Going into this year’s Emmy nominations, Mary Lou Belli figured she was unlikely to receive her third consecutive directing nomination for the BET sitcom “The Ms. Pat Show.” Emmy rules stipulate that one of the six nominations would go to a multi-camera show, the kind of live-in-front-of-a-studio-audience production that had been responsible for much of the classic comedy in the history of television. But one of the other multi-cam directors on the ballot was James Burrows, the undisputed king of the genre and by far the most nominated comedy director in Emmy history. (He has 26 nominations for shows including “Taxi,” “Cheers,” “Frasier,” “Friends” and “Will & Grace,” while runner-up Jay Sandrich has 10.
Who Is Mary Lou Belli and Why Does She Keep Getting Emmy Nominations?
TheWrap magazine: The director of “The Ms. Pat Show” specializes in the multi-cam format, where it’s all about getting an audience to laugh
