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    Elizabeth Debicki Discusses Her Second Emmy Nomination for Princess Diana

    Elizabeth Debicki earned an Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series on Wednesday, her second nomination for playing Princess Diana on “The Crown.”The Australian actress took over the role from Emma Corrin starting in Season 5 of the Netflix series about the British royal family and embodied Diana through the implosion of her marriage to Prince Charles. Season 6, the show’s final one, includes the 1997 car crash that killed Diana, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and their driver, Henri Paul, as they fled the paparazzi in Paris.The final season of “The Crown” received 18 nominations overall, including for outstanding drama series. Other acting nominations went to Dominic West as Prince Charles, for lead actor in a drama series; Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II, for lead actress; Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, for supporting actor; and Claire Foy for reprising her role as a younger Elizabeth, for guest actor.Debicki will also be competing against Lesley Manville, who played Princess Margaret, in the supporting actress race.For Debicki, receiving the nomination was a bittersweet cap on the experience of playing Diana.“It dawns on you that it’s done,” she said by phone just after the Emmy nominations were announced on Wednesday. “You don’t get to go back. You know while you’re doing it that this will be a totally one-off experience. Nothing will touch this. Nothing is like this. That’s the pill to swallow as the actor.”In a brief interview, Debicki discussed playing Diana and receiving the nomination. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Baby Reindeer’ Star Jessica Gunning on Her First Emmy Nomination

    Jessica Gunning is still a little stunned by the size of the audience “Baby Reindeer” has found, and the acclaim that has followed.A Netflix drama about a comedian and his stalker, “Baby Reindeer” picked up 11 Emmy nominations on Wednesday, including one for best limited series and one for Gunning, her first, for supporting actress in a limited series.The show follows the aspiring comedian, Donny Dunn, as he is tormented by a woman named Martha. Richard Gadd, the Scottish comedian who created the series and also received an acting nod, plays Dunn; Gunning plays Martha. The series is billed as a true story based on Gadd’s experience.In an interview shortly after the Emmy nominations were announced, Gunning said she and other members of the show are “still pinching ourselves” over the fact that so many millions of people have found their work. As to the 11 nominations, she added, “I literally can’t quite believe it.”“I think if someone had said three months ago when the show came out that it and the Emmys would even be included in the same sentence, I’m sure Richard would agree that we would have thought we were being pranked,” she added in a video interview from her parents’ house, several hours’ drive from her home in London.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Some folks have called “Baby Reindeer” a surprise hit. Were you expecting this kind of audience and acclaim for the show?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    HBO Falls to Third at the Emmys for the First Time Since 1996

    The last time HBO ranked in third place among television outlets in total Emmy nominations, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole were gearing up for a presidential election and the “Macarena” was sweeping the nation.On Wednesday, HBO, as well as its accompanying streaming service Max, earned 91 Emmy nominations, down from its massive haul last year (127), and trailing both Netflix (107) and FX (93) this year.For the first time since 1996, before “The Sopranos” or “Sex and the City” even premiered, HBO finds itself neither in first nor second place.For the better part of the last year, the network has encountered an unusual fallow period.Ever since “Succession” wrapped up in May 2023, HBO released several series that failed to connect with critics or a broad audience. That includes the expensive music drama flop, “The Idol”; the Kate Winslet limited series, “The Regime”; and the now canceled “Winning Time.”For some time, HBO executives have been telegraphing that if the network had a down year at the Emmys, production delays caused by last year’s double strikes would be to blame. An Emmy voter favorite like “The White Lotus,” for instance, might have premiered already if not for last year’s walkouts. Still, every outlet was severely affected by the strikes, not just HBO.Emmy recognition has long been of outsize significance to HBO executives, providing key evidence that it remains the pre-eminent home for quality television. In 1997, HBO became the first cable network to lead all networks in nominations. And for the better part of the last two decades, HBO has been the heavyweight. It previously ranked first every year in total Emmy nominations since 2001, except in 2018 and 2020. (HBO finished in second place each of those two years, behind Netflix.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Manny Jacinto Turns to the Dark Side in ‘The Acolyte’

    The actor discusses his complex role in the latest “Star Wars” series, which wrapped up its first season on Tuesday.This interview includes spoilers for the first season of “The Acolyte.”As it turns out, Manny Jacinto brought some relevant experience to “The Acolyte”: He understands how to change characters.Jacinto is best known for “The Good Place,” the hit NBC sitcom on which he played an unspeaking Buddhist monk before being unmasked as Jason Mendoza, a lovable, Jacksonville Jaguars-obsessed dummy who is anything but mute. “I had no idea what I was stepping into,” Jacinto said in an interview. “It was my first job in the States. I didn’t even have a green card yet.”He has since worked alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Nicole Kidman, in the television series “Nine Perfect Strangers” — a series in which he showed a more stoic side, playing a character who essentially served as Kidman’s acolyte. He then appeared with Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick.” And this summer he added arguably the biggest franchise of all to his résumé, taking a role in the latest big-budget “Star Wars” series on Disney+. Created by Leslye Headland, “The Acolyte” wrapped up its first season on Tuesday.As was the case in “The Good Place,” Jacinto’s character was not who he seemed.Jacinto, who is Filipino and Canadian, starred as Qimir, a pharmacist who began the show as a kind of accomplice to a young woman named Mae (Amandla Stenberg), who is on her mission to hunt and kill Jedi. In the fifth episode of the season, he was revealed to actually be a Sith Lord known as “the Stranger,” elevating Jacinto from an afterthought apothecary to a top-line “Star Wars” villain. In Tuesday’s season finale, he fought another lightsaber battle and got the acolyte his character always wanted.In two different interviews — one early in the season and another after the finale premiered on Tuesday — Jacinto discussed how he entered the “Star Wars” universe, his shift to the dark side and the possibility of more seasons of “The Acolyte.” Here are excerpts from the conversations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Shogun’ Leads Emmy Nominations With 25 Nods

    The FX hit “Shogun,” an ensemble drama set in 17th-century Japan, has been nominated for 25 Emmys, the most of any series this year. The show is in competition for several of the night’s biggest drama categories, including outstanding drama series, lead actor (Hiroyuki Sanada), lead actress (Anna Sawai) and outstanding directing (Frederick E.O. Toye).“Shogun” quickly became a hit after its debut in February, with many viewers and critics praising its epic scope and attention to authenticity. A majority of the American series’s dialogue was in Japanese, and its success is the latest evidence that U.S. viewers are increasingly open to shows with subtitles.An adaptation of the 1975 James Clavell novel, “Shogun” tells the story of an English sailor, John Blackthorne, who lands in Japan and becomes embroiled in a deadly political conflict involving the shrewd Lord Toranaga and his translator, Lady Mariko. Unlike the enormously popular 1980 mini-series version, which was oriented around Blackthorne, the new “Shogun” was told primarily through the viewpoints of its Japanese main characters.“In the 1980 mini-series, the Japanese characters played subsidiary roles in Chamberlain’s journey,” Motoko Rich wrote in The New York Times, referring to Richard Chamberlain, who played the first Blackthorne. (Cosmo Jarvis plays him in the FX series.) “The intermittent Japanese dialogue was not even translated. In large stretches of the new version, by contrast, the Japanese is subtitled, and significant plot lines revolve exclusively around the Japanese principals.”The new version surpassed the older mini-series in number of Emmy nominations, with the 1980 series having received 14.“Shogun” was first billed as a limited series, but the designation changed when FX announced in May that it was developing additional seasons. It could dominate the drama categories in a year that finds the drama side weaker than usual, with last year’s juggernaut, “Succession,” having finished and other past Emmy favorites like “The White Lotus” — another former limited series — and “The Last of Us” set to return in 2025 because of strike delays. More

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    Netflix Hit ‘Baby Reindeer’ Nabs 11 Emmy Nominations

    The surprise hit “Baby Reindeer,” a Netflix drama about a comedian and his stalker, picked up 11 Emmy nominations on Wednesday, including one for best limited series.The seven-episode show, which was viewed more than 56 million times in the four weeks after it debuted, according to data released by Netflix, follows an aspiring comedian named Donny Dunn as he is tormented by a woman named Martha, primarily through emails and voice mail messages.The series was created by the comedian Richard Gadd, who plays Dunn. It was billed as a true story based on Gadd’s experience, which led to online efforts to uncover the actual identities of the characters onscreen — and eventually embroiled the streaming service in a legal dispute.Fiona Harvey, a woman who says the Martha character was modeled after her, sued Netflix last month for defamation, claiming that the show falsely suggested that she was a convicted stalker. Netflix has said it stands by “Gadd’s right to tell his story.”Along with “Baby Reindeer,” the nominees for outstanding limited series include: “Fargo” (FX), “Lessons in Chemistry” (Apple TV+), “Ripley” (Netflix) and “True Detective: Night Country” (HBO). More

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    ‘UnPrisoned’ Review: Kerry Washington Handles Comedy, Too

    The star of “Scandal” demonstrates her range in the Hulu series about an ex-con’s daughter and her relatable traumas.Paige Alexander, the high-maintenance mom played by Kerry Washington in the Hulu dramedy “UnPrisoned,” puts her family and friends through a lot. She’s also a challenge for the show’s captioners: Rendering her continual nervous laughter, which punctuates the soundtrack like the sputtering of a rusty muffler, calls for creativity. In Season 1, (laughs), (laughter) and (laughing) were supplemented with (snickers), (snorts), (chuckles), (chuckles awkwardly) and other descriptors of uncomfortable mirth.That Paige is a marriage and family counselor and also a jittery basket case is the comic framework of “UnPrisoned,” which returned with a new season on Wednesday. The therapist needs therapy, and she gets it from everyone: her father the ex-convict; her son the anxiety-ridden gamer; her foster sister the libidinous real estate agent; and even, in Season 2, her therapist, a self-absorbed but helpful showboat played by John Stamos.Running in parallel, and neatly explaining Paige’s problems, is the dramatic framework, in which Paige and her dad try warily to reconcile after his latest stay in prison, a 17-year stretch. His repeated absences from her life are the reason she is a reflexively negative, critical and untrusting control freak who dates only unattainable men. He’s in his 60s and suddenly has to grow up; she’s in her 40s and still has to get over her daddy issues.Created by the television writer and relationship maven Tracy McMillan, “UnPrisoned,” which is based on McMillan’s life, is a better-than-average family comedy-drama, deft and ordinary in equal measure. Its quick half-hour episodes weave clever, familiar relationship humor with poignant reflections on the consequences of incarceration.The material is what it is: worthwhile, but not too far north of pleasantly watchable. “UnPrisoned” can be hard to click away from, though, because Kerry Washington is such a quietly vivid, thoroughly alive presence at its center. Whether or not you buy what the show is selling, you don’t for a second doubt the realness, the ineluctable authenticity, of Paige Alexander, even as she’s driving you crazy.Washington received plenty of attention, and two Emmy nominations, for her career-making run as Olivia Pope on ABC’s “Scandal.” But her talent and magnetism still tended to become a little lost amid the Shonda Rhimes circus, overshadowed by costumes, melodrama and take-no-prisoners attitude.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘The Bear’ Breaks the Record for Emmy Nominations for a Comedy

    “Yes, Chef” is now part of Emmy history.“The Bear” notched a record-breaking 23 Emmy nominations on Wednesday, setting a new high for the most nominations in a single year for a comedy series. The record previously belonged to “30 Rock,” which earned 22 nominations 15 years ago.“The Bear,” which was honored on Wednesday for its second season, which premiered in June 2023, scored significantly more nominations compared with its first season, when it had 13. Its principal actors — Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach — all landed nominations. It also got nods in technical categories like sound mixing and picture editing.“The Bear,” which already won best comedy at the strike-delayed Emmys in January, will be the heavy favorite going in.The record-setting status of “The Bear,” however, will surely draw a renewed round of scrutiny of how shows get slotted into different categories at the Emmys. Going back to last year, some industry insiders gnashed their teeth at the Emmy success of “The Bear.” Should it be honored? Absolutely. But, seriously, in the comedy categories?Alan Sepinwall, a TV critic for Rolling Stone, raised the point recently, asking whether “this story of toxic workplaces, addiction and mental illness, and ruinous personal relationships was a barrel of laughs.” Given that “The Bear” beat out “30 Rock” — a beloved series that would never be mistaken for anything other than a straight-up comedy — to break the record, it could set off howls of outrage from comedy nerds.Emmy categorization controversy is nothing new, of course. The Peak TV era unleashed a torrent of dramatic comedies (try “Atlanta”), and comedic dramas (how about “Succession”?). Netflix’s “Orange Is The New Black” was nominated as a comedy one year, and as a drama the next. Long gone are the days when shows like “Cheers” and “The West Wing” had a crystal clear Emmy lane.There is one more obstacle for “The Bear.” Though Emmy voters will be weighing the series’ much-celebrated second season, they’ll start casting votes in August, on the heels of the recently released third season. The third season has a considerably lower audience score on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the first two seasons. The Daily Beast even asked earlier this month, “Why Is Everyone Saying ‘The Bear’ Is a Bad Show?”It remains an open question whether any backlash to the current season, along with is-it-actually-a-comedy industry debates, will affect its chances to win big in September.Other comedies have come close to the “30 Rock” record in recent years. “Ted Lasso” recently earned 21 nominations, one shy of tying the record. And “Saturday Night Live,” technically a sketch variety series and not a recurring comedy series as defined by Emmy rules, earned 22 nominations in 2017. More