Yahoo News When Stars Direct Their Own Shows: Bill Hader, Donald Glover and More Actors Who Wear Multiple Hats
Sometimes the best way for a performer to gain screen time is to write their own material — and there are dozens of multihyphenates who have balanced writing and acting duties on their respective series this season. That’s particularly true in comedy, a genre that sees many series led by performers who mine their own lives for onscreen laughs. (See, for example, HBO Max’s Bridget Everett-led Somebody Somewhere, Peacock’s Pete Davidson vehicle Bupkis and Netflix’s Mo, co-created by and starring Mo Amer.)
But running a show is also a great way for an actor to branch out into the directing field. This season, these five actor-writers also helmed episodes of their Emmy-contending shows.
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Donald Glover
Atlanta (FX/Hulu)
The star-creator won two Emmys, one for directing and one for acting, for the dark comedy’s first season in 2017. During the fourth and final season, he helmed two episodes and wrote the series finale. Overall, Glover has been in the director’s chair for nine episodes of the FX series. This season, he also directed the pilot episode of Prime Video’s limited series Swarm, which he co-created with Atlanta scribe Janine Nabers.
Bill Hader
Barry (HBO/Max)
Hader created HBO’s hitman comedy, on which he stars in the eponymous role, with writing partner Alec Berg; both Hader and Berg have directed episodes of the show throughout its first three seasons. In the fourth and final season of the pitch-black show business satire, Hader was at the elm of each of the eight episodes.
Rob McElhenney
Mythic Quest (Apple TV+)
McElhenney, who co-created the Apple series with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-star Charlie Day and writer Megan Ganz, stars as Ian Grimm, the egotistical head of a video game company that produces the multiplayer role-playing game of the show’s title. The actor pulled triple duty in the comedy’s third season, co-writing and directing the first two episodes.
Zoe Lister-Jones
Slip (The Roku Channel)
Lister-Jones, who previously wrote and directed the features Band Aid, The Craft: Legacy and How It Ends, similarly wore multiple hats for Roku’s comedy series, writing and directing the entire seven-episode tale in which she portrays a unhappily married woman who finds herself thrown into parallel universes following a one-night stand.
Ramy Youssef
Ramy (Hulu)
Youssef was nominated for both acting and directing Emmys in 2020 for the second season of this Hulu comedy, on which he stars as a Millennial man in New Jersey grappling with his Muslim faith and identity. For the third season, which hit the streamer last September, Youssef write the first episode and shared writing credits for the remaining nine — and was at the helm of seven episodes.
A version of this story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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