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For anyone on a TV show that’s taken it’s time to find an audience, there’s no better example to follow than Schitt’s Creek. When I was at Vanity Fair in 2016, then-editor-in-chief Graydon Carter commissioned a lavish portrait of the show’s cast, and I was not the only person in the office scratching my head. Why would anyone care so much about this Canadian sitcom starring Eugene Levy and his son?
Four years and one pandemic later, Schitt’s Creek ran the table at the 2020 Emmys, capitalizing on years of accumulated buzz and a world in dire need of some gentle laughs. The show also got an undeniable boost when it began streaming on Netflix following its third season. (“By now the Netflix Bump is more than a rare phenomenon — it’s a given,” wrote The Ringer in 2020.)
If Netflix still has the power to elevate a cult comedy to world domination, then please oh please let it happen for Girls5Eva. The series created by Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt alum Meredith Scardino had critical raves but a limited audience in its first two seasons on Peaco*ck, but when its third, strike-delayed season launched on Netflix in March, something felt different.
Scardino, at least, could feel it.
“Our audience massively increased,” Scardino tells me, despite the fact that — like every other creator of a streaming show— she doesn’t have exact numbers to back it up. “The actors in particular say people stop them on the street all the time, and that was not happening before.”
Scardino isn’t getting stopped in the street — as Richard Kind argues in a cameo in the third season’s exceptional finale, she’s got the proper level of fame where she’s not getting “bugged in a deli” — but she can see it, too. “So many people come up to me and they go, Oh my God, I just started your show, I love it. And it’s like, I obviously know you didn't have Peaco*ck.”
Scardino is clear that she was happy in her time at Peaco*ck, and since Girls5Eva is produced by Universal Studio Group, she’s still part of the family. But the move to Netflix is an undeniable leveling up for Girls5Eva, and as the show continues its Emmy season push, the question is whether some long-overdue awards recognition can follow as well.
Keep reading for more from my conversation with Meredith, but first, let’s keep an eye out for the other shows hoping to build more Emmy buzz over time. It’s a rare — but not entirely impossible — feat that proves that, once in a while at least, good things in Hollywood really can rise to the top.
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The Slow-Motion Breakouts of 2024
Girls5Eva is, after all, a show about a group of women getting their second chance at fame, reuniting their early-2000s girl group for an album and then a tour now that they’re all in their 40s. What better reward could there be than, say, an Emmy nomination for star Renee Elise Goldsberry, or absurdly overdue recognition for one of its original songs — this year’s contender is the season-closing anthem “Medium Time,” written by star Sara Bareilles.
Although Girls5Eva has remained consistently, incredibly funny throughout its run, its current bump in visibility might make it easier for the Emmys to acknowledge it. But it is not the only show hoping for later-season recognition. They may not have switched streamers or tweaked with their formulas at all, and yet in our culture where it seems harder than ever to be a late bloomer, these shows hope they can get hardware they couldn’t muster in previous seasons.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about The Gilded Age, the lavish HBO period piece that earned just a single nomination for its first season but is pushing hard for its second, with nominations for cast members Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Nathan Lane, Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon and Audra McDonald all very possible. It’s not just that HBO no longer has Succession to overshadow its other show in the drama race; The Gilded Age really built its audience in its second season, proving that Bridgerton hasn’t cornered the market on bingeable, low-stakes period sagas.
Apple TV+’s Slow Horses, which aired its third season in November and earned a Golden Globe nomination for star Gary Oldman earlier this year, is another one of those shows I keep hearing about from more and more people. With Shogun now in the mix, Oldman has far more serious competition for a best actor win, but the show should easily earn several of its first-ever Emmy nominations come July.
The comedy race will likely be dominated by The Bear, Abbott Elementary and Hacks, none of which had any trouble earning Emmy attention for its early seasons. But it’s possible we’ll see a breakthrough nomination for Reservation Dogs, a critical hit since its 2021 premiere and winner of no less than a Peabody Award. Despite all of that it only scored its first Emmy nomination last year — for sound editing (it lost). With the series now wrapped up, it would be a perfect moment to make room for it in the best comedy series lineup, in addition to nominations for stars Devery Jacobs and D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai.
Finally, like most people, I am eternally rooting for Maya Rudolph, who is the guest on next week’s Prestige Junkie podcast as the second season of her Apple TV+ series Loot wraps up. The warm and sharply funny workplace comedy seemed overshadowed in Ted Lasso’s heyday, but Rudolph — already a five-time Emmy winner — deserves a place in the best actress lineup, even if her old pal Kristen Wiig is competing in the same spot with her new Apple comedy Palm Royale.
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Making the Donuts with Meredith Scardino
KR: When Girls5Eva was picked up by Netflix after leaving Peaco*ck, was it an easier transition process because you had already made two seasons of the show, so they knew exactly what they were getting?
MS: That was the thing that was cool. It was a really seamless process, partially because we knew some of the people from back when we worked with them at Kimmy Schmidt. And then also because they very much already liked the product that we were making. So it was kind of like, Oh, you make those donuts? We like those donuts. Can you make those donuts here?
KR: Did Schitt's Creek cross your mind when you made this jump as something that had an exponential explosion after moving to Netflix?
MS: When you look back, [Schitt’s Creek] wasn't [even] an overnight success on Netflix. It was really 2020 when it just exploded. So there's always factors. You don't know how something will suddenly get discovered.
KR: The field for comedy on TV has expanded so much in the past 15 years since you’ve been in the business. Do you feel like you’re still able to carve out your own lane and make exactly what you want to, because there’s something for everybody out there?
MS: One thing that I love: A lot of random people DM me on Instagram and say, ‘I have not laughed out loud at something in so long.’ A lot of someone watching it in one room and then the other person coming into the other room being like, What is going on with you in here? That is just very affirming. I always like to see more comedies because I love them and I like the high JPMs. [She means “jokes per minute,” deploying some truly excellent shorthand.] It doesn't mean it's light or something. You can say everything you want to say and in that Veep style or 30 Rock style or Arrested Development style.
KR: Girls5Eva is definitely another high JPM show. Is there a specific bit or joke from the season you remember stressing about the most?
MS: You come up with so much stuff and you throw it up at a table read, and you can kind of tell when things are moving along and feeling alive and in the pocket. And then you can feel when things are slower. There were things we quickly had to pivot around. The wonderful Andrew Rannells happened not to be available during our shoot window. We had a whole episode about him, a whole storyline that I hope we get to do someday. So after we had it pitched, outlined and approved and all that, we were like, oh no.
KR: Is that where it saves you that you come up with so many ideas in the writing process?
MS: We ended up with a storyline where Summer was scatting in the mansion with Pixie, played by Ingrid Michaelson. A lack of ideas has never been my problem or anyone I work with's problem. We have plenty of ideas, but time is a commodity that is very precious.
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ICYMI: My First Podcast Guest, Lily Gladstone
The first episode of Prestige Junkie premiered on Tuesday, and I’m so grateful for all the messages of support and enthusiasm — it’s great to be back on mic! Hopefully by now you’ve already subscribed (or even left us a review?), but just in case, here are some highlights from my conversation with Lily Gladstone — Oscar nominee, Cannes juror and now star of Hulu’s limited series Under the Bridge.
Gladstone was filming Under the Bridge in Vancouver for seven months before flying from the set to Cannes last May, where Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon premiered and introduced Gladstone as a star to watch. This year she’s back at Cannes as a juror, and immediately after will fly back to Vancouver, where she’ll start production on the comedy remake The Wedding Banquet with Bowen Yang. As Gladstone puts it with a wry smile, “Cannes to Van two years in a row.”
Under the Bridge takes place in Victoria, Canada in 1997, recreating the infamous murder of 14-year-old Reena Virk. Gladstone was just across the border in Seattle at the time, a sixth-grader who was already skeptical of the easy media stories about teenage violence — narratives that Under the Bridge questions as well:
I remember around that time is when adults were getting really hyper consumed with what kind of media that kids were consuming, and blaming that for these violent outbursts. And a couple of years later, we had Columbine, for example, and that suddenly became like, you know, Nine Inch Nails’ fault. I just remember being an adolescent feeling that that was a pretty shallow analysis.
So that's one thing I appreciate about Under the Bridge. People don't act in a vacuum. These kids had life circ*mstances that made them into bullies. Just like Reena had societal circ*mstances made her particularly vulnerable to being bullied.
Gladstone also talked to me about her working relationship with Under the Bridge co-star Riley Keough, which began from a distance when they worked with the same assistant director, Chris Carroll, on their indies Certain Women and American Honey. Gladstone said she’d admired Keough from a distance, particularly in her commitment to working with Native actors as she does in her directorial debut War Pony:
Riley's such an incredible ally to so many people, but she's very focused on being an ally to Indian Country. I mean, there's a huge part of Indian country that does like to claim Elvis.
Riley moves through the world as an ally, which is something that I really respect. I think she's just a brilliant actress—she's pretty fearless, but she's so compassionate. It's one of those lucky combinations of an artist who can do very terrifying work, but is a very accessible, easy person to be around.
Keough and Gladstone’s working relationship might be an inspiration to anyone trying to make a connection in Hollywood, actually. As Gladstone tells it, “She slid into my DMs, as they say, that was, that was the start of it all.”
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