Who Is Mary Lou Belli and Why Does She Keep Getting Emmy Nominations?

Going into this year’s Emmy nominations, Mary Lou Belli figured she was unlikely to receive her third consecutive directing nomination for the BET sitcom “The Ms. Pat Show.” Emmy rules stipulate that one of the six nominations would go to a multi-camera show, the kind of live-in-front-of-a-studio-audience production that had been responsible for much of the classic comedy in the history of television. But one of the other multi-cam directors on the ballot was James Burrows, the undisputed king of the genre and by far the most nominated comedy director in Emmy history. (He has 26 nominations for shows including “Taxi,” “Cheers,” “Frasier,” “Friends” and “Will & Grace,” while runner-up Jay Sandrich has 10.)

“I said to my friends, ‘I’m not getting it this year, it’s going to Jimmy,’” Belli said, laughing.

But to her shock, it didn’t go to Jimmy. Instead, Belli landed her third consecutive nomination for comedy directing, making her only the second woman to ever score three in a row in the category. (The first was Amy Sherman-Palladino for “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”in 2018, 2019 and 2020.)

The nomination was one of the surprises of this year’s Emmy class. And it drew attention to the Television Academy rule that if more than 5% of the entries in the Outstanding Comedy Series category are from multi-cam shows, at least one nomination will go to a show from that genre, which is responsible for eight of the 10 biggest Emmy-winning comedies ever, including “Frasier,” “Modern Family,” “All in the Family,” “Cheers” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

Belli, who came to sitcom directing in the late 1980s after years in the theater, embraces the format that she says comes with its own specific requirements. “It is its own beast, because the rules for comedy and the rules for filming it are different,” she said. “In terms of the rules for comedy, it’s jokier. We’re looking for that laugh, we expect that kind of response and the artists themselves feed off that response.

“The thing that I love, and it’ll probably always bring me back to the multi-camera arena, is there’s no comparison to a live audience really laughing.”

“The Ms. Pat Show,” a family sitcom based on the real life of comedian Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams, is filmed in front of an audience in Atlanta, though it occasionally uses other locations. “Debbie Allen set the standard with the pilot, to say that we don’t have to be in the studio,” Belli said. “I’ve shot on a basketball court in Studio City, at a nearby park, at an auto repair shop outside the CBS gates. There’s a lot we can do to give it more production value and make it friendly for people who are used to watching single-camera shows, while keeping the humor of the multi-cam space.”

The episode for which Belli was nominated has fun with the format: “I’m Your Pappy”  opens with a black-and-white sequence that mocks the classic sitcom. “Why am I saying fudge ?” wonders Ms. Pat, who intended to use a far coarser epithet that also begins with f-u.

“There were two people I wrote to immediately after I got the nomination,” she said. “[Show cocreator] Jordan [E. Cooper] and Pat and the BET people, we were all talking, but the other two people on my crew that I wrote to immediately were the costume designer and the music editor. That piece of music for the black-and-white piece was perefect, and so were the costumes. I mean, anybody who’s seen an episode of ‘Leave It to Beaver’ would go, ‘Oh, yeah!’”

But the playful shift from a ’50s style show to a modern one was not what Belli mentioned when asked about the episode’s biggest challenge. “A baby being born live in front of a TV audience?” she said, referencing a lengthy sequence in which the girlfriend of the family’s teenage son gives birth on the couch during a snow- storm. “I think so.” (The production looked into using a real baby but opted for a prosthetic infant instead.)

As usual, the episode deals with social and racial issues in between the jokes — a major attraction for Belli, a governor in the Television Academy who is one of the few women recognized in a category that has given less than 10% of its nominations to female directors. (In the last five years, the number has improved to more than 35% for women.) She has also spent much of her career work- ing on multi-ethnic and Black-centered shows. “It’s my job to seek information and tell a story as authentically as I can,” she said.

And although multi-cam shows are far less prevalent than they once were, outnumbered by single-cam shows that aren’t exactly chasing laughs, Belli is a staunch defender of the genre. (In fact, she cowrote a book on it: “The Sitcom Career Book.”)

“I’ve been here long enough to know it goes through cycles,” she said. “I think [multi-cam] is here to stay. I think it’ll morph into certain things, and hopefully it’ll only get better. And in today’s economy, it is cheaper.” She laughed. “So I hope it lives long and prospers. I’m honored to be in that space.”

A version of this story first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here .

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