gonna get through the day.  The list of things that I don’t know is really, really long on the first day of shooting. It’s an endless list. And then there is a list of things that I do know: story, character, dialogue, blocking, actors.

But eventually the things that I don’t know start to shrink every day. I learn how to read the call sheet. I know who to ask for what problem. Eventually, what I love most about making a movie for the first time is the way that the list of things I do know and the list of things that I don’t know start to shift.

JEFFERSON I think it’s interesting that both Celine and I come from a background of writing. I’d been thinking about directing for, like, five years before I directed this film. And everybody was like, “How did you know that this was the one that you wanted to jump into?” It’s because I knew this story and these characters on such a fundamental level, I felt like I’d finally found something that I knew in my bones, molecularly.

What gave me the courage to step onto set every day was that even if I didn’t know what was going on with the lights or the cameras that day, even if I didn’t know these technical things, I did know what story we were trying to tell. That place of real confidence in understanding the story and the characters allowed me to say, “OK, I don’t know about lights but I know that this needs to be the mood for this scene. And the lighting needs to reflect that. And what we do with the cameras needs to reflect the isolation that Monk feels here.” I was able to tap into the emotions and the story of it, and that helped guide all the technical stuff that I didn’t necessarily understand.

Both of these films are very personal in certain ways — Celine because it reflects your experience living a life far from where you grew up, Cord because of being defined as a writer by your race. Does it take a story that personal to spur you to take the leap into directing?

SONG It is a much easier way to ask people to believe in you. Because it’s so personal, connected to this actual moment in my own life that happened, it can help convince everyone that I know how to make this movie. And because it’s so personal, I can endlessly argue for the opportunity to direct it. So it makes sense that this is the first opportunity that I had to direct a movie.

JEFFERSON I think Celine’s absolutely right. Before we sent the script to anybody, I was like, “They need to know it’s a package deal.” I didn’t want somebody being like, “Yes, we love this script. Now let’s see what Spike Lee’s doing.” I needed to let people know, “No, this is gonna be me if you want this.” Because it’s so personal, I think that it makes it easier for people to say, “OK, this person understands this deeply.”

Let me ask Celine a question. The thing that finally made me courageous enough to say, “I want to direct this” was that I knew that if somebody were to come to me and say, “Great, now let’s give it to a director,” it would’ve felt like giving away a limb.  And so I’m wondering, Celine, if somebody had come to you and said, “We love this script but we want to give it to a different director,” do you think you would’ve been able to do that to get the film made?

SONG Oh, I was genuinely open to that. (Laughs)

JEFFERSON You were?

SONG Yeah. I just knew that it deserved to be made, right? I didn’t know the industry. I was like, “I need this to get made in a way that the story deserves to be told. I really hope you see that I’m the director for it, but I understand if you cannot fund that.”

Has the success of these two films upped the stakes for what you do next?

SONG  I don’t know. Maybe this comes from me having been in theater for so long, but I think that every project, regardless of scale or scope or the context or what’s come before, is the highest stakes possible. I don’t think the stakes have necessarily changed, because whether it’s a play that I’m doing in a basement in New York or a big movie with a big budget, it still has to pass the ultimate test. And the only test that I really believe in is the test of, “Do I love it? Am I devoted to it?” I have to be devoted to the point where it’s a bit frenzied or fanatical.

JEFFERSON For me, I am deeply, deeply insecure. All of this is wonderful and I’m loving every minute of it and I’m so proud of the film and so happy for everybody that made it with me. But there’s still going to be a deep pit of insecurity that will hit me come April, no matter what happens in March.

This industry frequently tries to force people to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak. But I need to block out all the expectations that other people have for what’s next and focus on being as methodical and patient as I was with this movie. I want to go inward a little bit and figure out what’s next in my own time.  

This story first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post How Cord Jefferson and Celine Song Grabbed Oscar Success With Their First Movies appeared first on TheWrap.

But a few years later, after he’d made the animated film “Chico & Rita” and received an Oscar nomination, it occurred to him that the story of Tenório Júnior might be right for animation.

“I realized that if I made a documentary with people talking about him, it was going to be one hour of closeups of people talking about a dead guy,” said Trueba, best known for live-action films like “Year of Enlightenment,” “The Girl of Your Dreams” and “Belle Époque,” which won the 1992 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

“I thought, Tenório deserved better than that. I was going to tell the story of his disappearance, but I also wanted to talk about someone who was alive. I wanted to make the audience not just hear the bad news, but also hear the great music.”

He initially thought it was a stupid idea to make an animated film about Tenório Junior, but after six months of keeping it to himself while the idea grew in his head, he told his wife about it. Instead of telling him it was ridiculous, she said, “OK, let’s go.”

So Trueba began work on the movie that became “They Shot the Piano Player” by bringing in Spanish artist and designer Javier Mariscal to direct with him. Mariscal realized that different sections of the film would require different styles of animation.

“I saw very quickly that the film should be very realistic when Jeff (a journalist character investigating Tenório Junior’s disappearance) is doing interviews or going to New York or Rio or Los Angeles,” Mariscal said. “But even when I was drawing in a realistic way, I tried to make the heads and the hands bigger for more expression.

“And then when I illustrate the memories of people, it’s another style. It’s not realistic, with not a lot of colors. When it was possible, I only used two or three colors to better understand the memory of this character. And when they play music, I tried to make it completely unrealistic, more like the music is inside the drawings.”

Jeff Goldblum, a longtime friend of Trueba and an accomplished jazz pianist himself, supplied the voice of the journalist character. But even though Trueba has a movie star and a distribution deal with Sony Pictures Classics, the director knows his movie has a rarefied audience.

“It’s not a commercial project,” he said. “It’s very risky, very arty. You are talking about music, about politics, about history, about memory. But how can you do the puzzle of a life knowing that there are many pieces that you will never have? This was very complicated — making it real in three languages, working with documentary material but keeping the strategies of fiction storytelling. For me, that made it really interesting and challenging.”

This story first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post How ‘They Shot the Piano Player’ Made the Journey From ‘Stupid Idea’ to Oscar Contender appeared first on TheWrap.