Awards

Samantha Bee is now the only female host in late night, and that’s a stat she’s not happy about. “It’s a bit unsettling,” Bee recently told Variety. “It’s been a bad year to be a woman in this space. It’s not really a badge that I want to wear.” Shows that have been canceled over

Two of TV’s busiest comedians, D’Arcy Carden and Ken Jeong, have been tapped by the Television Academy to announce this year’s Emmy nominations. Carden, whose credits include both NBC’s “The Good Place” and HBO’s “Barry,” and Jeong, seen on Fox’s “The Masked Singer” and his Netflix special “Ken Jeong: You Complete Me, Ho,” will present

When Jimmy Fallon comes back to Los Angeles, he often flashes back to the lean early days of his career, when he wondered whether he’d ever make it. “I just don’t miss those things,” Fallon said of awkward auditions and soul-crushing rejections. “There was a Carl’s Jr. parking lot by Universal that I remember crying

“The Other Two” co-showrunners Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider split time between Los Angeles and New York because their writers’ room is on the West Coast where he lives, while production is back East where she lives. This means they are constantly packing and unpacking their office. But when they do settle into a new

Jimmy Fallon and Hasan Minhaj were like magnets when Variety brought them together in New York for a joint Q&A about late-night TV in the age of Trump. The two host very different shows — Fallon fronts NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” while Minhaj recently picked up a Peabody Award for his work on Netflix’s “Patriot

Few disciplines are as tough to shine in as sketch comedy. Often, being funny isn’t often enough. What makes a sketch resonate comes down to the characters. But while sitcoms build arcs over seasons, short skits require viewers to buy into new characters constantly. It’s a tricky art. For decades, “Saturday Night Live” has blended

It may feel like late-night talk shows often overwhelmingly consist of a barrage of recounts of the most recent, or most polarizing, political headlines or tweets. It’s a subject matter that can’t, and perhaps shouldn’t, be avoided, given the changing state of local laws when it comes to health care, that families are literally being

There was a certain amount of loyalty Steve Blackman felt when adapting “The Umbrella Academy” from its graphic novel source material to his Netflix drama — loyalty to the original’s writer and illustrator, Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba, as well as to the fans. But because the streaming service encouraged him to broaden the story

“Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” has been dominating the variety talk series category, winning the Emmy for three consecutive years — and is the favorite to win a fourth. It’s a great show, and deserves every accolade it can get. But Oliver’s streak also exposes another category conundrum for the TV Academy: As news-based

Indya Moore got their start as a model before turning attention to film and television. After standout work in independent films (such as “Saturday Church”), Moore landed the role of Angel in FX’s ballroom culture period drama. Many of Moore’s first season scenes focused on exploring Angel’s relationship with white-collar Stan (Evan Peters), but in

Like her character Rebecca Bunch in “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” Golden Globe winner Rachel Bloom journeyed to find herself, fashion-wise. “There had been efforts to minimize my bust and not showcase my curves to fit a more acceptable, ‘high-fashion’ look,” says Bloom, whose most recent awards look epitomizes how much she’s grown. “[It] felt like truly embracing

In the last episode of “Good Omens,” the Amazon adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s novel of the same name, a 500-foot-tall Satan rises from the ground to confront his son (Sam Taylor Buck), the antichrist with the power to bring about the end of the world. On most shows, such a confrontation would

Debbie Allen first rose to acclaim in the 1980s when she starred in, directed and co-produced the arts high school-set series “Fame.” More than three decades later, she is still showing of her trifecta of talents on “Grey’s Anatomy.” In addition to portraying a doctor living with cancer, she also helms some of the series’

There has been much said — and many headlines written — about peak TV providing almost 500 scripted series last year and showing no signs of slowing down. One area not often taken into consideration in that equation is short form, which is seeing its own emergence of creative, high-brow content. Some of the top

Directing any film or television show is a challenging feat, but there are extra complications for those who step in for an episode or two of a longer-running series: They have to lead a group of people who know the ins and outs of the storytelling, and the set itself, better than they do. The

With politics dominating television from the actual news to talk and sketch shows, some writers and producers of scripted fare prefer to deliver escapist storytelling as an antidote. For others, reflecting the state of the world is imperative in order to keep their characters rooted in reality. The balance then becomes about finding a way

Film is often referred to as a director’s medium, while in television the writer, or at least the showrunner, is the one with the most control. Some select few, though, give themselves the opportunity to be hybrids, not only crafting the story on the page but also stepping behind the camera to shape notable episodes

Just as in those 1970s-era Reese’s peanut-butter cups commercials — “You got peanut butter on my chocolate!” “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” — comedy and drama are commingling more than ever in the age of peak TV. But such blurring of lines can cause complications when it comes to pitching and marketing series,

The WGA-ATA saga loomed large at Variety‘s “A Night in the Writers’ Room,” where showrunners and lead writers from several of the year’s best dramas gathered to discuss their business and craft. The big four agencies and the WGA finally agreed to return to the negotiating table last week after a weeks-long stalemate. But with

The possibility of a host-less Emmys is among the leading options being considered by Fox and the Television Academy as it preps for this year’s telecast. With just three months until the telecast and no host yet named, insiders confirm that the Emmys may go without one for the first time since 2003 (when the

For years, music in documentary and nonfiction programming competed alongside the music for fictional narratives, but this year, music composition for a documentary series or special is getting its own category — the Emmys’ seventh music category overall. It is a change that couldn’t have come soon enough for many veterans in the space. “So

In this time of record volume of content competing for audience attention, there’s more than one way to define a series’s success, especially when it comes to structured and unstructured reality shows that don’t follow as strict a format as reality competitions, nor as specific storytelling arcs as scripted programs. “The DNA and ingredients in

The growth of American unscripted television shows no signs of slowing down, with imported formats such as Fox’s “The Masked Singer” and re-energized long-standing staples such as Bravo’s “Project Runway,” competing with stalwart series (think “The Amazing Race,” “Top Chef” and “The Voice”) for ratings and awards glory. With so many shows in the race,

The amount of time that passes between a traumatic or otherwise subjective event and the way that event is recounted often greatly determines the response to and reception of those involved. In some cases, it may mean seeing someone who was once put on a pedestal as a much more complex and even criminal individual,

In this installment of Jordan Peele’s reimagined anthology, a mysterious visitor (Steven Yeun) crashes a Christmas party at a small Alaskan town’s police station. His presence is resented when he seemingly reveals the secrets of everyone in the room. But the traveler carries a secret of his own: He’s part of an alien species bent

Craig Plestis of Smart Dog Media and SallyAnn Salsano of 495 Prods. have more than three decades in the unscripted business between them. Despite working on very different series — his “The Masked Singer” imported a popular Asian format but kept its biggest personalities hidden behind giant costumes, while her “Paradise Hotel” reboot relies heavily

When “RuPaul’s Drag Race” won the Emmy last year for reality competition, it defied all odds. Until 2018, only three series had won the category in its 15-year existence: “The Amazing Race,” “The Voice” and “Top Chef.” “Drag Race” airs on VH1, which hasn’t been a huge Emmy player in the past (last year was

Simon Rich is no stranger to adapting his own novels for the screen, so when it came time to turn his 2012 work “What in God’s Name” into a series (TBS’ renamed “Miracle Workers”), he admits it never even crossed his mind that someone else would write the scripts. The story centers on God’s decision

An entertainer taking a kid under his wing describes both the premise of “Turn Up Charlie” and the real-life relationship between actors Frankie Hervey and Idris Elba. In the Netflix series, Hervey plays Gabrielle, a spoiled girl in need of proper parenting, and Elba is the titular Charlie, a struggling DJ moonlighting as the girl’s

Neil Gaiman executive produces two shows based on his books “American Gods” and “Good Omens,” so it’s only fitting that he has two office spaces. One is a “Spartan space [where] you can do nothing but write, and the only view is of trees,” he says of the eight-sided gazebo he had built out in