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Beyoncé & Jay-Z Face Off As Kendrick Lamar & Tramell Tillman Make History With 2025 Emmy Noms

Beyoncé & Jay-Z Face Off As Kendrick Lamar & Tramell Tillman Make History With 2025 Emmy Noms

Source: Edward Berthelot / Getty
The 2025 Emmy nominations are in, and the culture is at the pulse. From Severance dominating the list to a Carter vs. Carter showdown and Kendrick Lamar turning the Super Bowl into an award-winning stage, this year's Emmys are anything but ordinary. Check out our favorite nominations and see the full list inside.
One of the biggest moments? Beyoncé and Jay-Z are officially competing against each other in the Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded) category. The power couple finds themselves in creative combat as Emmy voters acknowledge both of their 2024 projects. While fans debate who will take home the golden statue, Black excellence is front and center.
Meanwhile, Apple TV+'s Severance leads the nominations pack with 27 total nods, earning critical acclaim across major categories. Among those celebrated is Tramell Tillman, who received his first-ever Emmy nomination. If he wins, he'll become the first Black actor to win in his respective supporting category, marking a historic milestone in Emmy history.
And don't sleep on Kendrick Lamar, whose Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show earned a well-deserved four nominations, including Outstanding Variety Special (Live), Outstanding Directing, Outstanding Music Direction, and Outstanding Choreography. The performance—featuring surprise guests like SZA and Samuel L. Jackson—was more than a show, it was the cultural reset the world needed.
Joining Severance in the Emmy spotlight are The Penguin , The Studio , and The White Lotus , which also racked up major nods. The strong presence of genre-spanning hits proves this year's Emmys are embracing innovation, diversity, and bold storytelling.
As the anticipation builds ahead of this fall's awards ceremony, the 2025 Emmys are a celebration of Black creativity, visionary performance, and cultural impact.
Want to see the full list? Head over to the Television Academy's official website for all the 77th Emmy nominations.
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Beyoncé & Jay-Z Face Off As Kendrick Lamar & Tramell Tillman Make History With 2025 Emmy Noms was originally published on globalgrind.com
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‘Demascus' review: A sci-fi comedy about one man's alternate realities
‘Demascus' review: A sci-fi comedy about one man's alternate realities

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  • Chicago Tribune

‘Demascus' review: A sci-fi comedy about one man's alternate realities

In the sci-fi comedy 'Demascus,' a man attending therapy tries a new technology that allows him to visit alternate versions of his life that exist in his subconscious in an effort to figure out why he's feeling so bleh. But which version is closest to his real life? Actually, which one is his real life, anyway? The show premieres on the free, ad-supported streaming platform Tubi, but it almost never made it to light. From writer-producers Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm and Mark Johnson, it was originally created for AMC and shot in its entirety, and then canceled in early 2023 before it could air (the network cited cost-cutting measures). It languished on the shelf until now. Kudos to Tubi, which offers only a limited number of originals, for taking a chance on it. But while the premise of 'Demascus' is enticing — what might our lives look like with small changes? — the six-episode series doesn't live up to its initial promise. There is a 'solution' offered by the final episode that explains everything we've seen up to that point, but instead of resonating, it felt somewhat pat. Okieriete Onaodowan plays the title character, a 33-year-old Everyman who moves through his days in a numb haze. His therapist (Janet Hubert) asks: Are you unhappy? What's making you unhappy? 'It's 2023 and I'm a Black man,' he says. 'The world is as inhospitable as ever.' Then he offers up an anecdote from work: Walking toward the break room, he hears someone sharing an anecdote about him, of which he only hears the last line: 'Y'all know how Demascus is, right?' Everyone in the break room laughs uproariously. 'Nobody knows me,' Demascus tells his therapist, confused by what this person could have meant. 'My one dominant quality is I'm unknowable.' You pride yourself on that, comes the response? 'Yeah, actually, I do. I can be anybody. Or nobody. And that's a good quality for a Black man to have, right?' But in your effort to remain unknowable, his therapist says, perhaps you have made yourself unknown even to you. This is good, interesting stuff and had me locked in. Then his therapist places a white contraption on his head that sends him into something called digital immersive reality therapy. 'By identifying commonalities across your alternate timelines, you'll be able to combat the issues you're facing in your everyday life.' It also comes with a warning. 'Attempting to take control of the narrative can permanently corrupt your primary reality.' In one of those alternate realities, he has a sister whose boyfriend has been roughing her up; she wants Demascus to round up some friends to set the guy straight. Demascus is reluctant — this is not his thing — but agrees and calls up Uncle Forty (Martin Lawrence), an aging no-bull type, and his best friend Redd (Caleb Eberhardt), who is ready, willing and eager. Not surprisingly, things go horribly, comically awry. And so it continues. We meet his girlfriend Budhi (Sasha Hutchings), who he is seriously involved with in one timeline, less so in another. In another timeline, it's Demascus and Redd who are a couple. In yet another, Demascus is a priest. In another, he and Budhi are on an instant marriage reality show. Everyone's styling is different each time. At one point, Demascus does the therapy while he's already in a therapy session, which is like staring into an infinity mirror, or waking from a dream, only to still be dreaming — when does the trance stop? The show is commenting on all kinds of ideas, from how we run away from (or suppress) our deepest pain, to the psychological issues — the addiction — that can result from people pretending they have a relationship with computer-generated reality. As his therapist said early on, he's created a world where he's unknowable not only to those around him but to himself as well. The larger issue is that he also remains unknowable to the viewer, and I think that is where the show loses me. Ultimately, who are we supposed to become invested in? 'Demascus' — 2 stars (out of 4) Where to watch: Tubi

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What to do in Chicago: Bud Billiken Parade, a fest for Beatles fans and Northalsted Market Days

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With the must-watch ‘Demascus,' Tubi rescues a reality-bending comedy
With the must-watch ‘Demascus,' Tubi rescues a reality-bending comedy

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With the must-watch ‘Demascus,' Tubi rescues a reality-bending comedy

The road to 'Demascus' — premiering Thursday on Tubi — runs through AMC, which had commissioned the series and then, though a six-episode season was completed, declined to air it. Not being privy to any boardroom discussions or the thoughts of executives and accountants, I won't claim to know why that was — most everything these days is a calculation instead of a gamble. But simply as regards its quality, AMC was wrong and Tubi is right. Created by playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm ('Hooded: Or Being Black for Dummies'), it sits alongside some of the most interesting series of the last several years — comedies from Black creators that mess with form and time and space and reality — 'I'm a Virgo,' 'Government Cheese,' 'The Vince Staples Show' and 'Atlanta' and the cartoons 'Lazor Wulf' and 'Oh My God ... Yes!' Perhaps if one already feels outside the system, there's less temptation to play it safe. 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Bonnetville suggests that Demascus might be a candidate for DIRT (Digital Immersive Reality Therapy), an experimental psychological virtual alternate reality rig that 'follows the path of your conscious and subconscious impulses, allowing you to visit alternate visions of yourself, but only as a voyeur. … Attempting to take control of a narrative can permanently corrupt your primary reality.' (Of course he will do just that.) But just what reality is primary is something the series purposely confuses and doesn't quite settle or really needs to. The gizmo is an excuse for episodes and parts of episodes set in various contexts that work both as short stories and pieces of a bigger puzzle, and as a bonus allows the main cast to try on different roles — in repertory, if you will. In what may or may not be his primary reality, Demascus is a graphic artist employed by the government — he's working on a campaign to encourage Black participation in the space program — which makes for some office-based satire. He has a best friend, Redd (Caleb Eberhardt), a District of Columbia public defender, who will reappear in other forms (in one episode, 'Thanksgiving,' they're a couple); an uncle, Forty (Martin Lawrence), now dissolute, now respectable; and, in some scenarios, a sister, Shaena (Brittany Adebumola). He's slowly losing interest in his 'algorithmically compatible' girlfriend, Budhi (Sasha Hutchings), and becoming interested in Naomi (Shakira Ja'nai Paye), who appears variously as an artist, a nun and a nurse in a psychiatric ward. There's a tentative pan-dimensional love story between them, the sort of thing that could easily be overdone, but is just … nice. The series itself takes different forms — a relationship reality show, a 'sad Thanksgiving' domestic comedy, a setting out of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.' Notwithstanding a change of hair or profession, Demascus remains more or less himself as shapes shift around him — the protagonist, basically a good guy, a little buttoned-up, a little insecure. He's surrounded by more colorful, unpredictable characters, more acted upon than acting and dealing with the same issues from scenario to scenario. 'There are rules and I know some of them and there are rules that I don't know and they're just ever-changing,' he tells Dr. Bonnetville. According to press materials, the show explores the 'gulf between Black male perspectives' and as with any culturally specific work, it may play to an audience that shares those specifics. But like all good art, it doesn't limit its meanings to the artist's statement. 'Demascus' isn't parochial or polemical; the emotional beats are accessible to any moderately sensitive human. And there's pure pleasure to be found in the writing, which is sharp and smart and natural; the direction, which shapes and is shaped by the evolving material without getting in its way; and uniformly marvelous performances. I finished the sixth episode, titled 'Season Two Prequel' (following the penultimate episode, 'Penultimate'), wanting more, though that possibility, given the series' previous wandering in the wilderness, seems an open question. A line of dialogue hearkens back to the beginning in a way that might be thought of as closure, as a circle closes without going anywhere, and yet things are not the same. An ending you can take as a beginning, as with any fairy tale or romantic comedy, it's a beautifully managed moment, as J. Cole's 'Love Yourz' — 'No such thing as a life that's better than yours' and 'It's beauty in the struggle' — makes its complementary points on the soundtrack.

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