Emmy Review: Drama Guest Actress

By Spencer Coile 

Historically announced with the Creative Arts Emmy Awards Show, Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series is a category often filled to the brim with brilliant performances -- making it no less memorable than the main stage categories. Won in the past by the likes of Allison Janney, Margo Martindale, Carrie Preston, and other incredible actresses of strage and screen, the soon-to-be winner will be joining prestigious company. 

Fortunately, the nominees for the category this year are (for the most part) equal parts memorable and thoughtful -- leaving a lasting impact on their series. Let's dive into this year's nominees and determine who will and should win...

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Emmy Nerd Trivia: Will Julia Louis-Dreyfus win again?

by Nathaniel R

Final Emmy voting starts on Monday and the most exciting thing is that for the first time in ages, the Emmy voters will be forced to choose at least one major new winner (Drama Series). One could argue that only one incumbent is considered the frontrunner to win again making this a potentially unusual Emmy night -though knowing the Academy they'll probably deliver more repeats than people expect. That leading incumbent would be Julia Louis-Dreyfus, she who is already buried in trophies.

For the record she has seven Emmys, five of them consecutively for Veep's first five seasons. If she wins a sixth for the sixth season she breaks her tie with Candice Bergen (Murphy Brown) as most lead actress wins for the same series, drama OR comedy. But Louis-Dreyfus is already the record holder for most lead wins, drama or comedy (overall) and most lead nominations in a comedy (overall).

You know what all of that means --> TRIVIA after the jump!

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TCA Awards: This is Us, The Handmaid's Tale, Atlanta...

The Television Critics Association have announced the winners of their 33rd annual awards at a ceremony hosted by Kristin Chenoweth. She sang, of course, but the surprise is that she pulled up Sterling K Brown for a duet. They sang "For Good" from Wicked! This is not a televised awards show but apparently his voice was good. That's a surprise to anyone who watched him "sing" in character on This is Us, the reveal there being that his character had no musical talent.

The TCA Awards don't do gendered acting* or supporting awards so there are only two acting winners a year. Congrats to Carrie Coon and Donald Glover for emerging as the lucky two. More winners after the jump...

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Will "Bright" be a Netflix Blockbuster? And how do you even define that?

By Ben Miller

If you haven’t heard already, Netflix will continue their quest for world domination with a tentpole feature film, Bright, in December.  Directed by David Ayer (End of Watch, Fury), the film stars Will Smith as a Los Angeles police officer who is teamed up with an orc cop (Joel Edgerton) to fight crime and try to make sense of whatever the hell is happening in the trailer.  There are fairies, magic wands, elves, swords, Noomi Rapace, and all sorts of other fantastical elements involved.

Let’s talk money.  Bright cost $90 million for Netflix to pick up.  Half of that cost went in to the film to shoot, while the other half goes to the talent (mostly Smith, Ayer and screenwriter Max Landis).  These days, $90 million seems pretty reasonable for a fantasy film starring an A-List “Movie Star”.  Suicide Squad, the most recent Smith-Ayer fantasy foray, cost $175 million. [More...]

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Beauty vs Beast: The Gilead Girls

Happy Monday, Jason from MNPP here with our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" fun-time experience. While you were all enjoying Elisabeth Moss' charm offensive on the Emmy Actress Roundtable this past weekend what you should have been doing is baking a birthday cake for her, because she turns 35 today.

Did we all watch The Handmaid's Tale? I'm thinking enough of us did (there was actressing from every angle, after all) that we can go ahead and have this week's contest be between Moss as Offred and her fellow Emmy nominee (not to mention honorary member of Team Film Experience!) the great Ann Dowd. Does Aunt Lydia's religious fervor strike too close to home, or is Dowd's take on the role just too delicious to ignore? You tell me.

PREVIOUSLY To be honest I am shocked that Charlton Heston won any votes in our Planet of the Apes off last week, but he was still soundly beat - Kim Hunter's Dr. Zira took over 81% of the vote. I guess his hands really are cold and dead now. Said Tom:

"Team Zira because empathetic scientists crying out the truth to an unbelieving world seems so important now."