SAG’s Actors Award Producers Behind the Scenes Secrets on Show, Music

It’s the first year of the newly named Actor Awards, but for the kudocast formerly known as the SAG Awards, Sunday’s ceremony was all about the music. The 32nd annual Actor Awards featured a live band for the first time, led by music director Rickey Minor, and featured several musical performances.

“This is our third year on Netflix, and every year we aim to raise the bar just a little bit higher,” said executive producer Mark Bracco, whose shingle Silent House Productions produces the Actor Awards with SAG-AFTRA. “Last year we really wanted to bring more fun and more comedy into the show. This year a big goal was to bring more music into the show.”

And they did, including an opening number performed by host Kristen Bell, who capitalized on the title shift from the “SAG Awards” to the “Actor Awards” with an original song that poked fun at celebrity name changes. Later, “Sinners” star Miles Caton performed a version of “This Little Light of Mine” from the film. Then there was Minor and his band, who added live music throughout the evening.

“It felt so good to have something so robust and real in the room, to have real music,” said showrunner and executive producer Jon Brockett. “It was, and I’m going to apologize in advance for saying this, like music to my ears.”

Added fellow EP Linda Gierahn, also of Silent House Prods.: “Rickey is such a professional and brings so much life and energy to it. I mean, it’s just a total gamechanger to have that live music in the room.”

Variety caught up with Brockett (who added “showrunner” to his duties for the first time this year), Bracco and Gierahn before the Actor Awards to get some background on what they had planned for the evening. Now they can share.

The Cold Open of ‘Abbott Elementary’ follows the Actor Awards’ previous ones with ‘Ted Lasso’ and ‘Hacks’. In this case, “Abbott” creator and star Quinta Brunson was involved in mapping out the idea.

“We pitched them the idea, we call it ‘Flip the Script,’ and it’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a while,” Brockett said. “And [Brunson] bit and just walked with it. They are very busy, so we had a number of people on our awards team who helped come up with ideas for concrete things to achieve. But they performed it and came up with all the writing and filming of it, and they did it on their stage and worked it into their schedule.

By getting the “Abbott” stars excitedly talking about actor-nominated TV and film projects, Brunson came up with the idea of ​​using Sheryl Lee Ralph’s character, Barbara, as a starting point, because she always mixes up pop culture references and celebrity names.

“My favorite role was Mr. Johnson, the janitor. His favorite movie is ‘Bugonia,'” Bracco said. “It’s so in their voices, because they’re all just sitting in the break room. And to me, it’s like what people do at work. They sit around and talk about their favorite movies and TV shows. They fully embraced it and recorded it just last week, so it happened very quickly.”

This year’s “I’m an Actor” opening featured Kristen Wiig, Delroy Lindo, Michael J. Fox, Teyana Taylor and Kate Hudson.

“It was such a great, eclectic lineup of people, and their stories ranged from very funny to very emotional,” Bracco said. “I think people look forward to this every year.”

Host Kristen Bell enlisted songwriter friends of hers to create the original opening track, “A Stage Name.”

The idea for a different opening song came after last year’s show, when Bell opened with “Do You Want to Be an Actor,” a play on her “Frozen” song “Do You Want to Build a Snowman.” (Bell referred to “going back to the source” when introducing the bit.)

“She was inspired by the idea that the name of the show was changing, and contacted some songwriter friends who came up with an original song based on actors changing their names — or some suggestions for names where she thinks actors should change their names,” Bracco said. “It was very referential for everyone in the audience and very funny. Some of the name suggestions are downright ridiculous, and it’s great. We’re making fun of ourselves a bit, but also leaning toward name changes.”

Brockett said, “I think my favorite proposed name change was for Jesse Plemons, as Jesse Plimes – as in lemons and limes. I literally laughed out loud.”

Miles Caton was asked to perform that special rendition of ‘This Little Light of Mine’ after the producers saw his performance in ‘Sinners’.

“One of the things that was really important to us was making sure that every musical number we created stayed within the DNA of our show,” Brockett said. “So a performance focused on a nominated movie or TV show made the most sense to us. This year, one of the ideas was to bring in Miles Caton for this. When I was listening to the ‘Sinners’ soundtrack, there was a moment where Miles came in and he sang an acoustic version with his guitar of ‘This Little Light of Mine,’ and it’s beautiful. It gave me chills. It gave me all the feelings I’ve ever had, all in one moment. Wow.”

By the way, that was Caton’s young eleven-year-old nephew CJ, who opened the piece as a soloist. “It’s so beautiful,” Brockett said.

Bell came up with the idea of ​​having some of her friends, such as Ted Danson, Jackie Tohn, Ike Barinholtz and Jacobi Jupe, play a “Marty Supreme”-style ping pong tournament backstage.

“The First Annual Kristen Bell Actor Awards Sports Championship” featured a trophy that Bell made himself.

“We love runners, just like Kristen,” Brockett said. “It’s like you have a continuous line.”

Bracco added, “We worked it all out together. But she wanted to do it. And then she said, ‘I want to have a crazy trophy.’ So we said, ‘Okay, we’re going out, do you want us to get a kid’s soccer trophy and put a picture of Timothy on it? And she says, ‘No, I’m going to get the trophy.’ And she did. I don’t know when she has time to do these things, but she made the trophy and it’s ridiculous.

The writers of ‘The Pitt’ came up with the fake medical dialogue that host Bell didn’t look at before trying to recite on the show.

“We coordinated this through Warner Bros. Television, and Noah Wyle’s word was to make it very difficult,” Bracco said.

The stage was rotated 90 degrees this year, giving the production more space for various antics.

“There wasn’t a bad seat in the house,” Gierahn said. Brockett added, “A big part of this helped us have a house band. We wouldn’t even have had the space for a house band before if we hadn’t reoriented the room.”

Mindy Kaling was instrumental in organizing the reunion of the female cast of “The Office” at the awards ceremony.

“Mindy Kaling became kind of a pseudo talent booker for our show,” Bracco said. “We had contacted her about wanting to be a host, and she came back with the idea, ‘What if I did a reunion with all the women from ‘The Office,'” and we said, ‘Yes!’ Within an hour she had texted them all and she actually booked them all for us. So she had texted Jenna Fischer, Angela Kinsey, and Ellie Kemper, and I’m not kidding, because within 90 minutes they were all booked and featured on the show.

With limited commercial breaks on Netflix, the producers filled some time this year with four special packages – on medical dialogue, physical comedy, troublemakers and the art of the rom-com.

“They were in the commercial breaks, and we came back from the commercial breaks with them on the show, and they were celebrating different genres of acting and different types of acting angles,” Brockett said.