The Hollywood Reporter – August 14, 2019

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 87 AUGUST 14, 2019

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mentality and set-ups, and none of

those scenes were filmed in front

of the audience.

The pinnacle of the series was

Sheldon winning the Nobel and

delivering a heartfelt speech giving

credit to his friends. What went into

that scene when working with Jim?

My mantra to Jim throughout

the years was, “Jim, it’s only

Thursday.” We start rehearsals

on Wednesday, and if he wasn’t

nailing things on the second

day, he’d get upset that it wasn’t

working. We don’t shoot until

Tuesday, and that’s what this was.

We did a table read, which was

emotional, on Wednesday, and we

At just 17, Asante

Blackk became this

year’s youngest

Emmy nominee

and the ninth

youngest ever for his perfor-

mance as 14-year-old Kevin

Richardson on Ava DuVernay’s

When They See Us. But Blackk

first auditioned for another

role: Korey Wise, played by fel-

low first-time nominee Jharrel

Jerome. “The entire time I’m

auditioning for Korey,” Blackk

tells THR. “At that time, they

A

‘Try to Capture the Innocence

as Best You Can’

Asante Blackk earns his first Emmy nomination for his debut

performance, starring in Netflix’s When They See Us BY TARA BITRAN

were thinking it would be like

everyone else, an actor playing

younger and [another playing

the character] older.” When

DuVernay’s team alerted

Black k that she wanted to see

him audition for Richardson,

Blackk admits, “I was super

confused. But I knew I had

to put everything I’ve got on

this tape.” (Jerome ultimately

played Wise as a teen and an

adult — the only actor among

the series’ five core characters

to do so.)

After DuVernay told Blackk

that he’d landed the role (his

acting debut), he was able to

meet with Richardson, who

advised him to simply “tell

the truth” in his portrayal.

Says Blackk: “He said, ‘Try

to capture the innocence as

best as you can — really show

how fragile we were and how

the case was set up against us

from the start.’ ”

Four Stars Make Their First Emmy Splash

A FILM VETERAN AND A GAME OF THRONES STALWART ARE AMONG

THOSE WHO CAUGHT THE TV ACADEMY’S ATTENTION By Rebecca Ford

Sarah Goldberg

Barry

The second season of

HBO’s hitman drama saw

Goldberg’s Sally Reed

continue to be a polar-

izing character. “They

didn’t want to write some

sweet girl next door, and

I didn’t want to play that,”

she says. “The beauty of

season two is being able to

explain the complexities.”

Ben Whishaw

A Very English Scandal

On the BBC One/Amazon

limited series, the British

actor stars as Norman

Scott, the secret lover of

Jeremy Thorpe (Hugh

Grant), who tries to have

him murdered. Whishaw

already has won a Golden

Globe and a BAFTA

for his work on the three-

part miniseries.

Gwendoline Christie

Game of Thrones

In the final season, Christie

displayed both Brienne

of Tarth’s toughness

and vulnerability as she

joined the knighthood.

“Brienne has decided to

stop serving other people,”

says Christie, who self-

submitted for her Emmy

nomination. “She’s starting

to be in control.”

Stellan Skarsgard

Chernobyl

The veteran supporting

actor portrayed real-life

politician Boris Shcherbina

in HBO’s five-part mini-

series, which chronicles

the 1986 nuclear reactor

explosion, the biggest

nuclear accident in history.

The show earned 19 total

nominations, the most for

any limited series.

had this buildup to shooting the

finale. We saw at the table read

how the scene affected everyone

and knew we didn’t need to do too

much more on camera to make

it work. The approach was not to

overwork it, not to beat it to death

and find every nuance. My big-

gest challenge was steering Jim

from Wednesday to the last day of

shooting on Monday.

Big Bang was not recognized in the

acting, writing or series categories

for its final season. Why not?

Multicamera is considered old-

fashioned. In the last five to 10

years, network execs wanted

single-cam or hybrid comedies

because that’s what’s hip. The

multicam format and making

people laugh and feel emotions

is the hardest thing to do. That’s

hard to accomplish, and I don’t

think the TV Academy recognizes

how difficult that is to do.

Interview edited for length

and clarity.

The series

finale,

titled “The

Stockholm

Syndrome,”

aired May 16.

Asante Blackk on When They See Us (left),

and with Kevin Richardson in May.