Last week during my blog holiday (by the way hope you all had a nice end of summer, mine went way too fast) I tweeted about SNL adding two more females to the cast — Nasim Pedrad and Jenny Slate. Thought that was awesome. What I later discovered is that the two women hired last season — Michaela Watkins and Casey Wilson were fired. I guess that Lorne Michaels was nervous about having too many women in the cast. WTF? Have any of the men who were hired last season been fired?
Michaela has some notable characters last season and she came by way of a funny arc in The New Adventures of Old Christine. Maybe she can get her old gig back.
EW asked Michaela why she was fired and shockingly she has no idea but has gone on the record with her shock and dismay. More women need to do that. Michaels said that it wasn’t a talent issue and that he believes that Watkins should have her own show. Thanks for the suggestion Lorne. How totally fucking absurd and unacceptable.
What was Lorne Michaels thinking?
MICHAELA WATKINS: I don’t think anyone knows what Lorne Michaels was thinking. That’s one of the exciting things about him. If he were to vanish the show would just freeze. Not a single thing would be shot because so much hinges on him.
What explanation did he give you?
WATKINS: The only explanation I got from him — and he’s not known to say things just to make people feel better — was that he felt deep down that I should have my own show. And I agreed. SNL was a dream come true for me. It was a fantastic year. I don’t have any regrets.
Lorne fired you because he thought you were good enough to get your own show? What am I missing here?
WATKINS: You tell me. I honestly don’t know. What he said is he’s trying to get what’s best for him and best for me. He said it had nothing to do with talent. And I’m just going to go on that. That was his only explanation. He’s looking at the whole mix of the show and maybe he feels that what I bring would be better served on a sitcom. They hired two new gals [Jenny Slate and Nasim Pedrad] that I think are going to be exquisite.
What was your reaction?
WATKINS: Shock. And sadness [because] it just felt premature. But on some level I feel like there are so many opportunities and things that I want to do in the future and now they’ll just happen sooner rather than later.
Tags:
Casey Wilson,
Michaela Watkins,
Saturday Night Live,
The New Adventures of Old Christine
Tina Fey’s 30 Rock was nominated for a record 22 Emmy awards yesterday. She broke her own record of 17 which she got last year. Fey continues her domination of the comedy world and she scored a nom for her portrayal of soon to be ex-Governor Palin on SNL.
But digging deeper women are not widely nominated in lots of the categories. Here are some things I noticed.
- The only women centric show nominated for best drama is Damages starring Glenn Close. 30 Rock and Weeds are nominated for the best comedy Emmy.
- Two women are nominated for directing a comedy series and two women are nominated for directing a miniseries or movie (both out of six) but NO women are nominated for directing a drama series or a variety, music or comedy series or special. One woman out of four was nominated for directing a non-fiction special.
- Even though 30 Rock has the lion’s share of writing nominations not a single woman is nominated in the outstanding writing for a comedy series.
- Mad Men is nominated for most of the dramatic writing slots and there are two women included on that team.
- The outstanding writing for a variety, music or comedy series is one of the categories that makes me crazy. It’s the one that features all the late night shows and those shows have very few women writers. The nominees are: The Stephen Colbert Show (2 women out of 14 writers- but he does have a female executive producer); The Daily Show (1 woman out of 16); Late Night with Conan O’Brien (NO women out of 16); Late Show with David Letterman (NO women out of 14); SNL (5 women out of 22)
The good news. The acting categories are beyond outstanding.
- Chandra Wilson scored two acting nominations.
- Veteran actresses like Gena Rowlands, Carol Burnett and Elaine Strich get noticed
- Elizabeth Moss, the heart of Mad Men gets invited to the big ball along with women like Holly Hunter and Glenn Close.
- Grey Gardens gets nods for the movie and for both Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange as well as Patricia Rozema for the script.
Nominees below:
Continue reading ‘Emmy Nominations- 30 Rock Breaks Record-But Not So Great for Women Creatives’
Tags:
30 Rock,
Chandra Wilson,
Saturday Night Live,
Tina Fey
I’m a big Rachel Dratch fan, I thought her characters on SNL were interesting, quirky, and a little different like the characters that Gilda Radner did a couple of decades ago. SNL has been an amazing springboard for her male colleagues propelling several if not many onto incredibly high profile careers (Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell…) but Dratch’s post SNL career has been well, kind of disappointing to her and to us since we haven’t seen her enough.
Missy Schwartz at EW talks to Dratch about her career:
”I did Second City and SNL and everything was chugging along,” says Dratch, 43, referring to the famed Chicago improv group. ”And then the chug got a little slower. When I was on SNL, I envisioned things going differently.”
Yeah I bet. She did seven years on SNL — the longest of any woman– and she hit the women’s comedy wall in Hollywood. Lost her gig on 30 Rock. Movie she wrote and co-starred in went straight to DVD (Spring Breakdown out last week.) Missing from Vanity Fair’s women’s comedy issue.
She talks about how playing the bizarro and at times kind of “ugly” looking characters and her lack of vanity in her roles on SNL may have affected how people thought about her with people commenting “Oh, you’re so much prettier in real life.” Ouch.
But Rachel is back in Nia Vardalos’ My Life in Ruins and has appeared in a musical Minsky’s in LA which will hopefully be on Broadway this fall.
Here’s to hoping we see more of Dratch. She’s worth it.
The Return of Rachel Dratch (EW)
Tags:
Rachel Dratch,
Saturday Night Live,
Spring Breakdown
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