DGA Awards Ceremony to Cement New President Lesli Linka Glatter
11.03.2022 - 20:29
/ variety.com
Andrew Barker Senior Features WriterWhen the Directors Guild of America’s annual awards gets underway March 12, there will be a number of changes from years previous. Most obviously, the ceremony will finally be held in person at the Beverly Hilton, after two straight years of virtual celebrations.
But just as importantly, it will also be the DGA’s first awards gala under new president Lesli Linka Glatter, who succeeded two-term president Thomas Schlamme last September.A multiple Emmy- and DGA Award-nominated television veteran, Glatter is best known for her work as a director of “Homeland,” “Twin Peaks,” “Mad Men” and “The West Wing,” as well as the cult coming-of-age feature “Now and Then.” She’s also a veteran of the DGA itself, having served as the guild’s vice president and been a three-time member of its negotiating team, as well as heading up a number of its diversity and inclusion initiatives. Clearly, she maintains a crowded schedule, and it was precisely that that made her initially hesitant about running for the position.
Speaking from Austin, Texas, in the early morning just before heading off to the set of “Love and Death,” which she developed for HBO along with David E. Kelley, Glatter remembers, “When Tommy [Schlamme] and Betty Thomas first sat me down and asked if I would consider running for the presidency, I said ‘absolutely not.
There’s no way I can do it, I can’t figure it out in my schedule. Thank you, I’m honored, but no.’”She soon reconsidered, however.
“What I love [about the DGA] is members’ desire to give back,” she explains. “It’s the people with the busiest careers, whether it’s Steven Spielberg or Christopher Nolan, that always find time in their schedules to give back and be part of the
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