arts&life

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The Tribe At

The Emmys

NATE BLOOM CONTRIBUTING WRITER

T

he Primetime Emmy awards will be
televised live on NBC 8 p.m. Monday, Sept.
17.
Last year, the Emmys expanded the number of
nominees. Instead of five “outstanding” (“best”)
shows in a category like drama, there were seven
or eight nominated shows. Nominees in an
acting category went from five up to eight.
This “nominee inflation” helps explain why
last year l had a larger than usual list of Jewish
Emmy nominees. It also partially explains why
relatively few Jewish nominees won last year —
they had more competition. Here’s hoping that
“the tribe” brings home more statues this year.
Here are the Jewish nominees in the categories
that will be presented at the primetime Emmy
Awards.

TOP TO BOTTOM: Larry David; Alex Borstein; Evan Rachel Wood.

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September 13 • 2018

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ACTING CATEGORIES. Lead Actor, comedy
series: Larry David, 71, Curb Your Enthusiasm;
Lead Actress, comedy series: Pamela Adlon, 52,
Better Things, and Tracee Ellis Ross, 45, Black-
ish; Lead Actress, drama series: Evan Rachel
Wood, 30, Westworld; Supporting Actor, comedy
series: Henry Winkler, 72, Barry; Supporting
Actress, comedy series: Alex Borstein, 47,
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; Supporting Actor,
drama series: Mandy Patinkin, 65, Homeland;
Supporting Actor, limited series/TV movie:
Michael Stuhlbarg, 50, The Looming Tower;
Supporting Actress, limited series/movie: Judith
Light, 69, The Assassination of Gianni Versace:
American Crime Story.
About half these nominees have already won
an Emmy Award. Those still looking for their
first win are Ellis, Wood, Borstein and Stuhlbarg.
Borstein, whose mother is a Hungarian
Holocaust survivor, had some bad luck in
2000 when she was unable (due to a prior
commitment) to take a starring role in Gilmore
Girls. The role she had to pass on launched the
career of actress Melissa McCarthy. However,
the creator of Gilmore Girls, Amy Sherman-
Palldino, 52, liked Borstein and, after the first
season of Gilmore, gave her small guest roles
on the show. She thought of Borstein when
she created Mrs. Maisel and gave her a juicy
supporting part. Well, against all odds, this
comedy about a “very” Jewish woman and her
family has become the surprise hit of 2018 and
Borstein is, as they say, sitting pretty.
It’s ironic that Michael Stuhlbarg is nominated
for playing a real non-Jewish character (Richard
Clarke, a top George W. Bush security official).

In the last decade, he has played a raft of
fictional and real-life Jews without getting an
Emmy or Oscar nomination (the real-life ones
are gangster Arnold Rothstein, producer Lew
Wasserman and New York Times editor Abe
Rosenthal).
Also nominated are non-Jewish thespians
Tony Shalhoub (Best Supporting Actor, comedy)
and Rachel Brosnahan (Best Lead Actress,
comedy). Brosnahan plays the title role in Mrs.
Maisel. She explains that she could play a Jewish
woman so authentically because she grew up
in a heavily Jewish Chicago suburb and went
to a “hundred bar/bat mitzvahs.” Shalhoub
plays Abraham Weissman, Mrs. Maisel’s Jewish
father. Shalhoub, who grew up in Green Bay, is
of Lebanese Christian background, and this isn’t
his first Jewish role. Lebanese/Syrian Christian
actors, like (non-Jewish) Italian actors, seem to
play Jews pretty well (I am thinking of Lebanese
Christian Danny Thomas in the first remake
of The Jazz Singer and Syrian Christian/Italian
actor F. Murray Abraham in several Jewish roles).

DIRECTING AND WRITING CATEGORIES:
(Note: The writing and directing awards cite
a specific episode, which I have omitted.)
Director, comedy series: Jesse Peretz, 50, Glow,
and Amy Sherman-Palladino, 52, Mrs. Maisel
(she also created this series); Director, drama
series: Jeremy Podewska, 55, Game of Thrones,
and Daniel Sackheim, 60ish, Ozark; Director,
variety special: Glenn Weiss, 60ish, The Oscars;
Director, limited series/TV movie: Scott
Frank, 58, Godless (he also wrote the series),
Craig Zisk, 68, The Looming Tower, and Barry
Levinson, 76, Paterno.
Peretz, as noted in a recent column, is the
director of Juliet, Naked, a film now in local
theaters. Also, as I’ve noted before, Frank had
a pastor character recite what seemed to be a
prayer in the last scene of the Western series
Godless (the pastor was honoring people who
died fighting for a righteous cause). Actually,
the prayer was a poem (“Tis a Fearful Thing”) by
Judah Ha-Levi (1075-1141), the famous Spanish
Jewish physician, poet and philosopher.
Writing, comedy series: Sherman-Palladinio,
Mrs. Maisel; Writing, drama series: Joe
Weisberg, 57, The Americans, Peter Morgan, 55,
The Crown, and David Benioff and D.B. Weiss,
both 47, Game of Thrones; Writing, limited
series/TV movie: Scott Frank, Godless.
This is a tough category to handicap. Game of