Canadian composer, Michael J. Fox get Emmy nods
TORONTO — Toronto composer Mychael Danna’s year just keeps getting better.
Just months after winning an Oscar for his work on Ang Lee’s 3D stunner Life of Pi, he now has an Emmy Award nomination for his music composition on the ReelzChannel historical miniseries World Without End.
“It is pretty thrilling,” Danna said Thursday in a telephone interview from his Toronto home just shortly after learning of his Emmy nod.
“I will never get tired of this. It’s something that you don’t expect and you definitely don’t get used to this.”
Danna was among several Canadians who got Emmy love on Thursday. Two-time Emmy winner Michael J. Fox of Edmonton is nominated for his guest role as a lawyer on CBS’ legal series The Good Wife.
And two-time Emmy winner Barry Julien, a former standup comedian from Montreal, is on The Colbert Report writing team that got a nod in the variety series category. The list also includes Vancouverraised Michelle MacLaren for best direction on the AMC drug drama Breaking Bad; Trevor Morris, a composer who hails from London, Ont., for his music composition on Showtime’s The Borgias papal drama series; and Thornhill, Ont.born Keith Crofford for executive producing the satirical medical comedy Childrens Hospital, which is up for best short-format live-action program.
Danna said he crafted the music for the eight-part World Without End, a followup to the 2010 miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, last year in Toronto and Los Angeles.
Based on the Ken Follett novel, the drama is set in England in the 1300s as the Hundred Years War and Black Death pandemic are ramping up. Stars include Cynthia Nixon, Miranda Richardson and Ben Chaplin.
It’s an intense, rollicking story that’s “completely different” from the tone of Life of Pi, about a boy trapped on a boat with a tiger in the middle of the ocean, said Danna.
“That’s what’s really fun about my job is that I get to go from one world to another, from an Indian boy on the middle of the Pacific Ocean to the Black Death,” he said with a laugh.
The Emmys, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, will air Sept. 22.
Danna said he won’t get to attend because it falls on the same weekend he’s scheduled to record music for his next project, Bennett Miller’s wrestling drama Foxcatcher starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo.