The Hollywood Reporter Awards Special 34B - December 11, 2024

For decades, Ted McGinley’s career has been defined by terminology outside of his control. The Happy Days and Married … With Children actor has been questionably associated with shows jumping the shark and inaccurately described as a show killer, as if his addition to a series’ roster represented or even led to a hastier demise. More recently, however, McGinley has been tiptoeing around a different and more coveted title: TV’s most valuable supporting actor. It isn’t a surprise that McGinley, a comic talent in steady employ dating back to the early ’80s, has been funny on Apple TV+’s Shrinking. As Derek, the inexplicably agreeable husband to Christa Miller’s filter-free Liz, McGinley already was a scene-stealer. But as the second season has put Derek’s marital devotion to the test, McGinley has…

Icelandic musician Hildur Gudnadóttir has experienced a very distinct shift since winning the best original score Academy Award for her work in Todd Phillips’ Joker. “It’s like getting married to it, because you get this prefix,” she jokes to The Hollywood Reporter about “Oscar winner” preceding any reference to her. “It’s hard to see my name written anywhere without this prefix.” The 42-year-old returned as the composer for Joker’s sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, a choice she says was a no-brainer. “It was always a given that I would be a part of the sequel because the music was such a big part of the first one,” she explains, noting that she wanted to make sure the sound stayed consistent with the first film. Gudnadóttir says that, sonically speaking, the…

Marissa Bode had all but given up on the idea she would get the part of Nessarose in Jon M. Chu’s feature adaptation of Wicked. “My last call-back that I had, prior to that, I didn’t think that I got it. I hadn’t heard back from casting,” Bode tells The Hollywood Reporter about her bid to land a part in the beloved stage musical. To distract herself, the 24-year-old says she made a “cute little spooky video” about witches, “not even thinking about Wicked.” But just two days after uploading the video to Instagram, she heard back from casting about another Zoom callback with Chu, who she says told her to be careful about posting a witch-themed video because no one knew she was up for the role of Nessarose.…

In the months leading up to the production of The Brutalist, writer-director Brady Corbet texted his leading actor, Adrien Brody, from Italy, where the filmmaker was struggling to find a location he had envisioned. In a key sequence in the film, Brody, as Jewish Hungarian refugee architect László Toth, travels with his wealthy patron, played by Guy Pearce, to obtain white marble from quarries carved into the mountains of Carrara, Italy. Corbet and his co-writer and romantic partner, Norwegian filmmaker Mona Fastvold, had written the dramatic landscape — where Michelangelo got his marble — into their 168-page script to supply an emotionally resonant backdrop for a dark turning point in the story, but Corbet couldn’t locate a spot for filming until Brody intervened. “I texted him back, ‘I got you,’…

Jessica Williams spent the first five years of her career essentially playing herself. Sure, the Daily Show correspondent gig she booked straight out of college allowed for some comedic liberties. And that job hosting the podcast turned TV show 2 Dope Queens forced her to really amp up the energy. But Jessica Williams, or some version of her, was front and center. These days, she’s more content disappearing behind a role. “I’m able to just do a character, maybe go to Japan for a month, come back and go back to work,” Williams tells THR. “There’s something really nice about being private — especially now. Nothing’s a secret. Everything is viral.” “Just doing characters” undersells what Williams has been able to build from her comedy roots. The 35-year-old has gone…

Legal drama is second nature to David E. Kelley, whose Emmy recognition in the genre spans three decades, from L.A. Law in the 1980s and The Practice and Ally McBeal in the ’90s to Boston Legal in the 2000s. But having worked on long seasons of those broadcast series, the eight episodes of Apple TV+’s Presumed Innocent this summer were a bit unnerving for the creator, show-runner and executive producer. “It feels strange,” Kelley tells THR. “In the new days, you spend all this time working and then whoosh, you drop it, people consume it, and then it’s over, onto the next. That part’s a little weird.” The thriller, based on Scott Turow’s 1987 novel of the same name and also adapted for a 1990 film, stars Jake Gyllenhaal in…