Apple TV+ FYC event honoring Emmy crafts nominees draws overflow crowd to Culver City
They came from all over L.A. on Monday night to spend a languid, balmy August evening on the roof of the iconic One Culver building in the heart of Culver City. The event honored Emmy nominees in numerous crafts categories at Apple TV+’s Summer Soiree FYC party, where some 300 people gathered to talk about the forthcoming awards and chow down on a gourmet buffet. In the main, they were there to take a bow themselves or rise in applause for hairstylists, make-up artists, composers, sound editors and mixers, production designers, set decorators, main title designers, costume designers and casting directors who had earned 2024 nominations for the Apple original series “The Morning Show,” “Palm Royale” and “Masters of the Air.”
The gathering was designed to shine a vivid light on some of those artisans who tend to receive significantly less attention than the above-the-line red carpet talent but are equally crucial to the project’s success. That had become more common at FYC events during the COVID pandemic, but Apple has seen fit to keep the trend going.
Attendees included Cindy J. Williams, a 2000 Emmy winner for “The X-Files” who 24 years later finally received her second bid for makeup as the department head on Season 3 of “The Morning Show.” But what she wanted to talk about was the identity crisis she’d often experienced in being named Cindy Williams but not being the one who once starred on “Laverne and Shirley.” “Our mail got mixed up several times,” she laments. “But I’m not complaining. I only wish we’d had a chance to meet. We never did.”
Williams was joined from “The Morning Show” at the Monday event by a host of fellow nominees: make-up artist Keiko Wedding, production designer Nelson Coates, casting director Victoria Thomas and hairstylists Nicole Venables, Jennifer Petrovich and Janine Thompson. On hand from “Masters of the Air” were composer Blake Neely (a previous Emmy winner for “The Flight Attendant,” the Oscar-winning sound editor and re-recording mixer Michael Minkler (a 13-time Academy Award nominee who won for sound in 2002 for “Black Hawk Down,” 2003 for “Chicago” and 2007 for “Dreamgirls”) as well as re-recording mixer Duncan McRae, supervising dialogue editor Dave McMoyler and scoring mixer Thor Fienberg.
Meanwhile, from first-year comedy nominee “Palm Royale,” attendees included set decorator Ellen Reede, creative director and main title designer Ronnie Koff, costume co-designer Leigh Bell and costume work room head Valerie Keiser, hair designer Karen Bartek, hairstylists Brittany Madrigal, Marissa Lafayette and Jill Crosby, composer Jeff Toyne, makeup designer Tricia Sawyer and key makeup artist Marie Del Prete – Emmy nominees all.
After the honorees sat for interviews with Gold Derby (to be published on our website soon), they were released to join the party and partake of a dinner designed to satisfy the pickiest/most limited palate. It featured Antipasto, three kinds of sushi (Vegan Avocado Cucumber, Spicy Tuna and Fresh Dungeness Crab), Roasted Seasonal Vegetables, Mac n’ Cheese, Vegan Crispy Orange Seitan, Eggplant Parmesan and (for the meat eaters) Pan Seared Pesto Chicken Breast and Braised Meatballs.
Jack Curtis Dubowsky, a music editor whose past projects have included the 2020 Apple TV+ miniseries “Defending Jacob,” gave the buffet a giant thumbs up. “This is good top-shelf stuff,” he noted. “I could seriously get used to this.” Alexander Rubinow, nominated five times for Emmys in reality series picture editing (including this year) and a winner in 2015 for “Deadliest Catch,” agreed with Dubowsky’s assessment about the food and the event itself. “It’s a great perk (of the job),” he stresses. “Every course I tried kept getting better and better.”
Then there was dessert, or at least what was left of it after the first wave of humanity nearly stripped the inventory bare. The offerings initially included Macarons, Key Lime Cheesecake Bites, Raspberry Mini Choux (a puff pastry), Praline Mini Choux, Lemon Bites and Fudge Bites. But within roughly 30 minutes of the desserts being laid out, all that was left were the Lemon Bites. What happened? A catering employee who requested anonymity, still flashing a shellshocked expression, gasped, “Have you ever watched film footage of a locust swarm moving through a field? It was like that. They just inhaled everything in sight. Cleaned out most of what we had, like that. I mean, these people were on a mission. I’m just relieved nobody was seriously injured.”
And how was it there were still Lemon Bites left?
“Oh, we had a bunch extra of those,” the employee said. “Thank God.”
No one ever said that FYC events didn’t sometimes carry an element of danger.
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