On The Emmy Trail With ‘Hacks’, ‘Samurai’ And ‘Daily Show’s MAGA Whisperer Jordan Klepper; Plus Saying Goodbye To A Hollywood Great – Notes On The Season

A column covering conversations and events on the awards circuit.

If it seems like we have been in an Emmy cycle with no end, you wouldn’t be far from wrong. But we are just about at the finish line as ballots are now in the hands (or laptops) of some 20,000, give or take, eligible Television Academy voting members and not due back until Monday, August 26 by 10 p.m PT. With the 76th annual Primetime Emmys — our historic second ceremony in the same calendar year — set for Sunday, September 15 exactly a month from now (with Eugene and Dan Levy as hosts as just officially announced today after Deadline’s scoop last week), it will bring to an end a collision of seasons for the 75th Emmys which, due to the strikes, were delayed four months to January 15 of this year — even though that year’s eligible shows ended on May 31, 2023.

In other words folks, we have been talking Emmy fairly consistently for more than a year and a half with no discernible break (the official FYC season for the 76th began in January just as the 75th winners were being announced). But now it really is crunch time and it is all on the line as voting continues over the course of the next 11 days.

HANGIN’ WITH ‘HACKS’

The campaigns are certainly still out in force. On Tuesday, the Hacks team turned up for a conversation onstage at the cushy Soho House screening room in West Hollywood. Stars Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder as well as the creative trio behind it Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky all showed up for a fun Q&A including talk about Season 4, which is now being written but of course is going to focus on a storyline where Deborah Vance finally gets the late-night talk show for which she has worked her entire life.

They all confirmed that after this next season, which starts shooting in September, that there are no plans to go beyond a fifth and final season, where it will get all wrapped up, just as they planned before the show ever premiered on Max, when it won Emmys right out of the gate for Smart and the creative team in Directing and Writing categories. After being off the grid last season, Hacks is back with a vengeance this time around with a whopping 17 Emmy nominations and critical praise that was through the roof.

Smart, with two of her five Emmys for this role, is so good in delivering Vance’s comedy stand-up routines that I asked her if there was any talk that maybe Jean Smart could turn up headlining in Vegas. “Oh yeah, that’s what we want to do. Let’s milk this thing for all its worth,” joked Downs about the prospect. For her part, Smart just rolled her eyes, content to play Deborah Vance, not morph into her.

IS EMMY TURNING JAPANESE?

On Monday night at Matsuhisa restaurant on La Cienega, Netflix threw a small dinner for its breakout animated series Blue Eye Samurai, with select press and the team including creators, EPs and writers Michael Green and Amber Noizumi, plus their Emmy-nominated sound editor Paulette Lifton. The stunning series is up for Outstanding Animated Series, and also Sound Editing in a Comedy or Drama Series (Half Hour) and Animation, but in the latter finds itself competing against heavyweight live-action titles like Star Wars: Ashoka, Only Murders in the Building and The Bear, and also another animated entry with a legacy name in Star Trek: Lower Decks. There may have been a good omen just two days later when the Television Academy announced this year’s juried Emmy winners and Blue Eye Samurai led the list of all shows with three Emmys: for Outstanding Achievement In Animation for Character Design, Production Design, and Storyboard. That makes it this season’s biggest Primetime Emmy leader so far.

Green told me the show has been renewed for a second season but it will be a while since it takes years to finish production. He also said that Yentl was one of his key inspirations for the female warrior disguised as a man. Barbra, Can You Hear Me?

‘DAILY SHOW’S’ MEGA MAGA MAN

Also this week in advance of his trip to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention, I caught up another Emmy nominee Jordan Klepper, who is up as one of the hosts of Outstanding Talk Series nominee The Daily Show. Up against single-host talkers Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers, this politically oriented Comedy Central staple really is hitting its stride with the return of Jon Stewart every Monday and a revolving-host format the rest of the week for the duration of this election season.

Coming off a win in January for the last year of host Trevor Noah’s seven-year run, there has been no lack of material for Klepper, fondly known for his many adventures in MAGAland as he ventures out into Trump rallies, as well as being a rotating host on the news team. He is having a great time.

“I love it. I mean, in many ways, Pete, the last couple years has been wild for The Daily Show, and so, we’ve had a pandemic, where Trevor’s doing shows in his pajamas, at home. We’ve had a writers strike. We’ve had a host end his tenure. We’ve had a bunch of new hosts come in. We’ve all been around. In many ways, you look at what’s happening in the news today, and it does feel chaotic, but you go to work at The Daily Show, and people are like, ‘Yeah, we’ve been there, we know what chaos is. We can ride this’,” he laughed. He also says it is great having Stewart back to help steer the ship. “It’s about the work, and the show moves so fast. It is. It’s a job that we love, but it’s a job, and so, you can’t get caught up in the ego. You get caught up in like how do we best execute this job? And we have other people who are experts in doing that job, as well, not to mention the person who freaking crafted this whole genre. He’s right down the hall, as well, and he can talk to us about some of the things we’re putting together.”

So next week the big show on television will be the Democratic Convention, which is happening just weeks after President Biden dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris dropped in. It also follows the chaos in July with an assassination attempt on Trump and a GOP convention for which The Daily Show had to tear up their planned live coverage due to the shooting. So, can this one be fun for him to cover when he is known for getting comedy gold from MAGA types at all those rallies he does? Are the Democrats good fodder too?

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“I go to MAGA events, and people are unafraid of wearing flags as capes and giant cowboy hats that have American flags all around them, and the Democrats are usually more subdued, but the DNC allows them…it gives them permission to come in and make the most horrific fashion choices known to man out of the spirit of patriotism, I guess,” he joked. “And so, in that moment, I look forward to watching the Democrats strut their stuff and perhaps finding a little bit of humor in it. … One of the things I love best about field stuff is that I get the first draft of responses, and I see a lot of people in that MAGA movement, right now, trying to connect the dots of knowing what dear leader has told them to believe but not exactly knowing how to articulate that or why they believe it.”

Vanity Fair recently dubbed Klepper as the MAGA Anthropologist, and he told me he hopes that distinction will get him a degree somewhere. But on the serious side, does he ever fear for his safety as these rallies and events? “It’s quite the dynamic there. There is tension at these MAGA events, for sure, and I have had my fair share of moments that have gotten a little dicey, but at the same time, you also have people who are just excited to be there and who are friendly and want to communicate their points of view. We were unsure what was going to happen at this last event (he covered recently),” he said.

“So much has happened in this last month, so much, including an attempted assassination on their candidate, which, frankly, when that first happened, there was a larger question about will we ever go to a MAGA rally again?” he said. “Is it appropriate? Is it safe? What will the energy and tenor be? And when I arrived, it had felt like years had passed between those events. Now, there was a lot of talk about the assassination attempt, but there was more talk about what had happened the last week and other grievances.”

Has he thought about what the show, tagged this season as Indecision 2024, will be like post-election? What kind of material will be left to explore?

“That’s something The Daily Show, when I talk to other people about it, it was like out of the places, all of the networks, all of the things, here at Comedy Central, they let me tell jokes that day, as a host. They let me go in the field and craft six-minute pieces that are anthropological looks at America, and then they let me do half-hour deep-dives into Estonian politics,” he says. “So, there’s a lot of ways to skin the political satire cat, and I love using all of them. So, whatever America looks like five, six months from now, I’m really eager to continue to use all of these skillsets to kind of try to craft a narrative, a story, or at least an understanding of this strange place we’re in.”

GENA ROWLANDS: ONE OF THE ALL-TIMERS

Finally, we lost a great one this week. Gena Rowlands died at age 94 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for the past few years. It seemed like every headline on her passing only mentioned 2004’s The Notebook, in which she ironically played the dementia-stricken older version of Allie, played as a young woman by Rachel McAdams, only to later live with the disease in real life.

But Rowlands had a career like no other, most notably in all those daring and different independent films directed by husband John Cassavetes. In fact she got to be directed by both her husband, and later her son, Nick Cassavetes (in The Notebook). I always thought she should have won the Best Actress Oscar for her seminal and haunting turn in 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence, but alas she lost to Ellen Burstyn that year for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (although Rowlands did take a Golden Globe for it, one of her eight GG nominations and two wins). She received a second lead actress Oscar nomination for 1980’s Gloria, but she should have gotten another, at least, for 1977’s Opening Night, one of the great performances by an actress playing an actress in cinema history. Check it out.

All of those and so many more were collaborations with Cassavetes, many shot right in their living room. Remarkable. Just on Wednesday, the day she died, I posted a new episode of my Deadline video series Behind the Lens in which my guest Mark Duplass extensively tells of his idolization of John Cassavetes and all those independent films that team was able to make outside the Hollywood system.

I am so happy that Rowlands finally received the Oscar she deserved, an Honorary one for her career, in 2015. I was there that night and it was special. For several years, right before the Board of Governors would convene to vote new recipients of their Governors Awards, I would write something in this column asking “Isn’t it about time for Gena?” Finally it was, but as I wrote after that night this Oscar in its own way was really for both of them, Gena and John.

One of the great honors I have had in doing interviews was in 2004 when I moderated a SAG Q&A with Gena and her equally legendary The Notebook co-star James Garner at Pacific Design Center. As they talked about the movie and their celebrated careers, Gena’s eyelash loosened and suddenly started hanging sideways. I wondered “Should I say something?” I decided to let it go. She was beautiful even with a sideways eyelash — and by the way she didn’t let it get in the way of the interview in front of her fellow actors.

This being the end of Emmy season it also seems appropriate to acknowledge Rowland’s status as an Emmy legend. She was nominated for eight Primetime Emmys, seven of them in the Limited (or Miniseries) category, and won three for 1987’s The Betty Ford Story, 1992’s Face of a Stranger, and in supporting for 2003’s Hysterical Blindness. She even won a Daytime Emmy in 2004 for Children’s Program performer in The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie.

Here’s to the incredible Gena Rowlands.