������

Air Dates: March 3-9, 2025

Every year, American popular culture focuses on recognizing the entertainment world’s hits and misses in Awards Season. Daniel D’Addario gives us a well-informed, if fictional, glimpse behind the smiles and glittering ceremonies to understand the personal and professional commitment of actresses at the top of their games.  

D’Addario is chief correspondent at “Variety,” writing features, profiles, and columns. He has won awards from the Los Angeles Press Club for profile writing and for political commentary and is among the moderators of Variety’s Actors on Actors video series. His debut novel, “The Talent,” follows five actresses as they navigate the complex world of Hollywood. D’Addario was previously the television critic for “Variety” and for “Time.” A graduate of Columbia University, he lives with his husband and two daughters in Brooklyn.

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” D’Addario attests to the significance of award shows in a broader economic sense. “I think that what people may not realize is that there’s a whole economy that award shows underpin,” he said. “It’s not just a program for our entertainment or to boost movies.” According to D’Addario, the talks of cancellation of the Hollywood award shows could not come at a worse time, as the people who work behind the scenes to make the whole event run need it now more than ever.  

With a significant amount of exposure to the entertainment industry, D’Addario draws on experiences from his career in the plot of his new novel, “The Talent.” He said, “I will say that a lot of the things in the novel are based on my observations of the Oscars, as well as my own work as a journalist … people’ I’ve worked with, people I’ve dealt with in passing.” Through his novel, D’Addario hopes to give readers outside of Hollywood an inside look at what truly lies behind the scenes. “Who the real person at the core is lies behind all this work that they’re doing,” he said. “Some of them are able to separate the work and go home at the end of the day and stay themselves, and some of them get really lost in it.”

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Check your local public television listings for air times near you! An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 2:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. and Mondays at 4:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at ������. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.