{"id":157347,"date":"2025-08-19T03:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T03:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/157347\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T03:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T03:07:09","slug":"why-sci-fi-genre-series-resonate-now-more-than-ever-with-emmy-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/157347\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Sci-Fi, Genre Series Resonate Now More Than Ever With Emmy Voters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tScience fiction and horror have become forces at the Emmys, with \u201cThe Penguin<\/a>,\u201d \u201cThe Last of Us<\/a>,\u201d \u201cAndor,\u201d \u201cSeverance,\u201d \u201cParadise\u201d and \u201cWhat We Do in the Shadows\u201d scoring nominations in major categories \u2014 acting, writing and best series.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Last of Us\u201d showrunner Craig Mazin credits \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d for the rise of the genre. \u201cThere was an application of quality and thoughtfulness to that story, and it didn\u2019t discount its genre elements. It embraced them,\u201d he says. \u201cGenre elements have more in common with mythology and legend than anything else, and mythology and legend are the most basic kind of storytelling we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And the numbers show that the storytelling transcends genre.<\/p>\n

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Mazin says that in TV, everything boils down to the quality of the script. \u201cIf you can deliver something where an agent can say to an actor, \u2018Hey, listen, this is a show about fungus zombies. But no, it\u2019s not. It\u2019s a show about a father and a daughter. It\u2019s a show about loss. It\u2019s a show about community, it\u2019s a show about hope, and it\u2019s a show about vengeance. Read it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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He points to the Nick Offerman episode of Season 1, which won him an Emmy: \u201cI was like, \u2018The script I\u2019m sending you will not appear to be about a zombie show, will appear to be about something else entirely.\u2019 Actors get excited, I think, about just sinking their teeth into good parts.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Penguin\u201d showrunner Lauren LeFranc notes that Cristin Milioti, who scored an Emmy nom for her portrayal of Sofia Falcone, asked a lot of questions about her character\u2019s backstory.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was a very magical thing, honestly, to work with everybody cohesively to figure out where Sofia begins and where she ends. And it\u2019s very tied to her trauma. It\u2019s tied to how she carries herself. Cristin worked with a movement coach, which was her own doing, in terms of her own process. But it was because we knew Sofia was holding in a lot of trauma, physically,\u201d LeFranc says of the character who was framed for murder and tossed by her father into the harrowing Arkham Asylum.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI also am keenly aware of some of the things that you\u2019ve seen time and again in a genre like this, and that I also wanted to actively push up against \u2014 especially as someone who\u2019s a fan of the comic book genre, the crime genre,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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Creating fully formed female characters was essential to her, because when she watched other crime dramas growing up, they were never as developed as the men. \u201cIt was important for me to really center a lot of complicated, flawed women in the show and try to give them richness, and try to actively fight against some of the tropes that you\u2019ve seen before, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In Episode 6, Sofia, who has already established rather violent methods in her professional
dealings, needs to get information from Eve (Carmen Ejogo).<\/p>\n

\n\t
\u201cI think we\u2019ve seen things like this before, where you presume she\u2019s gonna die because she\u2019s a sex worker, because this is often what happens. So we leaned into that and then didn\u2019t make that choice. Sofia would not make this choice,\u201d says LaFranc. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a writer saying, \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t want to do that.\u2019 It\u2019s like, let\u2019s create interesting dynamics that feel very real and human, and just not do the thing that you\u2019ve seen a million times.\u201d<\/p>\n

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What science fiction does so well, according to Mazin, is hold up a fun house mirror to society. \u201cIt\u2019s still us, but we can see what happens if we continue to proliferate nuclear weapons, if we continue to allow the Earth to warm right, if we continue to overuse antibiotics, if we continue to let AI take over every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

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LeFranc takes a long view: \u201cI do think good stories can be told in any genre. And I think right now we are in a climate where IP is king, and if that\u2019s the case, all writers will always find a way to tell human stories no matter the genre.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Science fiction and horror have become forces at the Emmys, with \u201cThe Penguin,\u201d \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d \u201cAndor,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":157348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[171,27809,91500,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-157347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-the-last-of-us","10":"tag-the-penguin","11":"tag-tv","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115053228558662113","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}