After 18 seasons on the air, RuPaul’s Drag Race has received a total of 88 Emmy nominations with 29 wins.

To celebrate its most recent slew of Emmy nominations, executive producer Natalia James, co-executive producer John Polly, production designer Jen Chu, choreographer Jamal Sims and Season 18 winner Myki Meeks joined Deadline’s Contenders Television: The Nominees Studio to discuss how the show consistently hits the mark each year with critics and award voters alike.

Watch the conversation below and scroll down for more photos from the event.

“It starts with the queens,” said James, whose work extends across RuPaul’s Drag Race, RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars. “To me, there’s no other show that has drag queens that have as much personality as ours do. There’s heart. There’s comedy. There’s emotion. There’s queer story,” she added.

Polly, who has been with RuPaul’s Drag Race since 2013 and its spinoff series RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars since 2012, credits the “raw talent” each season for making the show as successful as it has been.

RELATED: Contenders Television: The Nominees Studio – Deadline’s Complete Coverage

“It’s the raw talent that just needs a showcase, and we’re lucky enough to be able to put these amazing artists on TV and let them do what they do,” he said. “We have RuPaul — who is the most fantastic host, guide and sort of spiritual guru — mleading the whole team. But yes, it’s the queens, their talent and love of drag — it’s their exuberance, spunk and fight because it’s competition they want to win, which comes across.”

Myki joined the show representing Orlando, a love for her home state of Florida that she also represented in the studio by wearing a long white gown featuring the state’s fruit: oranges. In the finale of Season 18, Myki shared that she felt like she had started the reality competition as an ingenue and was leaving as a leading lady.

“The experience was a roller coaster start to finish. I always say I was a big fish in a small pond in my local scene, and I entered a full sea of whales, OK? I mean, look at the girls,” she said as the panel erupted in laughter.

“It’s a pressure cooker,” she continued. “You get there, and you start questioning, like, ‘Wow, what is it that I really do if you’re not 100% secure in it?’ It was the trials of the show, and constantly going 100% the entire time. It turned out to be for the better. I have even said that when we all came back together in the last episode, the queens who entered the workroom are not the queens that are leaving. I feel way more secure with what I do. I’m a much stronger performer than before, and that’s just now. Five years from now, who knows what’s going to happen.”

Sims works triple duty on Drag Race, serving face and as a guest judge and choreographer. As choreographer, he worked closely with Myki on her finale number: a performance of her original song “Versed,” featuring a showgirl theme.

“Again, it starts with the queens,” Sims said. “Myki had a clear idea of what she wanted, which is always helpful because not every queen comes with a clear idea. Sometimes I’m kind of fishing around, ‘And what do you think about…?’ Myki [for the finale] was like, ‘I know the song, and I know what I want to do.’ So that made my job a lot easier.”

Each week, the queens face off in unique challenges. Myki touts her favorite week was Snatch Game of Love: Island, which aired in February. With guest judge Brooke Shields in the house, the queens played the celebrity-impersonation competition with a twist. Myki dressed up as Drew Barrymore.

Myki Meeks

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Jamal Sims

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Jen Chu

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Natalia James

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

John Polly

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

“My favorite set from the season was Snatch Game of Love Island, which shows how the show is always up to date with pop culture references and not afraid to play with what people are talking about nowadays,” she said. “I think that’s kind of drag too. When we’re at our local shows, we’re creating mixes based on what’s popular now, or just pop culture moments.”

Chu said of the set: “Obviously, we have some favorite colors on the show that pop like crazy on white. So it was everything we love together, and it turned out perfect. We love sparkly; we love hot pink and orange. It was nice to have an intense contrast and so much eye candy in that particular show.”

She tells Myki: “It’s so funny because you don’t know this about us, but we watch you all on the monitor. My team works 12 hours a day, and they work really hard. We’re all there long hours, and it’s really hot in the Valley. But whenever we watch the monitors, you girls are working so hard. It’s crazy. We know that we cannot complain because look at these girls; they didn’t know these songs, they had never done this dance before, and they had been up for 14 hours.”

They’re already shooting Season 4, but the Shrinking cast — co-creator/co-writer Jason Segel, Harrison Ford, Jessica Williams and Michael Urie — took a break to chat about their Emmy-nominated third season at Deadline’s Contenders Television: The Nominees Studio.

Segel, who stars as Jimmy and serves as executive producer and writer alongside Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, teased a little about the upcoming season of the Apple TV comedy series, after Season 3 scored 10 Emmy nominations including for Outstanding Comedy Series.

“We knew that we wanted to get out of the acute stage of grief as a show because it will run out of steam eventually,” Segel said. “So we had a lot of talks about what another cycle could look like. What was interesting to me is what does it look like when you then decide, ‘OK, I’m ready to take it for a spin now. I’ve reached the end of the acute stage. I’m going to walk out this front door and try to have a good day.’ Sounds great, but it turns out it’s its own set of clumsiness and hilarity, and it almost feels like a bit of a rom-com to me, to try again at 45 years old. I think there is a lot of fun in there.”

RELATED: Contenders Television: The Nominees Studio – Deadline’s Complete Coverage

The show follows Jimmy, a grief-stricken therapist who decides to try radical honesty with his patients, with mixed results — helped and hindered by his fellow shrinks, Paul (Ford) and Gaby (Williams), along with his best friend and lawyer Brian (Urie).

Watch the Contenders conversation below with the cast (all also Emmy-nominated this year), and scroll down for photos from the event.

In Season 3, Jeff Daniels appeared as Jimmy’s father, and Segel said that had been a great revelation in what drives Jimmy and his perception of Paul as a kind of father figure. “You are given the reason that somebody is lacking or defective or yearning for something, and you see it really literally when Jeff Daniels arrives. It makes his obsession with Paul suddenly make sense. This guy has never had somebody tell him that he did a good job. He’s never had someone put his arm around and say, ‘It’s going to be OK, kid.’ All of these things that we suddenly understand, like, ‘Oh, this is what it’s all been about for Jimmy, and through Paul, he’s just looking for somebody he admires and respects to tell him he’s doing OK.’”

Ford spoke about his enjoyment of the Paul-Jimmy dynamic, which deepened in Season 3 as Paul’s Parkinson’s symptoms advanced. “I think the relationship is complicated,” Ford said. “I think there’s the surface relationship which is pretty clear, but then there’s something else between these two guys, and I think it’s each of them finding themselves through their relationship with each other. There’s something that he touches in me that I have not found in my character’s life. There’s something in my character that he has not found in his character’s life. And there’s something about the casting as well. This big guy and this old man are kind of a usual combination. … And the writing is so good. The people that I’m working with are so talented and free and happy to be doing what they’re doing. It’s just been a joy for me to be involved in the show.”

Jason Segel

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Michael Urie

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Jessica Williams

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

For Williams, Gaby and Jimmy’s no-holds-barred back and forth is like a “volley” she said, with Segel always returning the serve. “There’s nothing really you can give him that he’s not going to show up and be excited about and ready to do. I think we all want to do this show to the best of our ability, and have it succeed. And a big part of that is when No. 1 on the call sheet is down to clown … it trickles from the top down.”

Urie’s character Brian has become a parent this season. What was it like for Urie to play a narcissistic guy forced to put someone else first?

“It’s awesome to get to play a guy that’s evolving,” he said. “I didn’t even know if the character was a narcissist until a literal therapist told me halfway through Season 2, and I was like, ‘Have I been doing that?’ But now because the show is so mature we get to see him change. We don’t just leave him there to face adventures that way. And all the characters have their flaws. They’re in this beautiful chosen family of yes, a bunch of therapists, but also a bunch of empathetic people that love each other.”

Indie films helped drive a terrific box office weekend with Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma from Mubi a standout. The edgy director with a dedicated fan base of her own tapped the youthful audience that flocked to Obsession and Backrooms as well as fans of the The X-Files (Gillian Anderson stars), the imprimatur of a Cannes premiere and some of the best reviews of the year for a horror film to drive a stellar limited expansion.

Emmy-winning Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) also stars in the unconventional reimagining of the slasher genre that grossed $907k at 54 theaters in week 2 for a cume of $1.28 million.

“We are seeing more and more fans attracted to this film,” along with a surge in its social media profile, said Mubi distribution chief Mark Boxer. “It’s not one thing. It’s an original film. Jane’s fan base is growing. And there’s the Gillian factor.”

Mubi released it to a mix of traditional arthouses and commercial multiplexes, expanding in NY and LA and adding the top 15 U.S. markets with sold-out shows across locations and day parts — from lunchtime to midnight, he said. It will likely move to circa 500 screens next week.

The film is joined by a truly eclectic mix of indies from Tony and SIX: The Musical Live! (both Focus Features); Trafalgar’s Katseye: Wild Hearts; Angel Studios’ The Brink Of War; The Rivals Of Amziah King from Black Bear; Gkids’ rerelease of Your Name; Neon’s Wrong Girls; and Indian telugu opening Vishwanath & Sons from Shloka Entertainment.

Watermelon Pictures’ documentary American Doctor opened to a notable $40k at the Angelika in NYC, the highest per-screen average for a documentary since The Encampments, also from Watermelon, debuted to a PSA double that in March of 2025.  

Janus Films’ release of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Samurai And The Prisoner grossed $111k at 78 theaters in week 3 for a cume of over $500k.

A rough tally shows at least $16 million, or 10% of the $160 million estimated weekend box office (as per Rentrak), coming from indie and specialty titles.

“That’s a meaningful share for this market, and these films must be credited for generating solid box office and as important contributors to this blockbuster filled summer season,” says Paul Dergarabedian, box office expert and the firm’s head of marketplace trends.

“What’s particularly notable is the breadth and depth of these specialty titles … coming from a mix of indie/specialty, event cinema, international/local-language and other alternative programming rather than one single breakout title,” he adds. Those have become rarer in the indie world due to shifts in the moviegoing public, a crowded market and a dearth of pure arthouse cinemas.

Moderate and wide releases: Trafalgar Releasing’s KATSEYE: Wild Hearts music event film opened to no. 5 at the box office with an estimated $4 million from 724 theaters.

It was followed by Focus Features’ SIX: The Musical Live! at $3 million in 1,462 theaters, and Angel Studios’ latest, Brink of War, with $2.684 million from 2,083 locations.

Shloka’s Vishwanath & Sons rounded out the top ten with $1.635 million from 350 theaters.

Your Name: 10th Anniversary from GKids landed at $1.58 million on 675 screens.

Black Bear’s Matthew McConaughey-starring The Rivals of Amziah King debuted to $1.027 million at 632 theaters.

A24’s Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony continued in limited release in week 2, grossing a super $707k from 37 screens for a domestic cume of $1.2 million.

Neon’s The Wrong Girls opened with $406.5k at 520 theaters

Elijah Peel from eKKL Entertainment, executive producers Willie and Korie Robertson (Duck Dynasty, The Blind), debuted to $251k at 535 locations.

Limited: Oscilloscope Pictures’ Union County opened with $68.5k at 10 theaters. Its presentation of CatVideoFest 2026 is eyeing $143k in week 2 for an $800k cume.

Flaco the owl documentary Wild Inside from Sandbox Films added $28k on 37 screens for a 10-day cume of $170k.