With the likes of Kelsey Grammer, Matt Bomer and George Lopez in tow, SCAD TVfest — the Savannah College of Art and Design’s annual Atlanta celebration of TV — returned last week for its 12th year. The event wasn’t just an opportunity to catch sneak peeks of upcoming TV shows but a high-profile introduction to SCADshow’s lavish new midtown screening facility, erected last fall.
Usually a three-day event, this year, SCAD added an extra day of screenings and panel discussions. Awards were plentiful. Bomer received the Hollywood Reporter Trailblazer Award for his series Fellow Travelers; Grammer was given a Legend of Television Award for the reboot of the comedy Frasier; and George Lopez, in town for a screening of his Lopez vs. Lopez, earned the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Other award recipients included Ken Watanabe, Joel Kim Booster, Sonequa Martin-Green, Charlotte Stoudt and Josie Totah. TVfest also recognized some of the SCAD alumni who have created successful TV and film careers in Georgia and beyond.
One of the Atlanta-focused offerings was chefATL, a docuseries about Atlanta’s culinary arts landscape. The first episode, featuring Steven Satterfield, James Beard Award-winning chef of Miller Union, made its world premiere at the event. Satterfield’s work has earned him the nickname “Vegetable Shaman” by The New York Times, and, in the series, he talks to host John Gidding about his cooking style and the Atlanta dining world.
“I think Atlanta’s restaurant scene is very diverse, with a lot of styles of dining — from high to low to mid — and all kinds of culture and different points of view,” said Satterfield. “Just a lot of options. To highlight that and focus on the people behind the scenes making it happen is a really interesting project.”
The local dining city has evolved and changed over the years, he said, and it’s gained more respect. The Michelin status attained by local chefs last year was a game changer.
Satterfield’s Miller Union is 15 years old this fall. “That is no small feat,” he commented. And just as important as the restaurant’s growth have been its values. “We are very proud of how far we have come and [that we] still have a path in front of us. We have always been committed to locally and regionally sourcing our food and being sustainable. We wanted to buck some industry standards and have always composted, diverted food from land and fields and recycled.”
Atlanta’s Quinlan Orear was one of the lead supervising professors of chefATL, which brought together more than 100 students across nine of SCAD’s degree programs. He was excited not just to work with so many students but to shine a spotlight on the city.
“Atlanta is an international epicenter of business and the arts,” he said. “We hope this series helps people who are outside of and less familiar-with Atlanta connect with the city by exploring its essence through its food. And for those who call Atlanta home, we hope the series serves as a point of pride.”
After the screening, it was announced that chefATL will have a full season. The second episode will be filmed in March, highlighting the work of Deborah VanTrece, who owns two Atlanta restaurants: Twisted Soul Cookhouse & Pours and Oreatha’s At The Point.
Another TVfest highlight was the first episode of the fourth season of National Geographic’s biographical anthology drama Genius: MLK/X, which parallels the stories of Civil Rights icons Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and Malcolm X (Aaron Pierre).
The series was filmed both in Atlanta and Macon, and Pierre loved filming in the area.
“Atlanta is a beautiful place, and I know that everyone in the cast, crew and creative team share the sentiment — we felt loved by Atlanta, held by Atlanta and supported,” he said.
Jayme Lawson, who plays Malcolm’s wife Betty Shabazz in the series, is no stranger to the city either, having filmed both last year’s Till and the series The First Lady locally. “I haven’t even filmed in Los Angeles,” she said. “My career is mainly in Atlanta. It feels like a second home at this point.”
It’s no easy feat portraying a legend such as MLK, but Harrison is up for the task. “Everyone knows who [King] is. I have played real people before — B.B. King, Fred Hampton — but [King] is the most famous. It’s really challenging to not try and play the idea everyone has. You want to honor [people’s] relationship to a man who has allowed us to be who we are and live our dreams. The first thing I needed to do was ignore that part and look at him as a father, a son, a husband and a friend.”
For Harrison, being able to shoot locally added another layer of significance in telling the story. “Obviously, this is Dr. King’s birth place, and I was able to . . . get the tour and some of the history,” he said. “Even the background actors had a sense of relationship with Dr. King in a different way. Watching them in the audience being so excited — telling stories about what they heard from their grandparents — was special. It uplifted us all.”
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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog, Douglas.