A Salute to Legends Like Kathy Bates, Jean Smart and Harrison Ford on Finally Getting Their Emmy Flowers
Recently, when the iconic Kathy Bates was recognized with a well-deserved Emmy nomination for playing the unexpectedly complex 'Matty' Matlock (er, Madeline Kingston), Urman and team were ready with their flowers. Literally. The team formed a spirit tunnel, filled with cheers and balloons as well. They filmed that moment, and it was a joy to see on my feeds.
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'We're inspired every single day by your hard work and your grace and your humility and your talent and the way that you lead this set,' Urman said through tears on the video. Quipped Bates: 'This has been an extraordinary experience for an old broad like me.'
As I wipe away my own tears, I think: This is the kind of content I desperately need. And honestly, how lucky are we to be living in a golden age of legends? Bates, of course, made history as the oldest person ever to be nominated in the drama actress field, but she's not the only acting veteran still making waves.
And at this point I have to turn to Jean Smart, who has been turning her Sept. 13 birthday into an almost annual Emmy celebration — having now won the comedy actress Emmy in 2021, 2022 and 2024. This year, the Emmys take place the day after she turns 74. Smart is already the second-oldest Emmy comedy actress winner, but is actually the overall champ if you don't consider Ruth Gordon, who is the oldest winner at 82, in 1979 for 'Taxi.' But Gordon was a guest star; there was no guest category that year so she competed in lead.
Technicality or not, let's just remind folks that Smart also remains a screen queen. Her turn on this season of 'Hacks' was once again both impressive and heartbreaking; watching Deborah Vance realize her talk show dreams was exhilarating. And then, seeing it quickly turn toxic was a twist I didn't see coming.
I honestly can't tell who has a more crowded IMDB list of credits over the past decade — Bates or Smart. Both have experienced some whiplash castings in recent years: Bates doing Chuck Lorre comedies like 'The Big Bang Theory' and 'Disjointed,' and then Ryan Murphy-style thrills with 'American Horror Story' and straight-up drama with 'The Great Lillian Hall' and 'Richard Jewell.'
Then there has been the lengthy 'Jean Smartaissance' with her dramatic, powerful and sometimes scary roles in 'Fargo,' 'Watchmen,' 'Mare of Easttown' and 'Babylon' among them. (I will forever remember Smart as Helen in 'Mare of Easttown,' hiding her ice cream in a bag of frozen vegetables. It's a life hack I still think about to this day.)
Of course, on the actor side, on July 30, Variety ran a wonderful cover story on Harrison Ford — who just landed his first Emmy nomination, at 83, in the comedy supporting actor category for 'Shrinking.' Like Bates and Smart, Ford is doing some of his best and most memorable work right now. He also hasn't been busier, having also headlined the drama '1883.'
And if we want to talk about national treasures — and couples goals — let's look no further than Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. I was disappointed that Danson and his wonderful Netflix comedy 'A Man on the Inside' failed to get Emmy love, and am hopeful voters rectify that next year with the show's Season 2, in which Steenburgen joins her real-life husband on the show. But I was pleased to see the TV Academy will single out the couple for this year's Bob Hope Humanitarian Award for their charitable work in several causes.
Because, while I continue to scroll through nonstop awful headlines about what's happening in our country, I at least can take solace in knowing that there are living TV legends using their resources to do something about it.
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Ben Stiller won't direct on 'Severance' Season 3. But he's got plenty else to do
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Any one of these things would be enough to repeatedly summon the voice of Chief Brody. But as the flurry is arriving the day after the New York Knicks fired head coach Tom Thibodeau, and as Stiller sits alongside Spike Lee and Timothée Chalamet in the firmament of celebrity New York Knicks fandom, this is probably about Coach Thibs. "Being a Knicks fan is probably overshadowing the rest of my career — which might be a good thing," Stiller jokes. He shakes his head. "It's like an addiction." Stiller was just at Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals in Indianapolis when the Pacers eliminated the Knicks. He's still depressed. Seriously. It's like a bad breakup. Where there was once joy, there is now only pain and absence. It's over, and the bill has come due. Stiller and his 20-year-old son, Quinlin, really got into watching the games this season, years after Quinlin tapped out because being a Knicks fan is hard, what with the team's legacy of failure and heartbreak. Stiller's wife, Christine Taylor, became equally invested. They went through the highs and lows together, which helps, Stiller says. If something is going to take over your life, you might as well make it a family affair. "If we're working, you always know it's game day because Ben and John Turturro will be gathered around a phone in between takes," "Severance" star Adam Scott tells me. "It's deeply important. I'm actually envious of their passion." What if the Knicks had beaten the Pacers? Would we even be sitting here in L.A. talking right now, I ask. Wouldn't you be at home watching the finals? "There was a window," Stiller says. "I would have been OK." He starts laughing and tells me about a meeting he recently had at Netflix that coincided with one of the Knicks' playoff games. It was one of those sit-downs where you, the talent, talk about your dream projects and what you've got cooking and see if there's maybe mutual interest. "It was hard to concentrate," Stiller recalls. 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And, OK, we're actually talking about whether he'll be alive to see the Knicks win another championship — it has been more than 50 years — but the point remains valid. He's going to turn 60 in November. It's a daunting milestone. "Sixty sounds old. It's hard to get around it," Stiller says. "And of course, it's that other thing of, like, you know what the next one is." He laughs. "'Oh, s—.'" So, no, there are no firm plans to mark the occasion come November, though Taylor has asked. Stiller has never been one to celebrate birthdays anyway, preferring to use the occasion to take a little stock. He tells me he thinks about listening to an Elton John album, say "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy," and realizing it came out 50 years ago. And if you asked someone in 1975 about music in 1925, would they be able to say, "Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five were far out, man"? Because that's how they talked half a century ago. Time marches on. You can't escape it. When Stiller shoots "Focker-in-Law," he'll be older than Robert De Niro was when they made "Meet the Parents." Which prompts Stiller, ever the pragmatist, to think, "Time is valuable." That's why he and "Severance" showrunner Dan Erickson and the writing team have been spending much of the year planning Season 3 so that Stiller can step away and direct this feature film that tells the true story of a downed airman in occupied France and how he got involved with the French Resistance. Stiller also wants to make a movie based on the Rachel Maddow podcast "Bag Man," detailing the bribery scandal surrounding Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon's vice president. "These things take time to come together," Stiller says, "and the older you get, the more you realize that you only have so much time." Making the documentary about his parents, an idea that crystallized after his father died in 2020, reinforced that belief. Stiller & Meara were a hugely popular comedy team in the 1960s before going their separate ways professionally in the 1970s. Married from 1954 until Meara's death in 2015, they balanced their creative impulses with a commitment to their marriage and two children. (Stiller has an older sister, Amy.) It wasn't always easy, and the documentary explores the challenges they met to stay together, pressures that Stiller eventually faced too as a husband and father. "My parents' marriage really did affect me in terms of how I thought about our relationship," says Stiller. He and Taylor separated in 2017 but moved back in together during the pandemic, eventually reconciling. Stiller wasn't planning on talking about his own marriage in the doc, but the parallels made it unavoidable, particularly as both of Stiller and Taylor's children — Ella and Quinlin — have gone into acting as well. Jerry Stiller was protective of his son's showbiz ambitions, so much so that if a critic gave Ben a bad review, Jerry would sit down and fire off a letter. Or if Ben was up for a job, Jerry would put in a call on his behalf. When Stiller was attending UCLA, he applied for an internship with Alan Thicke's late-night talk show, "Thicke of the Night." And Jerry called the producer, telling him he'd be making a big mistake if he didn't hire his son. "It would drive me crazy," Stiller says. "He was the most loving dad, but some of that stuff is just a rite of passage you have to go through yourself. I remember the first play I was ever in, 'The House of Blue Leaves,' and John Simon with New York Magazine panned me and Christopher Walken in one sentence. And I thought that was pretty cool because I knew Christopher Walken was amazing." Stiller doesn't believe he's an overprotective dad. Am I going to be hearing from your kids to the contrary, I ask. 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We look at each other, waiting to see who blinks first. "I mean, you never know." Get exclusive awards season news, in-depth interviews and columnist Glenn Whipp's must-read analysis straight to your inbox. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Solve the daily Crossword
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