Screen Talk Emmy Edition 2018: Writing, Directing Categories (Episode 10)
IndieWire’s Screen Talk podcast brings back its bonus Emmy edition as this year’s race heats up. This week, IndieWire editor-at-large Anne Thompson and executive editor Michael Schneider look at the writing and directing categories in drama, comedy, limited series, variety, talk and nonfiction. | 8 August 2018
*Directing discussion at 8:47, writing discussion at 20:00
Last Year’s Winner: “Big Little Lies”
Still Eligible: No.
Hot Streak: Over the past five years, HBO and FX have alternated wins in this category. Since HBO’s “Big Little Lies” won in 2017, it’s FX’s “turn” in 2018.
Fun Fact: The “American Horror Story” franchise has been nominated five times in this category, one short of the record held by “Prime Suspect” — except the PBS series had won three times by this point, and “American Horror Story” has never won.“Twin Peaks” and “The Looming Tower” are out, “The Alienist” and “Genius: Picasso” are in; that was the surprising revelation on Emmy nominations’ morning, as two of the presumed limited series frontrunners couldn’t even make the initial cut. How does that change the race to the finish line? Quite a bit.
Two series in particular should be breathing a bit more easily right now. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” has the “American Crime Story” brand backing it, not to mention the full power of Ryan Murphy, so FX must be liking its chances now that the critics’ darling and historical Hulu threat are out of the running. Netflix, though, is likely itching even more for its first win in the category, and “Godless” could get them there. Jeff Daniels and Michelle Dockery’s western sports a cast of TV Academy favorites, earned solid reviews, and appears to be widely seen.
Then there’s the dark horse: While Showtime thought it had a good shot at two slots here, “Patrick Melrose” is now a sneaky pick to win. Benedict Cumberbatch has never been better, he’s beloved by Emmy voters, and the relatively short limited series (five episodes) should be an easy binge for anyone who hasn’t caught up yet. Moreover, it’s got weighty subject matter, confidant style, and is less divisive than the hit-or-miss “Versace” and “Godless.” (“Versace” earned less raves than its “ACS” predecessor, while westerns in general can be a turn-off to some viewers.)
So what about those surprise nominees? “The Alienist” scored six nominations overall, but none in the acting categories; it looks like it’ll need another shocking turn of events to walk away with the gold. As for “Genius: Picasso,” it nabbed a critical nod for Antonio Banderas, but has less total nominations than the “Einstein” edition, which won zero in 2017. It, too, looks like a longshot.
Below are IndieWire TV Critic Ben Travers’ predictions for Outstanding Limited Series (listed in alphabetical order), which will be updated throughout the season. Make sure to keep checking IndieWire for all the latest buzz and highlights from the 2018 race, and read predictions for the rest of the categories, as well.
The Nominees:
- “The Alienist”
- “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”
- “Genius: Picasso”
- “Godless”
- “Patrick Melrose”
Will Win: “Godless”
Could Win: “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”
Should Win: “Twin Peaks” (How was this left out?)
Screen Talk Emmy Edition 2018: Black Mirror, Versace Lead Longform Races (Episode 9)
IndieWire’s Screen Talk podcast brings back its bonus Emmy edition as this year’s race heats up. This week, IndieWire editor-at-large Anne Thompson and executive editor Michael Schneider look at the key limited series and TV movie categories. | 1 August 2018
Screen Talk Emmy Edition 2018: Crafts and Below-the-Line Categories (Episode 8)
IndieWire’s Screen Talk podcast brings back its bonus Emmy edition as this year’s race heats up. This week, IndieWire editor-at-large Anne Thompson and executive editor Michael Schneider are joined by crafts editor Bill Desowitz to look at the key below-the-line races. | 25 July 2018
*ACS mentions at 13:06 and 17:28
“The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”
Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For A Limited Series Or Movie
Ryan Murphy has been a hardcore advocate for gender parity behind the scenes of his many many series — and that shows with the three nominations received for editing the latest edition of “American Crime Story.” The nominees include 2016’s winner in this category, Chi-Yoon Chung, as well as Shelly Westerman (for the episode “House By The Lake”) and Emily Greene (for the episode “Alone”).
Welcome to Career Watch, a vocational checkup of top actors and directors, and those who hope to get there. In this edition we take on global star Penélope Cruz, who’s delivering lauded performances on multiple platforms, in English and her native Spanish.
Bottom Line: Cruz is a Goya and Oscar-winner (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) who chases challenging material around the globe. This year she and husband Javier Bardem not only opened Cannes with Asghar Farhadi’s Spanish mystery drama “Everybody Knows” (Focus Features) — which went on to rack up over $6.5 million in France — but Cruz transformed herself into blonde Italian fashion icon Donatella Versace for her first-ever foray into television. Ryan Murphy’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (FX) scored 18 Emmy nominations last week including Supporting Actress in a Limited series for Cruz. Next, she’ll play her sixth role with mentor Pedro Almodovar, playing his mother in autobiographical drama “Dolor y gloria” along with Antonio Banderas.
Career Peaks: The brunette actress has been an international star since her first movie with Almodovar, 1997’s “Live Flesh.” That was followed by “All About My Mother,” and Almodovar’s small-town semi-autobiographical “Volver,” for which she shared the Cannes Best Actress award with the female ensemble, and became the first Spanish actress to earn a Best Actress Oscar nomination. She won the BAFTA and Best Actress Oscar for her warm and witty role opposite Bardem in Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” She also scored an Oscar nod for her supporting performance in musical “Nine” (2010).
At Cannes 2018, “Everybody Knows” debuted on opening night, instantly sold to Focus Features, and became a big hit in France. Spain’s power couple Bardem and Cruz (who have been working together since “Jamón Jamón” in 1992), helped Iranian Oscar-winner Asghar Farhadi (“A Separation” and “The Salesman”) develop the mystery family drama over five years as he sent them treatments for their feedback. “Every day is an adventure,” said Cruz, who accepted equal pay with Bardem for the movie. “Asghar got in my dreams; he didn’t let me rest even when I was sleeping. He’s a poet. He could work anywhere. He is very humble. He asked a lot of questions. Like all his movies, the universal theme is about exploring the complexity of human relationships and behavior. We always have more to learn.”
Assets: The ballet-trained actress can do anything in three languages: her native Spanish, English, and Italian: comedies (“To Rome with Love,” “Vicky Christina Barcelona,” “Waking Up in Reno”), thrillers (“Gothika,” “Elegy”), westerns (“All the Pretty Horses”), melodramas (“Everybody Knows,” “Twice Born”), tragedies (“Ma Ma”), musicals (“Nine”), big-budget studio pieces (“Spectre, “The Counsellor,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” and “Murder on the Orient Express”), and costume dramas (“The Queen of Spain”).
Latest Awards Play: With “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” showrunner Ryan Murphy wanted to show Donatella Versace “in a serious light,” he told TV Guide last January. “What we did with Penelope was show her with heart. In many ways it’s a tribute to Donatella.” Over twenty years of working with the Versace fashion house, Cruz had met Donatella several times at parties, she told me on the phone. “She has always been kind to me; they have dressed me over the years for the Oscars. I felt a lot of responsibility to play her, I like and respect her and am a huge fan of her work with her brother.”
After Murphy called, she said she felt she needed to call Donatella and ask her, “or I couldn’t move forward. She was not involved the development in any way. She said, ‘if somebody is going to play me I’m happy it’s you.’ I felt in that call, that she knew I respect her and like her.” Cruz told Murphy: “I’m going to do it, as long as we treat her with respect.”
Murphy based the series on Maureen Orth’s 1999 non-fiction book “Vulgar Favors: The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” which Cruz did not read. “I didn’t want to read the book,” she said. “I went by the script, and doing my own research in terms of Donatella and the relationship with her brother.”
The accent was a challenge for a Spanish actress playing playing an Italian character speaking in English. It took three to four months of prep. Already knowing Italian made it easier. “For me the key was trying to find the way she speaks,” Cruz said, “so different, a pitch lower, with an Italian accent. She does a rock and roll thing in the way she speaks. I tried to have something of her in there, hopefully some essence of that person.”
Cruz’s Donatella is strong and determined to save her brother’s empire after his death, the only woman surrounded by men, sticking to her guns. “She’s emotionally in such a sad difficult place,” said Cruz, “and has to start making difficult decisions. She’s going to do this in the name of her brother, keep her brother alive through Versace. She got a lot of strength from that love, to keep the empire going in such a difficult time.”
If Cruz got hung up on some dialogue or wanted to add some research she had found, she felt free to discuss it with Murphy. Shooting television was “so different from film,” she said. “They’d make some new dialogue changes the day or two before. You have to be ready for it, you have to have the character in you to be able to improvise. It’s a great exercise for actors, there’s no other way to follow the rhythm of TV.”
She worked with her costume and hair and makeup teams from “Volver” and “Broken Embraces” and went for Donatella’s cigarettes. “We didn’t want to do caricature,” she said. “It’s the wig and very little makeup, my eyebrows were like no eyebrows because they’re so blonde, which changes the expression. We made my lips a tiny bit fuller on top with makeup. The costume was a corset for her tiny waist; she has an amazing body, she exercises a lot, even today her body is incredible.”
Cruz doubts that Donatella has seen the film, but she did send Cruz flowers the day of the premiere, “with a beautiful note to wish me luck,” she said.
Latest Misfires: Despite good reviews for her performance, Cruz couldn’t save 2016 cancer drama “Ma Ma,” which topped out at $1 million worldwide, nor poorly reviewed period epic “The Queen of Spain,” or little-seen “The Brothers Grimsby” and “Zoolander 2.”
Current Gossip: While she put in three years in the starlet spotlight (2001-2004) as the girlfriend of Tom Cruise after his breakup with Nicole Kidman (Cruise and Cruz co-starred in ill-fated “Vanilla Sky”), she left him, hooked up briefly with her “Sahara” costar Matthew McConaughey, and then in 2010, Bardem; they have raised two children together. Bardem and Cruz have learned not to take their roles home with them. “We both started very young in our twenties,” said Cruz. “Then, I felt that to torture myself and stay in character for months, the better the result would be. I have discovered that’s not true. To jump from reality to fiction many times in one day, I love that beautiful dance back and forth between both dimensions. This is work that we do, it would not make your life better if you use things from your private life. The fact that we know and trust each other so much really helps.”
Next Step: Cruz is currently filming her supporting role in Almodovar’s “Dolor y Gloria.” Banderas plays Almodovar. “Life is funny,” she said. “I’m Antonio’s mother in the part when he’s a little kid. It’s very beautiful. A lot of things are obviously about Pedro, others are more fiction. I think he’d agree this is an homage to his mother.” Coming up is the Simon Kinberg spy thriller “355,” which she helped producer and costar Jessica Chastain to sell to Universal at Cannes, along with Lupita Nyong’o, Marion Cotillard and Bingbing Fan. Also in the works is the Todd Solondz fable “Love Child,” co-starring her “Versace” costar Edgar Ramirez.
Career Advice: Hollywood often sees Cruz as a luscious attachment to a male star, but as Woody Allen and Pedro Almodovar have proved, she is capable of so much more. More often than not, Hollywood fare offers less than meets the eye, with limited range. She’s probably best off chasing world-class auteurs, whether or not the films are in English. As she ages, more character roles will come her way. And she should keep grabbing rich roles on television. “I want to do more,” she said. “I can get security with experience and some validation, but at the same time, I feel as insecure as the first day of a new film. I don’t want to lose that. Every character is new, you have a new challenge, that is what is so addictive about acting. I imagine when I’m 80 I will feel the same way. Insecurity has to be there to keep an actor growing and enjoying and hungry for knowing.”
Why Penélope Cruz Is a Global Star, Even Before ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ — Career Watch
Oh isn’t the only significant Asian representation among the nominees though. Darren Criss, who is half Filipino, snagged a nomination for playing killer Andrew Cunanan, who in real life was also half-Filipino, in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” on FX. This is his first individual acting Emmy nomination. He previously had a nod as a singer/songwriter on “Glee.”
Criss released the following statement on Twitter regarding his nomination: “Zorro, Dr. Strange, Harry Dunne, Todd Alquist, and Jesus Christ… pretty incredible company to keep. Humbled by your talent, Antonio Banderas, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jeff Daniels, Jesse Plemons, John Legend. I’m such a fan. Congrats! What an honor, Television Academy. Thank you so much. Truly. Wow. And a huge congrats to my fellow cast and crew of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story! Ryan Murphy does it again!”
Either win would make great strides for Asian representation, especially in the acting categories. Only two Asian actors have won previously: Riz Ahmed in 2017 for his leading role in “The Night Of” and Archie Panjabi for her supporting role in “The Good Wife” in 2010.
Sandra Oh’s ‘Killing Eve’ Emmy Nod Isn’t the Only Important Asian Nomination to Celebrate
Joyce Eng (@joyceeng61), GoldDerby
If this were 2017, I’d say “Big Little Lies,” no contest. This year, I’ve enjoyed the ’90s tunes of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” and the era-transporting hybrid mixes on “Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G.”, which had to tell the story without Pac’s and Biggie’s music.
Critics Pick the Best TV Soundtracks of the Year (So Far) – IndieWire Survey
In “American Crime Story’s” second season, creator Ryan Murphy explored the social significance of the murder of legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace (Édgar Ramírez) by spree-killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) outside his Miami mansion in 1997. In particular, Murphy contrasts the high and low worlds of Versace and Cunanan in Miami, the difficulty of coming out of the closet in the ’90s, and the culture’s underlying homophobia.
Visually, it was a tour-de-force for production designer Judy Becker (“Feud: Bette and Joan”) and costume designer Lou Eyrich (a three-time Emmy winner for “American Horror Story”). And Miami’s South Beach became the visual epicenter. “It’s about the clash between the high Versace world and the low Cunanan world,” Becker said. “But then within Cunanan’s world there were the contrasts of being taken care of by sugar daddies and being on his own.”
The clothes, too, reflected the difference between Versace, who transformed fashion into a glam party world, and Cunanan, who aspired to be a part of that fantasy. “Versace liked to be stylish but comfortable, and Andrew was a chameleon: He dressed the part to fit into the older gentleman’s world,” said Eyrich.
Miami: Black and Gold Meets Pink
The Versace mansion (Casa Casuarina) has since become a boutique hotel, but, fortunately, the production was allowed access. The opening of the first episode (“The Man Who Would Be Vogue”) was completely shot in the Versace mansion, including the interior, the pool area, and the first courtyard. The interior design was intricate and extravagant, with two rooms made out of seashells. Since much of the original furniture was sold, the art department commissioned Italian upholsterers to recreate the original, Versace-designed, furniture fabric, accentuating black and gold.
“His ambition and authenticity were important to Ryan,” Becker said. “Versace was rich and successful so the sets showed the success, taste, and his personality. He was very flamboyant, but we didn’t go crazy with the palette. We used a lot of tone on tone, whereas Andrew’s sugar daddies lived in monochromatic homes, and when he was alone, Andrew lived in a world of beige.”
In the second episode (“Manhunt”), Becker built two important sets in LA for the Miami locations: the interior of the grungy Normandy Plaza Hotel, where Andrew stayed, and a more upscale hotel, where he worked as a prostitute. Both emphasized different shades of pink, at Ryan’s request. “It’s a color you see in Miami,” she said. “It’s indicative of the sunsets, and it represents the pink triangle that gay men had to wear in concentration camps.
“The Normandy had cracking on the walls and it represented a place where Andrew had no power and was alone and poor. Ryan kept telling me to add more cracks. It really showed the decay. The other hotel had pink neon and the Memphis look [with bold colors], and was a place where Andrew held power.”
High and Low Fashion Statements
Without the cooperation of the Versace fashion house, costume designers Eyrich and Allison Leach were left to their own creative devices, so they turned to online resellers to purchase authentic Versace pieces while making garments for the principal actors. Two Versace standouts included the pink robe that he wore in the beginning, and the iconic black leather bondage dress worn by his sister, Donatella (Penélope Cruz ).
In fact, Eyrich’s favorite outfit for Versace was a leather shirt and pants that she recreated from one of his research books. “It really showed the beauty of his work,” she said. But the bondage dress was a difficult construction challenge. “Trying to figure out how he draped that had all of us in the department full of awe and respect for Versace and his meticulous hand,” she added.
However, when it came to Cunanan, there was obviously a lot more artistic license in dressing the 27-year-old hustler, who relied on relationships with wealthy older men to achieve the appearance of success and affluence. Eyrich and Leach mainly used descriptions from Maureen Orth’s book, “Vulgar Favors,” from which the FX series was adapted.
But when Cunanan fled to Miami, desperate and embittered, he planned the murder of Versace with few resources. “He has very little clothes left after his killing spree and he’s using drugs and losing weight,” said Eyrich. “We back track and tell his story, dressing him very sporty and conservative or preppy to fit in.”
“It was more about not letting him stand out,” added Eyrich. “Dressing him up in a linen sport coat with the perfect jeans and a loafer for when he’s at the height of the high life, to finding a place when he’s destitute and his clothes are all too big on him.”
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’: How Miami Became the Striking Visual Epicenter
Screen Talk Emmy Edition 2018: A Lackluster Longform Race (Episode 2)
IndieWire’s Screen Talk podcast brings back its bonus Emmy edition as this year’s race heats up. This week, IndieWire editor-at-large Anne Thompson and executive editor Michael Schneider banter about the limited series and TV movie categories. | 6 June 2018
ACS news 