W. Kamau Bell On His Emmy Noms For Powerful Doc Series ‘We Need To Talk About Cosby,’ And Facing Barack Obama For Outstanding Narrator:

Bill Cosby has called W. Kamau Bell, director of the damning documentary series We Need to Talk About Cosby, a “PR hack.” But Bell’s work on the Showtime series was validated by the Television Academy today, earning four Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.

Spanning four episodes, We Need to Talk About Cosby balances two discordant themes: the comedian’s cultural impact as an African American entertainer, and the allegations from dozens of women that Cosby sexually assaulted them, accusations that stretch over a period of decades.

Reacting to the nominations, Bell told Deadline, “All those survivors who trusted us by showing up to tell their stories, that’s the biggest acknowledgement here. We really worked hard to make sure they didn’t sound like we were ‘soundbiting’ them. We wanted them to tell bigger, longer versions of their stories and see them as humans outside of their time with Bill Cosby. And this is sort of a recognition of, we did that.”

The series was shot during Covid, which meant doing interviews mostly over Zoom. Bell, the Emmy-winning host of United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, took a sensitive approach to speaking with his subjects, to avoid as much as possible the risk of retraumatizing them.

“This is a tribute to the learning I’ve done on United Shades of America–the best place to start any interview is, How are you doing? What’s going on with you today?” he noted. “And then with these interviews it was like, Tell me about your life, just generally, like where were you born? What do you do for a living? Because it’s about getting to know that person through the interview so that by the time you get to the stuff that is difficult, you have a relationship with that person. And also they’re more naturally telling it in a different way because they didn’t sit down and have to start on that.”

The series is nominated for Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program, and Bell is nominated individually for directing and as Outstanding Narrator. The directing category puts him up against, among others, Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, directors of George Carlin’s American Dream, and Amy Poehler, director of Lucy and Desi. Like Poehler and Apatow, Bell’s background is in comedy, and he first gained recognition as a standup.

“This is going to sound ridiculous, it is truly an honor to be nominated amongst that group of heavy-hitting directors. Like, if you had said 10 years ago to me that you and Judd Apatow are going to be up against each other in the directing category, I would have been like, ‘What happened to his career?” Bell joked. “I’m super excited for the editors who got nominated and I’m super excited for the producers all being nominated. For me, just the fact that my name is going to be said among that group [of directors] feels like that is truly a victory.”

In the Outstanding Narrator category Bell is classed with some extraordinary fellow contenders.

“I’m up against Lupita Nyong’o, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sir David Attenborough and Barack Obama. I mean, come on. How am I going to be like, ‘I hope I win!’” he laughed. “I’m just going to be glad to have a seat and to hear my name announced among those people.”

With today’s nominations, Bell brings his career Emmy nomination total to 10, with three victories. Helping to keep him grounded amid all that success are his parenting responsibilities to two young children. He was on dad duty this morning before the Emmy nominations were announced.

“I was doing what I do most mornings. I was making my kids lunch. I was fighting with my four-year-old to get her shoes on her feet so she can go to pre-school,” he said. “Living that parent life. Trying to figure out how many carrots I could put in the lunchbox and then, right as they all left, the [Emmy] news started to come through.”

View this article at Deadline.