Victoria [Australia], June 18 : Australian playwright, screenwriter, and television producer Tony McNamara was with his actor wife and fellow Aussie, Belinda Bromilow, in his mind, when created the character of Aunt Elizabeth in Hulu's Emmy-winning biographical comedy 'The Great'.
Variety quoted him as saying, "I knew the character and I knew what I needed from an actor to do it," says McNamara, a seasoned playwright and Oscar-nominated screenwriter for Yorgos Lanthimos' piquant 2018 drama 'The Favourite'."
"I knew [Elizabeth] needed to have a strong dramatic voice but also be a bit idiosyncratic and have really good comic bones," McNamara said, adding, "The actor needed to be able to do comedy and be able to shift gears into a darker place. And I'd worked with Belinda before and knew that she could do that."
McNamara and Bromilow, who are married and parent two children, are among several artistes, who borrowed from their real lives to create characters for Emmy contenders. Other examples include "Shrinking" co-creator Bill Lawrence and Christa Miller, who plays Liz on the hit Apple TV+ sitcom; Rob Lowe and son John Owen Lowe, who co-created and star in Netflix comedy "Unstable"; and Sylvestor Stallone and daughter Scarlet Rose Stallone in Paramount+ "Tulsa King," created by Taylor Sheridan.
But nepotism doesn't guarantee anything in Hollywood, including a recurring role in a series, Variety reported, adding that when it came to landing "The Great," Bromilow auditioned for casting directors just like anybody else.
"I wanted her to get it on our own terms and, in the end, that's who they liked," said McNamara, adding, "And, I said, well, guess what? I like her too. So much so that we have two children together." '
"We have different surnames and, as far as I knew, no one knew that we were married," said Brominlow, adding, "And so I just auditioned for Elizabeth as I would any other role. I understand Tony's tone and I felt like I had a good chance at it because it's a tone that I really get. But it wasn't a sure thing at all. The whole audition process was equally nerve-wracking as it always is."
Further, according to Variety, John Owen Lowe was a staff writer on "911 Lone Star," in which his father Rob was starring," when he came up with the idea for "Unstable."
"Since I was writing, I didn't have to spend too much time with my dad," said John Owen Lowe, adding, "But when I was covering an episode that I had written on set, I would be around him and I was starting to go a little stir crazy working so closely with him. So, I would reach out weekly to my agent and manager and we'd have these little Zoom calls where I would just vent about the situation. And they became my de facto therapists and they would kind of laugh at my pain. And at a certain point they were like, this is actually very funny. Is there a show here? And I went off and wrote up a treatment."
And that's how 'Unstable', which revolves around, per John Owen Lowe, "a benevolent narcissistic father who society generally loves and with a son who doesn't see what everyone else sees in him" came to be.
"My dad was a great sport," quips John Owen Lowe.
Working and living together has its challenges, agreed MacNamara and Bromilow. Sometimes, it can even be "sad."
"It's lovely to have someone there that you know and love, but it's actually a bit sad because we're interacting in a professional way," said Bromilow, adding, "That's quite a weird experience to spend a lot of time around your partner, but not interacting with them as they are off set. I had someone come up to me this season and say he had no idea that I was married to Tony."
"He's a much loved showrunner," she said of McNamara, adding, "And thank God. Because otherwise, that would be really awkward if the general vibe was that people hated him", reported Variety.
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