The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Fife woman awarded an Emmy at LA ceremony
70th creative arts event honours The Crown costume designer from Newport-on-Tay
A costume designer from Fife has scooped the TV industry’s top accolade for her designs on the second series of The Crown.
Jane Petrie, who grew up in Newporton-Tay and spent much of her youth in Dundee, picked up an Emmy at the starstudded 70th Creative Arts Emmy Awards held in Los Angeles last weekend.
Jane and her team won the glittering prize by beating off competition from The Alienist, Genius: Picasso, The Marvellous Mrs Maisel and Outlander.
It is a second major success for Jane with the series as she also won the Excellence in Period Television Award at the Costume Designers Guild Awards, the equivalent of the Oscars for costume designers, in March.
Speaking exclusively to The Courier as she prepared to fly home from Los Angeles, 51-year-old Jane, whose family still live in Dundee, said she was stunned when the announcer read out The Crown as the winner in the costume design category.
“It’s completely nuts, it seems like such a long time ago since I did it,” she said.
“It’s surreal, you get 30 seconds to try to remember to thank everyone and it goes past in such a blur.
“Three of us went up, Gabrielle Spanswick our supervisor, Basia Kuznar – she’s our cutter – and myself.”
Jane stressed the importance of recognising the efforts of her entire team in securing the award, which is the ultimate in television achievements.
“Between us I think we managed to thank everybody we needed to. It’s the team.
“It’s such a big event, these people really put on a proper party.
“It’s just... everybody getting on with it. When you think about, it we’re all geeks lucky enough to be working on our own obsessions
“This is Hollywood doing what Hollywood does best.
“But it’s just a bunch of human beings and everybody just getting on with it. When you think about, it we’re all geeks lucky enough to be working on our own obsessions.”
Jane said she had been visiting her family in Dundee the week before the awards ceremony and is tremendously excited with the opening of the V&A.
She said it was a trip to the V&A in London with her mother Ann in 1976, when she was a 10-year-old, that sparked her “obsession” with costumes.
“I loved looking at all the costumes there, I was obsessed with it all and when you think about it, from Wormit Primary in 1976 to this, it’s completely bonkers.”
Presented by The Television Academy in America, the award recognises technical achievements on TV as well as handing out acting, hosting and top programme honours for the 2017-18 season.