Rebecca Miller on Emmy-Nominated Scorsese Doc
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- Rebecca Miller's Apple TV documentary series 'Mr. Scorsese' earned three Primetime Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series and Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program
- Miller appeared on Deadline's Doc Talk podcast, hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley and senior documentary editor Matt Carey, to discuss her five-part examination of Scorsese's career and complex personality
- The series traces Scorsese's preoccupation with violence to his youth in New York City, recounting an incident where he and friends used a pencil as a forensic instrument to assess a corpse they stumbled across in an alley
- 1972's 'Boxcar Bertha' was pivotal not for its quality but its pointlessness — Miller relates how a conversation with John Cassavetes about the film set Scorsese on a new course
- Robert De Niro was among those interviewed for the series; Miller says his facial expressions communicated more than his words, and the documentary covers how 'The King of Comedy' became an ordeal for the director
- The series also touches on one of Scorsese's roughest periods when a serious drug addiction nearly killed him, and analyzes what a scene from 'Goodfellas' reveals about his cinematic approach
- Miller is married to Daniel Day-Lewis, one of Scorsese's on-screen collaborators, and the Doc Talk episode is available on Spotify, iHeart, and Apple as a production of Deadline and Ridley's Nō Studios
Why it matters: Three Emmy nominations across major documentary categories put Miller's five-part retrospective in direct competition at the Primetime ceremony, and the podcast gives her a platform to shape the narrative around Scorsese's legacy before voters decide — including revealing details like the 'pencil as forensic tool' anecdote that wider coverage of the series has not surfaced.
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