Apple TV+’s The Studio has already made history with its 23 Emmy nominations being the most ever for a debut season of a comedy series, and tied for the most ever in a single season of any comedy series. A lot of that credit should go directly to the actors, since fully 10 of those nominations are in the acting categories including no less that five out of six in the Guest Actor Comedy Series category.
So, with that kind of support from their fellow actors, it is only natural that even on the eve of final Emmy voting beginning, six actors from The Studio gathered at the new Meryl Streep Theatre at SAG-AFTRA headquarters in L.A.’s Wilshire district to join me for a rollicking Apple TV+ x Deadline: ‘The Studio’ Q&A in front of a packed audience of about 100 SAG TV Nominating Committee members (the total overall that makes nominations are 2,500 randomly chosen SAG-AFTRA members).
Watch out conversation here, and scroll down for photos from the event.
The series debuted after eligibility for the 2025 SAG, Golden Globes and Critics Choice ceremonies, so come 2026 it will be the first time around for the series at those shows (post-Emmys), where Apple TV+ is hoping it sets more records.
The event Saturday was presented by Apple TV+ in association with Deadline and featured star/co-creator/writer/director/and executive producer Seth Rogen, who plays studio head Matt Remick and who has personally received four nominations including Lead Actor in a Comedy Series; Kathryn Hahn, who plays marketing head Maya Mason and is nominated for Supporting Actress Comedy; Chase Sui Wonders as studio exec Quinn Hackett; Bryan Cranston up for Guest Actor as Chairman Griffin Mill and Remick’s boss; Keyla Monterroso Mejia as assistant Petra; and Dewayne Perkins as another studio employee, Tyler. I pointed out it is a shame the Emmys don’t have an ensemble category like SAG does because this entire cast is worthy of recognition.
As for all the Emmy glory, Rogen said he was surprised. “It’s great. I was not expecting it at all. I never expect any awards attention in any way, shape or form. But not shockingly, Hollywood’s somewhat of an ego-driven industry. And so, you know, people with egos like when you talk about them. And maybe that’s not lost on me,” he said. “But honestly, I was actually very worried that people within the industry would feel as though we weren’t representing it properly or that our sentiments towards it would be vastly different than their sentiments. I was actually quite aware that a lot of people in the industry would watch the show, and or at least check it out.”
As for the inspiration for the show and where they get their ideas, it was right in front of them, Rogen says. “I’d say it’s entirely based on our experiences or on people we met with, pretty much all the heads of every studio, while we were writing the show, and we’re continuing to meet with them as we write the second season on the show,” he admitted. “It’s funny, now they just give us notes on the first season of the show, because they are studio heads, they’re incapable of not giving notes. But yeah, we really tried to mine our resources as far as stories go. And a lot of it is stuff that me and Evan (Goldberg), my creative partner, have personally experienced.”
In the green room at SAG-AFTRA
Earl Gibson III
Bryan Cranston
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Kathryn Hahn
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‘The Studio’ team onstage
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(L-R) Seth Rogen and Bryan Cranston
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Chase Sui Wonders
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Keyla Monterroso Mejia and Dewayne Perkins
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Dewayne Perkins
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Hahn, whose physical look for the show is hilarious and calls it her “armor” as a marketer, says there wasn’t one person in Hollywood she has based her character on, though she gets plenty of people guessing who it is anyway. “So I wouldn’t say anyone specific, but I certainly also have gotten phone calls or texts from people asking me if it was them,” she laughed.
Wonders plays a young exec who drives a Mini Cooper and is battling another exec Sal Saperstein for a personal parking spot in one episode, something she says clearly hits close to home in the culture of a movie studio. “I mean, every lot has these named parking spaces that in this exclusive-like titular thing of ‘This is reserved for XYZ’,” she said. “And it’s funny, I went into a meeting the other day on a lot, and I met with a junior exec and she’s like, ‘I drive a Mini Cooper. Is this based on me?’ And I so I’ve kind of started to indulge everybody and just feel like, ‘Yeah, it is’.”
Cranston, whose character in the two-part season-finale gets accidentally stoned out of his mind, found the wild comic situations refreshing to do. “It’s so good. Seth and Evan create an environment where they say, ‘just go and play’,” he said. “So there’s like the 14th take of these scenes outside where I’m on the fountain in Vegas with Aphrodite or whoever it is. And I just wanted to make the writers laugh or watching. So I’m orally copulating the statue and I mean, I am just thinking this is never going to be in and they’re going to choose something else.” (Spoiler alert: they put it in).
“So every time we did a scene, collectively or individually, it was like, yeah, let’s get these plot points in. We need to say this or do that. And then, you know, whatever you have, bring something, say something, do something, whatever you like. That kind of freedom then stimulates us because it is warranted and welcomed.”
Cranston as studio kingpin Griffin Mill (he suggested they make him 82 years old) is one of five nominated for Guest Actor in a Comedy Series and is considered the frontrunner in the category for a character that really shows his go-for-broke comic chops. But consider the names competing against him from their cameos on the show: Martin Scorsese, Dave Franco, Anthony Mackie and Ron Howard — who are all playing themselves. In fact, though he has been nominated 14 times for Emmys as a producer or director and won three statuettes, this represents the first time that Howard has received an Emmy acting nomination in a career that started in front of the cameras as a child actor in the late ’50s.
“I saw something in the guy. You know, it was, ‘Give the kid a break’,” Rogen laughs. “He’s been acting since his credited name was Little Ronny Howard. Like he had the weird ‘little’ in his name. Now you have to be a SoundCloud rapper to have that in your name. I think he was an embryo. So it took that big fight scene, to finally, unleash the rage.”