Comedy Series
Behind the Most “Badass” One-Take Scene in ‘Hacks’
Season three of Max’s Hacks begins with a suspended camera pan above the Las Vegas Strip that guides viewers inside Caesars Palace, where it follows a familiar figure through the casino for a gag of a reveal. Captured in one take, the shot, which the show’s director of photography Adam Bricker calls “kind of badass,” […]
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‘I’m a Virgo’s Secret Sauce: Anti-Capitalist Messaging and a Briefcase Full of Dolls
Boots Riley didn’t set out to make I’m a Virgo as a television series. Even a year after releasing the show, which premiered to critical acclaim and received four Spirit Award nominations, he’s not entirely sold on the medium. “I’m just going to be honest for the other filmmakers out there: I’m not a TV […]
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How to Create a Show About a Grieving Black Female P.I. “Without Apologizing for Being Bold”
Diarra Kilpatrick is the consummate multihyphenate: creator, co-writer and star of the BET+ noir dramedy Diarra From Detroit, which mines real elements of her life to tell a classic mystery tale that also deals with grief. “I wanted to tell a story about a Black private investigator for a long time. I was talking to […]
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‘Abbott Elementary’ Star Lisa Ann Walter on Doing Right by Philly: “I Would’ve Been a Dialectician If I Wasn’t an Actor”
Lisa Ann Walter has brought a lot of herself to her portrayal of tough-as-nails Melissa Schemmenti on Abbott Elementary, particularly her Sicilian upbringing and the experiences of her teacher mother. This latest season also saw her character get closer to fellow instructor Jacob Hill, played by Chris Perfetti, whom Walter has invited over for holidays. […]
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‘Hacks’ Star Jean Smart on Getting ‘Watchmen’ Role After Sigourney Weaver Turned It Down
On May 18, five-time Emmy winner Jean Smart added another accolade to her résumé: hometown hero. The star of Max’s Emmy-winning comedy Hacks returned to her Washington roots at a special career-retrospective event and award presentation hosted by the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), which marked 50 years this spring. Held inside the famed SIFF Downtown […]
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‘Palm Royale’ Director on “Iconic Moment” Laura Dern Shared the Screen With Father Bruce Dern for the First Time Ever
In Palm Royale, about a woman named Maxine (Kristen Wiig) infiltrating the wealthy elite of Palm Beach, Florida, in 1969, Laura Dern plays Linda, the local feminist of the community. In episode six, titled “Maxine Takes a Step,” Dern shares the screen with her real-life father, Bruce Dern, for the first time ever. “It’s such […]
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‘I’m a Virgo’ Editor on His Approach to 13-Foot-Tall Sex Scene in Boots Riley’s Superhero Drama
In the third episode of Prime Video’s I’m a Virgo, a beloved character succumbs to an injury after being denied treatment at a hospital because he was uninsured; it’s one of several of the show’s depictions of the horrors of America under capitalism, and the scene that made editor Tom Eagles want to be part […]
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‘Hacks’ Guest Star, Kaitlin Olson, on Royally Trashing Jean Smart as Her Mom
When The Good Place creator Mike Schur called Kaitlin Olson to convince her to take a guest role on an upcoming comedy series back in 2020 — the passion project he was producing from a trio of showrunners about a legendary female comedian staging a career resurgence — the actress says she was a little […]
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Is the Emmys Comedy Category Finally Funny Again?
When it comes to the comedy series category, a hypothetical question arises when imagining how Television Academy members may vote. Should the top prize go to the best show of the eventual eight nominees or the funniest show? Should a series’ humor — or in some cases, lack thereof — impact an Emmy pick? Last […]
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Why a Cocaine-Fueled Chicken Dance Didn’t “Burn My Career to the Ground”
One of the most talked-about scenes from Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen is the one in which a cocaine-fueled Freddy Horniman, played by Daniel Ings, dances in a chicken costume to wipe out a debt he owes to a gang of drug dealers. He’s forced to fly like a chicken and eat imaginary seeds off the ground […]
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How to Roast a Comedian and Other Trade Secrets From Hollywood’s Top Production Designers
Girls5eva Teresa Mastropierro says that since Girls5eva began, she had a box of CDs under her desk “just waiting for their day in the sun.” So when she heard that the eponymous girl group would be performing at a mansion for a nostalgia-themed birthday party in season three’s “Orlando,” Mastropierro knew she had to put those […]
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Down Under Dogs: The Aussie Couple Behind Disabled-Pet Comedy ‘Colin From Accounts’
During the process of writing Colin From Accounts, the spiky Australian comedy with a sweet center that launched this year on Paramount+, creator and star Harriet Dyer decided she didn’t want to make a “doggy show,” she recalls. “She didn’t want it to be cutesy,” her co-creator, co-star and husband, Patrick Brammall, added. She was […]
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