Critics and viewers alike agree that this third season, in which the Henricksons flirted with a fourth wife, Bill’s casino outfit got off the ground, Nicki dealt with an extramarital affair, and compound leader Roman Grant met his maker, was this series’ best yet. “It seemed like the season really fulfilled those mandates that we had for the show…which was to be a show that was full of really complex characters with very heavy plot and an emotionally satisfying story,” said Will Scheffer. “People got over this kind of narrow sense of what they thought this show was about, which was Polygamy with a capital ‘p,’” he said. “People said, ‘Wait a minute: This isn’t the show I thought it was.”
HBO / Everett
“We heard that a lot over the years, that we were a real favorite in terms of a lot of actors and writers…but it never really translated into an Emmy nomination before,” Scheffer said. So what changed this year? “I think that something about the strength of the season and the strength of the word of mouth started to build upon itself within the Emmy-voting community,” he said. “People felt almost like they had more fire and permission to kind of love the show.”
But the creators—who are married to each other—weren’t exactly holding their breaths when it came time for Emmy nomination morning. “Because we just felt like it had been a couple of years, we had lost hope that we were going to be recognized,” said Scheffer. “We told HBO and everyone not to call us in the morning, because waiting for the phone call is just as bad as waking up at 5:30 in the morning to see it. We just didn’t even want to know anything,” One optimistic staff writer decided he would get up early and watch the nominations anyways, despite exhorts not to, and went so far as to bet Scheffer and Olsen that they were going to emerge victorious. “He texted us at 5:00 or whatever time it was, and said, ‘I get taken out to dinner.’” How does the nomination feel, after two years of snubs? “We just felt like we were validated,” said Scheffer. “It was a real show of support for our show.”
Lacey Terrell / HBO
Turns out the Best Drama nod was the only nomination Big Love garnered. Nothing else. Nothing for writing, camera, direction, nada. “I think it’s a little—odd, let’s say, that we were nominated for best drama, and that all of our actors and our writers, and our department heads who make this incredibly cinematic, beautiful show, directors, didn’t receive a nomination,” said Scheffer. “But that said, I think getting this one nod made us feel that every conceivable player on our show was being recognized in it, and I think that made up for it…. I felt like people were robbed of awards nominations, but I don’t think we lingered on it too much. Because it felt like such a victory just for breaking into the best drama category.”
Lacey Terrell / HBO
In terms of which episodes to send out to Emmy voters, “we wanted the shows that really made people–our viewers and ourselves, I guess–cry. Laugh and cry the most,” said Scheffer. “We’re really into visceral kind of laughter and emotions, and so that’s what we like to do. And when we do it well—that’s the kind of show that we like to show off.” One of the episodes included on that list was “On Trial,” where self-proclaimed prophet and compound leader Roman Grant (a terrifically unsettling Harry Dean Stanton) was brought to court for underage marriage. Grant emerged victorious, but his daughter Nicki had the final word, as she surreptitiously pushed her conniving father down a flight of stairs.
Lacey Terrell / HBO
Another selected episode was one of Scheffer’s favorites: “Prom Night”—a pivotal hour that came early in the season, in which eldest daughter Sarah (Amanda Seyfried), who recently discovered she's pregnant, wishes to attend a school dance for a night of feigned teenage normalcy. Also, Bill’s mother Lois kidnaps husband Frank in an attempt to murder him, and Bill, fraught with whether or not to get involved in the trial of Roman Grant, asks his first wife Barb if he’s a good man. “It was a very seminal moment for this character and for the show,” said Scheffer. “Bill really sort of struggled with whether he was a good man…whether just by being a polygamist and connected with compound polygamy tarred him in a way, morally, and made him make choices that were less than righteous in his life.” Specifically, Bill wonders if participating in a principle that condones underage marriage makes him complicit as well. “We had never really dealt with the moral crisis of what that meant to our sunny polygamists,” Scheffer said. “It was clearly always a kind of creepy thing on the compound, but it was the first time that I think that our sunny polygamists really had to confront it head on.”
HBO / Everett
Another season highlight was “Come, Ye Saints”, or the road trip episode, in which the Henricksons, fresh off of their failed marriage to fourth wife Ana, caravaned from their Salt Lake City homes to the Mormon pilgrimage site of Hill Cumorah, N.Y. “Just to get those characters on a road trip could have been…dangerous. You know, sort of like Gidget Goes to Hawaii or a Very Brady episode or something,” recalled Scheffer. “But we really felt like that episode showed the show off to its best advantage. It was full of a lot of family conflict, and fun and very strong emotional payoffs.” The biggest revelation of the hour occurred when Sarah revealed that she was not only pregnant, but had lost her baby. “Sarah’s miscarriage gave it such a tense, emotional resonance,” Scheffer said. The whole episode “just really worked, and we had a chance to be with our main characters in a way that we had never really been before.”
Lacey Terrell / HBO
A key storyline last season was when first wife Barb, who gave up her Latter-Day Saints upbringing for the polygamist tradition, was threatened with the realization that she might lose membership within her old church. That led to a controversial scene in which Barb, in an effort to be right with her faith, enters the temple for an endowment ceremony. “We were trying to create a moment of great beauty and great art, and it was a necessary story for our character,” Scheffer has stated of the temple scene. “There was nothing glib or extraordinary about that. We were trying to go deep, and we both felt that was important for us to do.” While the episode received fire from the Mormon church for depicting a sacred and private rite, Scheffer maintained that it was handled “in context of it being a very sacred, very holy ceremony.”
Lacey Terrell / HBO
That same episode culminated in Barb’s excommunication from the Latter-Day Saints church. “Jeanne [Tripplehorn] was just so beautiful in that episode,” said Scheffer. And while that heartwrenching scene didn’t secure her an Emmy nomination, Tripplehorn did receive an acting nod for her brief yet poignant role as Jackie Kennedy in HBO’s Grey Gardens. Will the Big Love creators claim that nomination as their own? “I think we will,” said Scheffer decidedly. “The female lead in a drama is a difficult category. Jeanne definitely deserved to be in it, and I think Jeanne deserved to win that category had she been in it this year.… She did great work in Grey Gardens–it was a very small role, and it could have been the recognition of her coming into her own right now as an actress that she was nominated…. I think that people who have seen the [ Big Love] episodes certainly recognize that she was doing quality work that was worthy of an award.”
HBO
“I know the popularity of shows are going to be making a difference to the voters,” remarked Scheffer on
Big Love’s chances of winning come Emmy night. “But basically I feel like we have such an even playing field that all of these judges are seeing two of our episodes and two
Mad Men episodes, and two of
Lost’s episodes, and I just feel like, wow, they’re actually going to be watching the work against the work, and I feel very good about that.”
“I just feel like the work does speak for itself,” he continued. “They each have their own power and charm, each of our episodes. And I think they can fight against any other show that way.”
