When casting the reality series The Traitors, the creative team admitted that were looking for gullible people.
This revelation came during Deadline’s annual Contenders Television: The Nominees event. The day-long experience highlighted series and individuals who are vying for Emmy awards this season. The Emmy Awards ceremony is currently scheduled to take place on January 15th, 2024.
Spotlighting 13 scripted and unscripted series, from nine networks, studios and streaming services, each panel featured discussions about crafting the individual projects.
In addition to The Traitors, a party game reality series in which a small group of contestants become “Traitors” who work together to eliminate other contestants in order to win a prize, other non-scripted panels featured behind-the-scenes looks at RuPaul’s Drag Race, and Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi.
What makes this year’s version of the Contenders Television event so unique is that while in the past the panels were filled with actors, writers, and showrunners, due to the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, these discussions were populated with the men and women who contributed to various other creative aspects of each series, such as cinematography, choreography, production design, costumes, and music, among others.
For The Traitors, it was the casting group that spoke, while during the Ted Lasso panel the composers of the series’ Emmy-nominated song discussed creating the tune and its significance in the penultimate episode.
Natalie Kingston, the cinematographer of the limited series Black Bird, which takes place in a prison, explained how she manipulated her shots in an effort to make the audience feel a sense of claustrophobia, and, much like the characters, that they couldn’t escape.
The event highlighted a wide variety of genres, with Succession and House of the Dragon in the fictional drama category. Documentaries included Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie and Dear Mama, about the late Tupac Shakur and his mother Afeni, as well as National Geographic’s The Territory, about an indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest fighting off the encroachment of a group of Brazilian farmers.
The panel for the limited series about a ‘70s era band, Daisy Jones and the Six, featured music supervisor, Frankie Pine, explaining just how the team worked to create music that accurately reflected the sound of the time period, while the choreographer of Schmigadoon!, a fantasy musical series, described how a trapeze played a key role in one actor’s performance.
Another aspect of the year’s Contenders Television: The Nominees event that should be noted is that because the event was held virtually, the panels are available for viewing by anyone. In fact, Deadline has launched a dedicated streaming site just for this content, which can be found here.
Participating platforms for the event included Apple TV+, Prime Video, FX, HBO, NBC, Peacock, Hulu, MTV, and National Geographic Documentary Films,
Prior to the pandemic, Contender panels were held in-person in Los Angeles, New York and London. Deadline began holding these events in 2010.
(*All Emmy nominees who appeared at the event did so in accordance with SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike guidelines.)
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