The record-setting 23 Emmy Award nominations earned by “The Bear” on Wednesday has reignited the debate over whether the series about food, family, loss, addiction, and perfectionism-bordering-on-obsession is a comedy at all.
That’s a discussion worth having, and not just as regards television. In the world of Boston theater and on Broadway, plays are routinely marketed as comedies when they are no such thing. What’s so scary about the word “drama”?
But there shouldn’t be any dispute about whether Jamie Lee Curtis deserves her nomination for outstanding guest actress in a comedy series. She got the nod for an episode of “The Bear” in which Donna, the emotionally troubled and alcoholic matriarch of the Berzatto family, hosts Christmas dinner, only to see it dissolve into acrimony and chaos.
Curtis could well earn another Emmy nomination next year for her mesmerizing performance in an episode of the current season of “The Bear.” Donna’s tortured history with daughter Natalie (Abby Elliott) is telescoped into a single episode as Natalie prepares to give birth, with Donna at her hospital bedside.
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Curtis won an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her portrayal of an IRS auditor in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Married to mockumentary filmmaker Christopher Guest (”This Is Spinal Tap,” “Best in Show”) since 1984, she is the daughter of two Hollywood legends: Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. But it was pretty clear from the start of her career that she was no mere nepo baby. She rose to fame in John Carpenter’s “Halloween” (1978), and then — dubbed “the scream queen” — made other horror films, such as Carpenter’s “The Fog” (1980).
But Curtis was clearly mindful of the perils of typecasting. She has demonstrated the blend of savvy choices and a certain versatility needed to keep a movie career going.
Curtis proved adept at comedy with “Trading Places” (1983, with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd), “A Fish Called Wanda” (1988, with John Cleese and Kevin Kline), and “Freaky Friday” (2003, with Lindsay Lohan). She held her own with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the action film “True Lies” (1994). With Richard Lewis, she starred in a TV sitcom, “Anything But Love” (1989-92).
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And she has proven to be a candid judge of her own work, describing “Grandview, U.S.A.” (1984) and “Virus” (1999) as “laughable, ludicrous movies, and I’m bad in them.”
She brought that kind of ruthless honesty to “Everything Everywhere.” Curtis is frumpily attired in the film, with a visible paunch. It is not a prosthetic. She “just wanted to be truthful to this woman,” Curtis said in a 2022 interview posted on IndieWire.
“There is an industry — a billion-dollar, trillion-dollar industry — about hiding things. Concealers. Body-shapers. Fillers. Procedures. Clothing. Hair accessories. Hair products. Everything to conceal the reality of who we are,” Curtis added. “And my instruction to everybody was: I want there to be no concealing of anything.”
Don Aucoin can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @GlobeAucoin.