Backstage Magazine, Digital Edition: December 13, 2021 SAG Awards Television Issue

Page 10

● Male

Comedy Series

CECILY STRONG AND KEEGAN-MICHAEL KEY ON “SCHMIGADOON!”

guardians of the young. Parents, you’ve been warned.

Brett Goldstein

HARVEY GUILLÉN ON “WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

“Mr. Corman” Apple TV+’s dearly departed but well-loved “Mr. Corman” saw Gordon-Levitt taking the reins as creator, writer, director, executive producer, and star. As the series’ titular Josh Corman, the leading man ably inhabited the slightly neurotic but well-meaning psyche of a musician who pivots to public school teaching as he navigates anxiety, love, and relationships with family and friends.

How I Got My SAG Card: Bob Odenkirk “I got my AFTRA card from being on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I was a writer there, but I did a few one-line roles, which they’ll sometimes have writers do. Ben Stiller got me my SAG card [for] ‘The Ben Stiller Show.’ ”

BACKSTAGE 12.13.21

Harvey Guillén

“What We Do in the Shadows” Guillén’s Guillermo de la Cruz stands out as the human among vampires you can’t help but root

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Nicholas Hoult

“The Great” Tony McNamara’s Hulu dramedy works because of, not despite, its historically inaccurate flourishes. Embodying that spirit most of all is Hoult as Russian Emperor Peter III, following up his irreverently haughty work in “The Favourite.” Opposite Elle Fanning as Catherine the Great, he’s an exemplary scene partner: dry, unruffled, and hilariously imperious without stealing focus.

Keegan-Michael Key

“Schmigadoon!” Key’s Josh, a surgeon in a relationship with Cecily Strong’s Melissa, is your typical emotionally repressed dude. Watching the feelings that emerge from him in comedic bursts when the couple becomes trapped in a magical, musical town makes for hilarious TV. Among this chameleonic actor’s many skills is the ability backstage.com

“SCHMIGADOON!”: COURTESY APPLE TV+; “WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS”: RUSS MARTIN/FX

“Ted Lasso” “Ted Lasso” centers and celebrates all things sincere, daring to find humor in hope. Its earnest tone makes Roy Kent—the perpetually furious, repressed, aging footballer brought to life by the Emmywinning Goldstein—all the more hilarious. Under all that foulmouthed rage, there’s a sensitive man in crisis, which Goldstein reveals over the course of a subtle and effective character arc.

for on this Emmy-nominated comedy hit. His adorable, sweaterclad familiar hopes to become a bloodsucker himself despite discovering he’s a descendant of Van Helsing; the actor is particularly great at making this hilarious conflict clear while slaying vampires to protect his master, Nandor (Kayvan Novak), on early Season 2.


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