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      “Shogun” Emmy Win Lifts FX Past Bigger Rivals

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      The network has been a darling among critics for years. But it hit a new high on Sunday, with “Shogun” winning best drama and “The Bear” picking up several awards as well.When the “Shogun” writer and producer Justin Marks stormed the Emmys stage after his show won best drama on Sunday night, his first order of business was to pay tribute to the people who helped bring him there: the executive team at FX.How, he wondered aloud, did the network approve a show that was extremely expensive, and would be mostly subtitled in Japanese?“I have no idea why you did that, but thank you for your faith in this incredible team,” he said.For roughly two decades, that team at FX has been a darling to television critics with series like “American Horror Story,” “The Americans,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Atlanta.” But the network, with less money at its disposal than rivals such as Netflix and HBO, had never won television’s most prestigious prize, best drama, until Sunday.And that’s not all it won.“Shogun,” an adaptation from a 1975 best-selling book centered on 17th century feudal Japan on the brink of civil war, had a dominant night at the Emmys. It set a record for most Emmys won by a show in a single year, winning 18 in all. It was also the first time a foreign language show (roughly 70 percent of the show was in Japanese) had taken the best drama award that is normally the domain of shows that take place in the United States, the United Kingdom or Westeros.Hiroyuki Sanada in a scene from “Shogun.”Katie Yu/FX, via Associated PressAnother FX show, “The Bear,” won several major Emmys on Sunday night, including three acting awards. But in an upset, Max’s “Hacks” defeated “The Bear” in best comedy series.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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      Jeremy Allen White, of ‘The Bear,’ Wins Emmy for Best Actor in a Comedy

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      Another Emmy? Yes, Chef.Jeremy Allen White, who plays a chef always on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the FX series “The Bear,” won the Emmy for best actor in a comedy on Sunday.In the show, White plays Carmen Berzatto, known as Carmy, a high-profile chef in New York who comes home to Chicago to take over an Italian beef sandwich shop, after his brother dies by suicide. In Season 2, which was under consideration in Sunday’s ceremony, Carmy tries to transform the spot into a Michelin-worthy destination. This was his second nomination and win for the role.“My heart is just beating right out of its chest,” White said in his acceptance speech before professing his love for his castmates.“This show has changed my life,” White said. “It has instilled a faith that change is possible. If you are able to reach out, you are really truly never actually alone.”White beat Steve Martin and Martin Short of “Only Murders in the Building,” Matt Berry of “What We Do in the Shadows,” D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai of “Reservation Dogs” and Larry David of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”“The Bear” was a heavy favorite heading into the 76th Emmy Awards, as the show made Emmy history in July when it notched 23 nominations for its second season, setting a record for most nominations for a comedy series in a single year. (The record belonged previously to “30 Rock.”) White was also widely favored.In an unusual quirk of timing, this is the second time this calendar year that White has won an Emmy for playing Carmy. For his work in Season 1, he accepted the best lead actor award in January, when the 75th Emmy Awards aired because of delays caused by the writer and actor strikes. More

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      Review: On ‘English Teacher,’ School Is a Battlefield

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      A new FX sitcom handles the educational culture wars with a light touch.The culture war often doesn’t have a physical frontline; it’s fought in op-ed columns, through social-media memes and inside people’s heads.Public schools are an exception. There, the state infantry of teachers, enlisted to handle potentially explosive ideas, face wave after wave of challenging students, backed by air support from helicopter parents.“English Teacher,” which begins Monday on FX, is a deft, brutal trench comedy of this battle. Brian Jordan Alvarez, the creator and viral-video comic, stars as Evan Marquez, a high school teacher in suburban Austin, Texas, struggling to get through each day with his ideals intact and his shirts unstained.His students are wily shape-shifters, a tech-enabled alien species whose ways and attitudes keep their handlers off-balance. “The kids this year, I feel like they’re less woke,” Evan tells his best friend, the history teacher Gwen Sanders (Stephanie Koenig), who concurs. One student, she said, told her she needed to teach “both sides” of the Spanish Inquisition.Evan’s real troubles begin, however, when he learns that he’s under “investigation” after a rich, influential parent reported him for having kissed his ex-boyfriend (Jordan Firstman) in front of students.His principal, Grant Moretti — a walking anxiety attack played wonderfully by Enrico Colantoni — admits that Evan shouldn’t have to deal with this, but he’s too beaten and besieged to do anything but plead with Evan to help him make the problem go away. One of Evan’s students suggests he claim discrimination as a gay Hispanic, but another says, “Gay doesn’t count anymore, and he talks like a straight white guy.”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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      With New FX Sitcom ‘English Teacher,’ Brian Jordan Alvarez Takes Another Leap

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      For over a decade, Brian Jordan Alvarez has been bootstrapping his way across platforms and screens big and small, collecting fans and followers.In the early days, he starred with friends in short comedic sketches he posted on YouTube. Then in 2016, on a paltry budget of around $10,000, he created “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo,” a five-part comedy web series about a misfit group of queer friends in Los Angeles. Alvarez wrote and directed it, and starred as the title character.“Caleb Gallo” quickly found an audience. It was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival that year, earned a Gotham Award nomination and topped IndieWire’s list of best web series of 2016, edging out Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” The next year, Alvarez landed a recurring role in the three-season revival of “Will & Grace,” as the fiancé, then husband, of Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes).In 2023 he leveled up again, starring alongside Allison Williams in the horror comedy box office smash “M3gan” and reaching new heights of virality with a stable of absurdist face-filtered characters. The most famous of them, the bug-eyed, duck-lipped pop star TJ Mack, delighted millions on TikTok and Instagram with the earworm “Sitting” (pronounced “Sittim”).Alvarez plays an English teacher at a high school in Austin, Texas, who is navigating relationships and discussions of hot-button topics.Richard Ducree/FXNow Alvarez is taking another major leap: “English Teacher,” a feel-good sitcom with an edge that he created and stars in, debuts on FX on Sept. 2.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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      In ‘Shogun,’ Anna Sawai Drew On the Power of Silence. And Mozart.

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      “It gives me confidence,” she said about her first Emmy nomination, for best actress in a drama. “I have such bad impostor syndrome.”This interview contains major spoilers for Season 1 of “Shogun.”When Anna Sawai was preparing to die, she listened to Mozart.In a key scene of the FX series “Shogun” — in which Toda Mariko, the disgraced but defiant noblewoman and samurai she plays, meets her fiery demise — Sawai delivers a rebellious speech to the sinister Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira). Lady Mariko knows it doubles as a death sentence. To prepare for this pivotal moment, Sawai said, “I was listening to ‘Requiem K. 626’ — ‘Lacrimosa.’”The music, she said, gave her power. “It really helps you build,” she said in an interview last week. Referring to the director of the episode, Frederick E.O. Toye, she continued: “I remember Fred coming to me multiple times and asking, ‘Do you still have a couple more takes in you?’ I was like: ‘Yeah, this is totally fine. I feel good. Let’s do it.’”Set in feudal Japan and based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell, the first season of “Shogun” focuses largely on the relationship between Sawai’s Lady Mariko and John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), the temperamental English navigator whose arrival in Japan triggers the conflict that drives the series. That conflict tests Mariko’s Catholic beliefs and her fealty to traditional Japanese customs against her desire for Blackthorne — and for justice against her oppressors. It also leads directly to her death.“People are always like, ‘It must have been tough to prepare for that episode,’” Sawai said. “But I’ve been holding it in for 10 months, and I finally get to let go.”It was the end for Mariko but not for Sawai’s relationship to the character: Her performance, almost entirely in subtitled Japanese, landed her an Emmy nomination for best actress in a drama. A fearless exploration of the emotional chasm between Mariko’s duties and her desires, it is all the more haunting for how much it leaves hidden.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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      ‘Reservation Dogs’ Showed D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai What Is Possible

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      The actor received his first Emmy nomination for his performance on the acclaimed Native comedy. In an interview, he talks about breaking down stereotypes, and possibly reviving his character.Much like his “Reservation Dogs” character, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai grew up wondering if he was a good guy.If his dedication to his craft and his community is any indication, the 22-year-old actor of Anishinaabe, Guyanese and German descent seems to be a pretty upstanding citizen. The day we chat about his Emmy nomination for lead actor in a comedy series, for example, he is visiting his parents in his native Toronto (from his adopted hometown, Los Angeles) and has spent most of the morning chauffeuring his auntie around on a several-hours-long excursion. After all, mothers, grandmothers and aunties are considered the bedrock of Indigenous communities.That’s a fact any “Reservation Dogs” fan would know. With the groundbreaking FX series, the creators Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo provided a rare look at everyday life on an Oklahoma Indian reservation through the eyes of four teens reeling in the aftermath of a friend’s suicide. Harjo, who also served as showrunner, has said there was only one way to do it: with an all-Indigenous team of writers, directors and regular actors who could authentically tell this story.Alongside his young co-stars, Woon-A-Tai made uncharted television territory feel warm, raw and utterly relatable, garnering “Rez Dogs” broad acclaim as well as four Emmy nominations this year, including a best comedy nod. His portrayal of Bear Smallhill also earned him an Emmy nomination, placing him alongside Lily Gladstone (“Under the Bridge”) and Kali Reis (“True Detective: Night Country”) as the first Indigenous actors to be nominated in 17 years.In an interview, he talked about breaking down stereotypes, possibly reviving his “Rez Dogs” character and being a good, healthy Indigenous man. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Despite critical acclaim, “Rez Dogs” was notably overlooked by the television academy for its first two seasons. What does it mean to you to break through with a best comedy nomination and one of the few Indigenous acting nominations in Emmys history?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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      Jon Hamm Talks Emmy Nominations for ‘Fargo,’ ‘The Morning Show’

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      Jon Hamm is back in the Emmy Awards saddle.Nine years after winning his first statuette for his performance as the philandering advertising executive Don Draper in the Madison Avenue drama “Mad Men,” Hamm picked up two more acting nominations on Wednesday, for his performances in “Fargo” and “The Morning Show.”The first, for lead actor in a limited or anthology series or movie, was for his villainous turn as Roy Tillman, a power-hungry Christian nationalist sheriff on “Fargo,” FX’s darkly comic anthology crime drama inspired by the 1996 Coen Brothers movie. The series, which was created by Noah Hawley, picked up 15 nominations for its fifth season, including best limited series.Hamm also scored a supporting actor in a drama nod for his role as Paul Marks, an Elon Musk-like, space-loving billionaire in Season 3 of “The Morning Show,” Apple TV+’s behind-the-scenes look at a fictional broadcast news program.In an interview shortly after the nominations were announced — on the way to a voice-over session in Lower Manhattan for the animated show “Grimsburg,” in which Hamm, 53, plays a small-town detective — he shared his inspirations for his characters and what he thinks of Netflix’s limited series contender “Baby Reindeer.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Congratulations! How did you find out you were nominated?I was walking the dog to go get coffee, and I came back and my phone had quite a few messages.Your characters on “Fargo” and “The Morning Show” both seem to have fairly clear politically charged, real-world analogues — someone like Elon Musk for Paul Marks and any number of blowhard, nationalist politicians for Roy Tillman. To what extent did you base your performances on real people?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

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      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