Fred Savage Shared The Surprising Way He Learned of His Emmy Nomination For The Wonder Years
Here's how 13 year old Fred Savage learned of his Emmy nomination.
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It’s hard for a lot of people to imagine what it’s like to have spent their childhood acting in a television series and becoming famous. We have more of a glimpse of what that’s like today on reality television, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that wasn’t a thing. Instead, audiences watched children stars on television series like The Wonder Years with only tabloids giving a clue on what their daily lives may have been like. Currently, Fred Savage is a 45-year-old adult and an executive producer on the upcoming reboot of The Wonder Years, a series that gained him fame decades ago. This has him reminiscing in interviews about what it was like to be famous before he was a teenager. In one interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he recalled learning of his Emmy win.
Fred Savage was actually nominated for an Emmy twice. Both times around, he was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series. To this day, he’s still the youngest person to have that honor at 13 years old. When the nomination was announced, he was hanging out with his friends. At a sleepover party. An incredibly average and fun event when you’re 13 years old. Fred Savage learned of the Emmy nomination when he woke up that morning and went to the kitchen. He found a note from his friend’s mom left on the dishwasher. It read: Good morning, guys! There’s breakfast in the fridge. And congratulations, Fred. You were nominated for an Emmy.”
He didn’t share what his friends had to say about that. It’s hard to imagine that at that age, Fred Savage’s friends had an understanding of what it really meant that he was nominated for an Emmy, or that he was the youngest person to ever be nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. There’s not a lot of opportunities for 13-year-olds to be nominated for Outstanding Lead. Of course, now, Elisha “EJ” Williams will have that opportunity as he is taking the lead role for the 12-year-old lead character in The Wonder Years reboot.
Today, while Fred Savage does some acting (which is often voice work), he does a lot more as a director. He’s taken what he learned in his early years on the set of The Wonder Years and applied it to a lot of this new career, directing episodes on many sitcoms. His work has included runs on The Goldbergs, 2 Broke Girls, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Modern Family, The Conners, and Black-ish. It hasn’t been announced how much directing he’ll be doing on The Wonder Years reboot, but he is supposed to direct some of the episodes on there as well.
The reboot will take place in the 1960s, like the Fred Savage original, but will follow a new (and yet similar) family. While the original family followed the Arnolds in an unnamed suburb in middle America, the new series will follow the Williams, a Black family living in Alabama. The new series has familiar titling fonts, the same theme song performed by someone new, and will be narrated by Don Cheadle.
