What do people who are not in the industry think the job of a TV director is? Do they think they wear a beret, walk around on a crane and bark orders into a megaphone? That’s the cliché anyway. “I think sometimes it’s just assumed that maybe you’re just directing the actors or that’s the main thing you do,” says Lucia Aniellowho is co-showrunner and head writer and regular director of the Max comedy series “Hacks.” “When my parents are around, I think the most feedback they give me is that they don’t realize how much preparation goes into it, how much work goes into it after the actual shooting and post-production, and how long that takes. I think when we do our job right, it looks like it’s easy. And sometimes I think the love and care that goes into it is something that nobody gets credit for, but it all takes a lot of time.”
We spoke with Aniello as part of Gold Derby’s Meet the Emmy Nominees roundtable discussion for television directors, which also featured the 2024 Emmy nominees Randall Einhorn (the ABC comedy “Abbott Elementary”), Weronika Tofilska (the Netflix miniseries “Baby Reindeer”), Hiro Murai (the Prime Video drama series “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”) and Nick Murray (the award-winning MTV reality series “RuPaul’s Drag Race”). Watch our exclusive video interview above. Click on each name above to watch that person’s chat.
SEE Lively chats with over 200 of the 2024 Emmy nominees
Einhorn doesn’t think most people who hear he’s a TV director don’t understand that his biggest job “is actually listening.” He stresses, “It’s not about talking. It’s about picking up on other people’s feelings, the vibe of something. To me, that’s the most important thing I do. You wouldn’t believe it, but it really is.” One of the misconceptions Tofilska encountered – particularly when dealing with her own parents – was the idea that being a TV director makes you a fearless leader. “I think that’s hopefully changing,” she adds. “But yes, when I talked to my parents very early on about wanting to be a director, a lot of it was about how loud I could be.”
Murai says that when people hear he’s a director, they automatically assume it’s pretty glamorous. “And I guess that’s a little bit true,” he admits, “but they also don’t think about eating pizza as a second meal after a 14-hour day. There are a lot of little things I love, but that’s not what you think of when you think of a director.”
“Actually,” replies Einhorn, “a second pizza meal a day doesn’t sound so bad.”
Murray echoes the notion that his job is “super-glamorous.” He continues, “You assume you’ve got a red carpet in front of you all the time when you walk around on set. People are always amazed that you can have 12, 13 cameras running at once. They often ask, ‘How on earth do you keep track of that?’ And the answer is, it’s a lot of preparation. I mean, you have to take this job really seriously, because if you don’t, it really shows – not just on film, but when you’re doing it. People notice, and you’re practically in charge of a huge crew. Ours is well over a hundred people. So there’s a lot of what I call chief of staff work that people don’t really understand. It’s about making sure everyone’s on the same page.
“And as for pizza after 14 hours: well, only if you’re really lucky.”
PREDICTIONS the 2024 Emmy winners until September 15
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