Niecy Nash-Betts is a hot ticket

I’m raising a glass to Pee-wee — tequila, what else? — while contemplating the trade-off between inviting bats to congregate in my backyard or simply putting on some bug spray to ward off the mosquitoes. I mean ... I’m told there are no blood-sucking bats in SoCal, so what could go wrong?

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope’s Friday newsletter. Pop open a cold one and let’s take a look at this week’s happenings.

She’s ‘Black, fabulous and on TV’

The last time Niecy Nash-Betts and I spoke, she was just Niecy Nash, and sitting here with her in a corner booth on the covered patio at Porta Via in Calabasas — her favorite spot, her favorite table — I’m wondering if she’s using her hyphenated name professionally, the one she took when she married singer-actor Jessica Betts in 2020.

“Like ... when they announce ...” I stop myself. We’re having lunch the week before Emmy nominations, and I don’t finish the thought, knowing actors can be superstitious about putting something out into the world before it happens.

Nash-Betts fixes me with a stare. “No. Say what you were about to say.” So I say it, asking if, should they announce her as an Emmy nominee for her moving portrayal of Glenda Cleveland on the Netflix limited series “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” if it’d be Niecy Nash or Niecy Nash-Betts.

“My prayer is that they say Niecy Nash-Betts,” she replies. (They did.)

She isn’t finished. She’s never finished.

“How can someone who spoke her whole life and had it manifest be superstitious?” Nash-Betts, 53, continues. “A lot of people say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to jinx it.’ If you are a person who goes by the Bible, it says, ‘God says it.’ It doesn’t say ‘He hoped’ or ‘He imagined’ or ‘He dreamed.’ He said it. And that’s what I’m gonna say. And that’s that.”

Nash-Betts and I enjoyed a long lunch a week before the actors went on strike, talking about living in gratitude, how Oprah wants her to write a book on relationships and love and the reason why it was all of “five minutes” between her second and third marriages.

“Let me tell you why,” she says, leaning in. “The reason why is they don’t let me stay single. Let me tell you something: I’m a hot ticket. If I want to be with you, I’m going to make your experience feel custom and not off-the-rack. A lot of people show up and say, ‘This is just how I am.’ No. I’m going to show up and make sure I provide the proper provision for the patient. What do you require? What do you need? And once people know that you regard them that way, they’re swirly eyed, they don’t want to let you out of their clutches and they always want to marry you. What can I say?”

Nash-Betts says a lot more ... which you can enjoy by reading the full conversation.

Niecy Nash-Betts lives in gratitude.

(Erik Carter / For The Times)

Fox set to postpone Emmy Awards until January

The Los Angeles Times’ awards publication, The Envelope, has four print issues on tap for the month of August, coinciding with the final round of Emmy voting. The ceremony itself, as I noted in a newsletter three weeks ago, is probably going to be held in January, at which time you’ll either be craving to see a Roy family reunion or will have completely forgotten who won “Succession.”

Meanwhile, studios and streamers are still campaigning, albeit with restraint as spending big bucks on a lavish awards push isn’t a great look in the middle of two brutal labor disputes that have shut down production and brought about immeasurable hardship.

But, again, the show must go on ... so four more issues and four more columns about Emmy races (“it’s like you’re writing science fiction,” one colleague told me recently) whose results won’t be known for months. And you were wondering why I’m considering welcoming bats to my backyard. It makes sense now, doesn’t it?

We probably won’t know who’s winning an Emmy until January — if then.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

In this cruel summer, let’s salute the writers

I’m more partial to the collective experience of moviegoing than sitting on my couch watching and streaming TV, but there are occasions when I’ve been thankful for the relative invisibility that home-viewing provides.

If an episode of television wrecks me, like the tender love story between Bill and Frank (beautifully played by Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, an instance that needs to produce an Emmy tie) in the “The Last of Us” installment titled “Long, Long Time,” I don’t have to hide my tears surrounded by people in the darkness. I can just let it out and then wallow in the Linda Ronstadt song that gave the episode its name, listening to it over and over again while I ponder the importance of human connection. (Not to mention the wonder of Ronstadt’s voice.)

Is there anything better than a piece of great writing like “Long, Long Time”? Popsicles and puppy dogs, maybe. But outside of that, not much. You know it. I know it. About the only people who don’t know it — or don’t want to admit they know it — are the studio executives who’d rather see writers — and actors — starve than pay them a fair wage for their work.

So as final Emmy voting is about to get underway, I wrote a column looking at the nominated writers behind the shows that have thrilled, moved and transported us this past year. With representatives of the Writers Guild of America and the major studios agreeing to meet for the first time since the writers strike began, here’s hoping they’ll return to work soon.

Mike White won Emmys last year for writing, directing and producing “The White Lotus.”

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)