Megan McLachlan was in Atlanta, Ga., to cover SCAD TVfest 2026, which featured Emmy-winning shows like The Pitt and Bridgerton, new hopefuls like Neighbors on HBO, as well as revivals like Scrubs and The Comeback.
Nestled between Sundance and awards season is SCAD TVfest.
Each year, the Savannah College of Art & Design hosts this festival at their Atlanta campus, celebrating the best in television, like the Emmy-winning Abbott Elementary, with Quinta Brunson receiving Variety’s Showrunner Award (with Sheryl Lee Ralph in attendance, too!).
With Emmy season just around the corner, here’s a look at some of the other SCAD-celebrated shows to watch for this upcoming Emmy season.
The Pitt on HBO Max Welcomes New Cast Members
Obviously!
The festival culminated with a screening of the Outstanding Drama winner, followed by a chat with Taylor Dearden (Mel King), Brandon Mendez Homer (Donnie), Amielynn Abellera (Perlah), and new in Season 2, Laetitia Hollard (Emma).
On the red carpet, Hollard spoke about what it’s like to come into the second season of the hottest show of the moment.
“Being the new kid on the block wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be,” says Hollard. “I was going to be like a turtle and stay in my trailer all day. They were like, ‘You’re one of us! You come with us.’ When I went to eat by myself, Shabana (Victoria Javadi) was like, ‘Girl, what are you doing? Come over here!'”
Bridgerton on Netflix: Lady Danbury and Queen Charlotte’s Falling Out
Bridgerton frequently receives Emmy nominations (and wins!) in below-the-line categories like costumes and voice-over work, but the series hasn’t received an acting nomination since Regé-Jean Page in Lead Actor for Season 1. Could Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh) and Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) break into the awards conversation, given a juicy fight in Season 4 Part I?
On the red carpet, the two talked about this new dynamic.
“Those are the scenes you read, and you’re like, bring it on!” says Andoh. “You see the way different power can operate within the relationship and friendship. You want me to be your subject? I will be, but I won’t be your friend.”
“We call it a tennis match or pingpong,” said Rosheuvel. “I know when I look in her eyes, I’m definitely going to get something back. We had a lot of fun filming that scene. It’s interesting for these two characters to go through that. We haven’t seen the queen use that card. A lot of feedback I’m receiving is how emotional it is for fans, seeing these two best friends having a falling out.”
Survivor 50 on CBS: Will This Be the Last Season of “Superfans”?
Over the last two years, CBS’s reality juggernaut has been nominated for Outstanding Reality Competition Program, returning to the big dance after a more than 10-year absence. Is this because of the turn toward casting superfan competitors? And will we ever see non-superfans compete again?
“It’s something we’ve been talking about,” said Probst on the red carpet. “The question is, if you’re playing poker with a bunch of people who are really good at poker and one person doesn’t know how to play, does it make the game more interesting or not? I don’t know! We might try it. We’ve literally been talking about whether we should have a couple of people who don’t know the show.”
Survivor 50 returns on CBS on Wednesday, February 25.
The Comeback on HBO Reintroduces Audiences to 2026 Valerie Cherish
I asked Michael Patrick King if The Comeback is a bit like the cicadas: best enjoyed every decade or so. In the two seasons of the show, Lisa Kudrow has always earned an Outstanding Lead Actress nomination at the Emmys. Could we see a third one in her future when it returns in March?
“I don’t know how we got here, but it seems that The Comeback appears every 10 years,” said King. “And that’s a unique experience that has to do with a lot of factors, but mostly there are other careers happening in those 10 years. Lisa and I are waiting for the right story. It just happens to be 11 years [this time]. It’s so funny, we did the first in 2005, the second in 2015, and people were making jokes about looking at their watch, it’s time for Valerie! And here we are again.”
Scrubs on ABC: A ‘Revival’ of the Original Series
On the red carpet, Zach Braff was careful not to call this new iteration of Scrubs a “Season 10,” but a revival of the series when it returns to ABC on Wednesday, February 25.
In the 17 years since it went off the air, Scrubs has only seemed to become more classic and underrecognized for its realistic (and hilarious!) look at what it’s like to be a doctor. Plus, it also gave us an iconic bromance between J.D. (Braff) and Turk (Donald Faison).
“Bill Lawrence told the story of two guys who loved each other and were best friends,” said Braff. “They weren’t afraid of any stigma around being fully themselves and expressing their love for each other. He did it in a really funny and creative way, and a lot of people saw themselves in those friendships.”
Neighbors Aims to Nose Their Way into Outstanding Documentary Series
No, it’s not the Australian soap opera that gave us Kylie Minogue and Natalie Imbruglia. This Neighbors is HBO’s docuseries about real-life neighbor disputes, scratching that audience itch somewhere between TLC and Chimp Crazy. So how did directors Harrison Fishman and Dylan Redford FIND these people in neighborly conflict?
“We had a really great casting director and producer, Harleigh Shaw, who is a pioneer for finding these stories,” said Redford on the red carpet. “Casting is a weird word for documentary, but so much of this job is basically going out in the world and finding people who are related to our subject matter. We had very specific criteria. We needed both sides of the conflict, and they needed to be ongoing conflicts.”
The team used Facebook groups, Craigslist, door knocking, small claims court, and even newspaper articles with zone meetings to find their cast.
“You’re looking for ongoing neighbor disputes, but then the actual people need to be interesting and have amazing lives outside of the dispute,” said Fishman. “The dispute is really just the key that gets us into the worlds of these people. That was just another criterion that was unexplainable.”
Neighbors premieres on HBO on Friday, February 13.
