The Emmy nominations were announced this week, and gay was definitively in play. It's exciting to see so many nominations of both gay actors and gay- and lesbian-themed programming. It's way past time.
Among the nominations that pleased us were some old faves and new series. Outstanding Comedy Series include Modern Family, which now ranks with Frasier and Cheers for most successive nominations. Also in that category is Orange Is the New Black. The Netflix original series was nominated for its very first season (the second season began in June). OITNB is breaking barriers with its strong lesbian themes and a multi-cultural ensemble of actresses doing a pitch-perfect job of exploring the issues of women in prison. It also has the only out transgender actress on the tube, Laverne Cox, who recently made the cover of Time, that's how pivotal the show has been. OITNB star Taylor Schilling is nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Kate Mulgrew, who plays the amazing bull-daggery kitchen Russian, Red, is nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Uzo Aduba, Laverne Cox and Natasha Lyonne all got the nod for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for their roles on OITNB .
Oscar winner and (finally) out lesbian actress and director Jodie Foster is nominated for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for the OITNB episode, "Lesbian Request Denied." Jenji Kohan, the show's creator, and Liz Friedman are both nominated as a team for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, but have stiff competition from Louis C.K. They are also the only women nominated in the category.
Ty Burrell and out gay actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson are both up for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, and Julie Bowen is up for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, all for their ensemble roles in Modern Family. (Eric Stonestreet has previously won for his role on the show.) Nathan Lane is nominated for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as Pepper, the hilarious gay wedding planner and friend of Cam and Mitchell on Modern Family. We love Pepper.
Two of our favorite nominations were both surprises. Andre Braugher, for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as the gay captain in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is also one of the few actors of color to get an Emmy nomination. Out lesbian comedian Kate McKinnon, as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Saturday Night Live, is the only member of the SNL ensemble to be nominated, a major achievement.
Out gay actor Jim Parsons is up again for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for The Big Bang Theory, which is itself again nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series. Parsons has won three out of five years he's been nominated in this category.
Out gay showrunner Ryan Murphy's FX series American Horror Story: Coven is up for Outstanding Miniseries, but has stiff competition from Fargo, Treme and Luther, all of which were among the best series on the tube in 2013.
Murphy's film for HBO of Larry Kramer's iconic play The Normal Heart is up for Outstanding Television Movie. Mark Ruffalo, who played Kramer's stand-in Ned Weeks in Normal Heart, is nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie. The Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie category has six entrants, four of whom are from The Normal Heart: out gay actors Matt Bomer and Jim Parsons, as well as Joe Mantello and Alfred Molina. Julia Roberts was also nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for her role in the film.
Murphy, who was nominated for a record 34 Emmy nominations for his various projects, including as writer and director for Glee, told Deadline.com he was honored by the nominations and said, "I worked with Larry Kramer for five years on The Normal Heart. I really believed that it is the culture's sacred text. It was important to get it right. The tone on the set was like that of a church. It was a passion project for everyone who worked on it." Kramer is nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special, ironically in competition with Murphy, who is nominated in the same category for AHS.
We were also pleased to see long-time out gay African-American director Paris Barclay, who is one of the least noted but most deserving TV directors on the tube, nominated for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for directing the "100" episode of Glee . Speaking of Glee, why has the final season been cut to 13 episodes? Is that Fox's idea, Murphy's idea, or a combination of both? Stay tuned for more on that decision, which is, we admit, surprising.
Barclay has been directing TV forever, and was a standout in getting gay storylines as well as other gay and lesbian directors into the NYPD Blue lineup back in the 1990s. He's president of the Directors Guild of America and has won the prime-time Emmy before for directing. He's also executive producer and principal director of FX's Sons of Anarchy, which is currently filming its seventh (and final) season and is FX's best-rated series.
But back to the Emmys. Out lesbian Jane Lynch is nominated for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program, for Hollywood Game Night (which we really don't like, but we always love her). Out gay Renaissance man and fashionista Tim Gunn is also nominated in that category for Project Runway, and deserves to win. Gunn has totally made that show with his smart and savvy direction of contestants. How many times have we uttered his signature phrases "Make it work!," "Trying and achieving are two different things!" or "It's a little costumey?"
No Emmy nominations list is complete without the snubs. Several that made our head swivel off were – surprise! – queer. How there was not a single Emmy nomination for gay showrunner Bryan Fuller's lush, crazy, complex, homoerotic thriller Hannibal seems impossible. Mads Mikkelsen not nominated? We are far from the sole critic who has raved about this show since its debut. Everything about it screams Emmy. Or so we thought.
Also startling is the lack of a nomination for a second year for Tatiana Maslany for her outstanding (and lesbian) work on the BBC America sci-fi/thriller Orphan Black. Maslany is the show in many respects. She plays six different characters (sometimes more), and often they all appear in the same scene! Where is her Emmy nomination? Orphan Black was renewed for a third season, so the Emmys will have yet another chance to get it right. Three better be the charm.
Another surprise for us was the shut-out of Shonda Rhimes for Scandal. Although Scandal actresses Kerry Washington and Kate Burton, and Scandal actor Joe Morton all received nominations, Jeff Perry deserved a spot in the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category. His performance as the grieving and betrayed gay husband took gay to a whole different place. The Emmy committee may have missed it, but we didn't. Perry was brilliant, and he was robbed.
We counted carefully, and we only saw a handful of black actors nominated for anything, with Kerry Washington and Don Cheadle (House of Lies ) as the only leads. We'd say tsk tsk to this, but that doesn't sound serious enough. So let's say instead, for shame. Like why was Tony winner and out gay actor (and San Franciscan!) B.D. Wong snubbed in the Emmy nods for The Normal Heart? It's telling. And Sandra Oh's final season on Grey's Anatomy didn't register? Another shut-out of an Asian actor. A total of 10 acting nods for black actors, several of whom are British. No Asians, no Latinos. That's 10 out of 16 acting categories with a total of six nominees each. Ten out of 96 is a piss-poor ratio if you ask us.
Must. Do. Better. We're gratified to see gays do so well, but women and people of color are still MIA in these awards. That's got to change. The TV landscape has to start reflecting all of us. Surely when women are writing their own series, like Shonda Rhimes, Lena Dunham, Amy Poehler, Mindy Kahling, Jenji Kohan, Sarah Silverman and Tina Fey, a nomination is due?
In the final tally, the nominations look like this: Game of Thrones is this year's most nominated program, with 19 nods, all deserved. Fargo and AHS received 18 and 17 nominations, respectively, also deserved. The death knell for HBO is clearly exaggerated, as the network was far and away the front-runner, with 99 nods. Next is CBS with 47 nominations, including The Good Wife; NBC with 46, but none for Cannibal or The Blacklist; and FX with 45. We agree with most of the nominations, but there were additions that definitely needed to be made.
Speaking of additions, it's official: She's back! As of July 10, Rosie O'Donnell has been rehired at ABC to co-host The View. Both ABC and Rosie herself took to her favorite medium, Twitter, to announce the news and start fighting with naysayers in advance of her September return. (Check out the flurry of tweets from Rosie who is, natch, @Rosie.) Rosie left The View after a series of dramatic on-air and off-air fights with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck and doyenne Barbara Walters. She has been tapped to co-host in the fall with remaining host Whoopi Goldberg. ABC is looking for at least two other co-hosts, who may come from the cable news ranks. Oh, to see Rachel Maddow join The View. It's been seven years since Rosie left, yet her shadow has hovered over the show since that much-tabloid-discussed split in 2007. After nearly 10 years, Hasselbeck left the series in July 2013, replacing Gretchen Carlson as the female co-host of Fox & Friends, a perfect fit with her strong conservative politics.
Rosie's return prompted a snippy comment from Hasselbeck, who said, "She spit in the face of our military, and spit in the face of our network." Okay then. We told you this would happen the minute Barbara Walters retired. We also told you Hasselbeck would not be happy about it. Hasselbeck said Barbara Walters' farewell show in May was really Rosie's "hello show." ABC World News Now reported this as a "cat fight" as the "claws come out." Oy.
Jenny McCarthy, the current co-host whom Rosie will be replacing, was more generous, noting simply that ABC likes controversy on the program, and Rosie would provide it. We do hope the show decides to include another conservative voice, however. That makes for rollicking TV, and the main reason to watch The View is to see what drama the various co-hosts bring to their table.
Big losers
Meanwhile over on NBC, lesbian fitness trainer and weight-loss guru Jillian Michaels has left Biggest Loser in a cloud of controversy. NBC announced last week Michaels was leaving. Known as the tough one, Michaels has been known to scream in the faces of her contestants as well as give them big hugs. She was appalled at the end of last season when winner Rachel Fredrickson came onstage having lost 155 lbs. She looked emaciated and, as the ripped Michaels noted, "anorexic." Michaels said the win made the show look "unhealthy," and she did not want to promote unhealthy body images.
She's been wooed back before by the network and is a huge fan favorite, but we agreed with her assessment. Fredrickson did not look like what the show aims for, and we thought the show gave the wrong message, especially to girls already dealing with the pressure to adopt eating disorders as a way of maintaining thinness.
Speaking of real-life drama, we love ABC's NY Med because it never shies away from gay issues. In the July 10 episode, one of the patients spotlighted was a black gay actor and homeless/HIV activist from New York, Levorne Moore. Moore was magnificent to watch. The very definition of fierce, he had no intention of hiding his gayness or his fears. Dr. Ashley Winters told him his bladder cancer had become invasive, and she would need to remove his bladder. The exchange between them was loving and humane. She held him, he cried softly and said he felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, caught up in a whirlwind. Iconic gay imagery.
All did not go well for Moore, who starred in a production of The Worm in the Apple, a play about homelessness and HIV in the Big Apple. After the surgery he had a heart attack, his organs began to fail and he was near death. But, as Winters explained for the camera, he had a "miracle" recovery and we watched as he sashayed out of the hospital healthy and beautifully attired (Gunn would have approved), leaving Winters fighting back tears at the thought that she nearly lost this patient.
Speaking of will to live, NBC's hit medical drama Night Shift has added one of our favorite gay actors, Luke Macfarlane (beloved Scotty on Brothers & Sisters ). He has joined the cast as Rick Lincoln, Dr. Drew McAllister's (Brendan Fehr) partner, who has just returned from Afghanistan. Nobody has ever done gay military couples on the tube before. Night Shift is doing it. While the show may have jumped the shark in putting Rick's life at risk Stateside (he and other returning soldiers were in a massive bus crash), it did mean Drew had to acknowledge his gayness and his partner to his colleagues. That kiss in the ER was one we'd been waiting for.
Other shows that should be on your radar this summer are: PBS' Vicious, the gay comedy starring Derek Jacobi and Sir Ian McKellen as aging lovers. The sci-fi/thrillers The Strain, The Last Ship and Extant have all just debuted, and they are stellar . Also, DVR the return of the phenomenal Masters of Sex, The Bridge, True Blood and Pretty Little Liars. Watch for Rush on USA, July 17. So for all of this, the shows that got the Emmy nods and the ones that missed, and for the constantly evolving landscape of the tube, you really must stay tuned.