Emmy Comedy Actor interviews: Adam Brody, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel
Over the past few months of Emmy campaigning, Gold Derby has spoken with several contenders in all categories. Now with voting underway ahead of the July 15 unveiling of the nominees, we have compiled 10 interviews for stars vying for Best Comedy Actor, including: (English Teacher), (Nobody Wants This), (A Man on the Inside), (St. Denis Medical), (Étoile), (The Righteous Gemstones), (Government Cheese), (The Studio), (Shrinking), and (Deli Boys).
Read on for highlights from each interviews and links to watch our full video Q&As.
The creator, writer, director, and star for the FX comedy series plays Evan Marquez, an English teacher in Austin, Texas, navigating the complex sociopolitical climate of high school and his personal life, specifically his on-again, off-again boyfriend Malcolm ().
"I think with hot topics in general, somehow we just found in the voice of the show that we could handle this stuff, that there was a certain perspective, or even I would say the show has a certain empathy and intelligence that allows us to really look at things that can be uncomfortable conversations," Alvarez says.
Watch our complete interview with Brian Jordan Alvarez.
Brody plays "hot rabbi" Noah, who falls for Joanne (Kristen Bell), an agnostic podcaster for the Netflix comedy series. The two have to navigate numerous obstacles, religious and non-religious, in their relationship.
For Brody, the rapturous reception to the show has been "lovely, wonderful, very, very surprising, very gratifying. I really can't think of a negative," he says. "Maybe it'll come, but I don't know. I've been doing this a long time, so it's not like it's surprising, but I feel acclimated to the business, the ebbs and flows. So it's nothing that I don't feel ready to handle, but it's just really lovely."
Watch our complete interview with Adam Brody.
Danson plays Charles, a retired professor struggling to move on after the passing of his wife. To find purpose and solve the mystery of a stolen necklace, he accepts an undercover job in a retirement home.
For the new Netflix comedy he admits, “I’m exploring aging at 76. Some of it hurts a little, there’s more aches and pains. There’s some sadness because you live long enough. But I’m beginning to learn, ‘so what? keep going!’ And I get the same thrill driving through a studio gate today that I did when I was in my late 20s. One of my goals in life is to keep acting and figure out how to be funny at every age.”
Watch our complete video interview with Ted Danson.
Grier stars on the NBC mockumentary as the curmudgeonly but knowledgeable Doctor Ron.
The balance of comedy and pathos stood out the most to Grier. “It’s a weird show, it’s like a hybrid,” explains the actor, who trained at the Yale School of Drama. He finds that “the humor there is earned and organic. … The way it’s written, it’s a drama,” and notes, “The biggest challenge was just, you have to trust … I had to trust that the tone was right.”
Read our complete interview with David Alan Grier.
Kirby stars as Jack MacMillan, the head of a New York ballet company who engages in a talent swap with a Paris troupe in a bid to revive interest in both for the Prime Video series.
He says, “I'm really happy with how people are responding to the dynamism of the story, the kinetic energy of it, how different it is from our last endeavor. And I think the biggest thing is just people saying the show grows as the episodes go on, that it does work as a big movie where things are revealed episode to episode where by the end, you have this very rich tapestry of information for these characters and this endeavor to keep their art alive.”
Watch our complete interview with Luke Kirby.
McBride stars as Jesse Gemstone, member of a famous televangelist and megachurch pastor family in South Carolina for the HBO Max comedy.
He says that creating the series "is kind of what drives me more than anything. I just love telling stories, and I like creating stories, and it's honestly part of why I'm closing the chapter on Gemstones, as much fun as I've had making the show. As much as I love the entire cast and I've loved making it, I just want to tell more stories. And I see how quick time's moving on and I've been on Gemstones since I wrote the pilot in 2017. And it's been an absolute blast, but my brain is just firing and wanting to tell other stories as well. For me, that's kind of my driving force. What inspires me the most is just trying to find a new world and new characters to explore.
Watch our complete interview with Danny McBride.
The Apple TV+ show is tightly focused on the personal story of the Chambers family, a Black family living in the San Fernando Valley during the summer of 1969.
Says Oyelowo of his character, Hampton Chambers: "He is a bit of a scoundrel. But I think the lovability and the relatability come from the fact that he is constantly trying to be better, and, of course, failing at that. And that is the drama, that is the tension of the show. He is both selfish and selfless. He is both a man of faith and steeped in fear. He is someone who loves his kids but really behaves in very questionable ways as a father, the same thing as a husband. So, you know, I think that's both relatable and, of course, is quite a compelling thing to watch play out.”
Watch our complete interview with David Oyelowo.
Rogen is the cocreator, producer, director, writer, and star of the Apple TV+ series about the new head of a Hollywood studio.
Discussing the work involved in some of the episodes, he says, "The Vegas stuff was hard, but to me, the Golden Globes one was the one I was most proud of. We had an incredibly specific vision for it in in every way, and the vision was incredibly complicated — we just had to shoot it at the Beverly Hilton. And that was incredibly restrictive and logistically difficult. I wanted there to be never a suspension in disbelief in the caliber of celebrity you were seeing — that's not who'd be winning a Golden Globe, that's not who'd be hosting the Golden Globes, that's not who'd be getting a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Golden Globes, that's not who'd be presenting at the Golden Globes. And so given that that was our self-imposed mandate, pulling off an award show was incredibly difficult, and getting that amount of cameos to show up in that time frame was incredibly difficult.
"It was also the first time that we were really using our oner shooting style in an environment with so many people. A lot of the episodes are pretty contained — maybe 30, 40 people in some scenes. But this, every scene had 500 people in it, and so we instantly saw, oh, the resets take so much longer, and so much more can go wrong. And even though very few people have been to the Golden Globes, and ever will go to the Golden Globes, very few people will understand the lengths I went through to obtain this. I just wanted it to feel like you were there. And when I watch it, to me, it really feels like what it feels like to be at the Golden Globes, and I'm very proud that I was able to do that."
Watch our complete interview with Seth Rogen.
The Apple TV+ series is about how Jimmy (Segel) rebuilds his life following the death of his wife, who was killed by a drunk driver named Louis (played by Brett Goldstein in Season 2)
“I have found with time that for me, my best strategy acting-wise, is to know my sh-s really well," says Segel. To know it so well that I like to think of it as if I’m planning a river rafting trip and then I step into the river, and all of a sudden, the river is in charge. And these plans you have, they’re helpful but moot. So when Brett’s doing something, my job is just to be there for it. My job on the show is to be there for all these people doing their thing. And that may be part of the function of being the main guy with all these people orbiting you and it’s your job to let them reflect off of you.”
Watch our complete interview with Jason Segel.
The Hulu comedy series centers on a pair of brothers who learn that their multimillionaire father was a secret drug kingpin.
"We're not teaching a lesson. We're not taking a stance on anything. We're just having fun, we're being silly, we're making this stupid show that we love so much," says Shaikh. The mix of comedy and high stakes action "really piggy-back off of each other. It's easy to play funny when the stakes are so high, because it's almost like a reversal in genre in that moment. The audience isn't expecting the switch to be so immediate," and "the comedy cuts the tension" of the high stakes at play. At the same time, "the goriness, the drama, the drug aspect of it, really cuts the tension of the comedy. So they kind of work really well together."
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