Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the 231st episode of Awards Chatter, the Hollywood Reporters Awards Podcast. the the Jack Pearson of NBC's This is Us.

Two weeks ago for the second year in a row,

This is Us received a Best Drama Series Emmy nomination.

No other show from a Broadcasting Network has been nominated in the category since 2011.

And also for the second year in a row, Vent Amelia was nominated for Best Actor in a Drama

Series.

The 41-year-old has been a familiar face on TV for most of this century

Having previously played the major roles of Jess Mariano on the W.B.'s Gilmore girls from

2001 through 2003 and Peter Petrelli on NBC's heroes from 2006 through 2010.

But nothing quite prepared viewers or event Amelia himself for the role of Jack, one of the great TV dads of all time, whose life and death have brought even the most

hardened among us to tears. Over the course of our interview we talk about all of the above and much more.

But first I was joined at the offices of the Hollywood reporter by Kevin Cassidy,

our international news editor, to break down a week of announcements that have basically set us up for the fall

film fests all over the world from

Venice to telluride to Toronto and then back to New York and so Kevin thanks for

coming in to try to help us make sense of all this of course. Let's start with Venice because that is the

first of these big ones and it's the 75th edition of it. It's going to be taking place

August 29th to September 8th. This year Yarmo del Toro last year's Golden Lion winner at that

fest is going to be presiding over the jury and the big news that we got a few days

ago is that Damian Chiselle's follow-up to Lala Land, first man, a movie about Neil Armstrong, is going to be the opening night there.

And then in subsequent days, including just today, we've learned a lot more about the rest of the lineup.

Can you give us a little bit of an overview of that?

...