Night Manager wins Emmy, prodco hires Wolkoff

The Night Manager scooped a second Emmy last night (Sunday), with Susanne Bier getting the best directing for a miniseries gong, as one of its coproducers brings in a new development chief.

Victor Reyes had already scooped the best miniseries score award in the craft Emmys, which took place last week.

The Ink Factory- and Character Seven-produced Le Carré adaptation won acclaim, and proved popular on the BBC in the UK and AMC in the US.

Speaking to TBI ahead of last night’s awards, Character Seven founder Stephen Garrett said he has brought in seasoned exec Michelle Wolkoff to head up development efforts.

She is now head of development at Character Seven, the drama producer launched by Kudos co-founder Garrett.

The Night Manager was Character Seven’s first project. It is now making supernatural series The Rook for Hulu, and Wolkoff will work up new ideas for the LA and London-based firm.

“I wanted an LA-based head of development and have brought in Michelle,” Garrett said. “She has worked entirely in film, and that was a deliberate decision for Character Seven with so much film talent gravitating to TV.”

Wolkoff joined Character Seven from The Mark Gordon Company. She was head of film at that prodco, which is now owned by Entertainment One. She has also been director of development at Focus Features and UPI.

Character Seven is part of the team for the upcoming TV adaptation of iconic Le Carré novel The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Garrett admitted that following the success of The Night Manager and given the success of the novel, expectations are high for the second Le Carré series.

“Of course, expectations are off the scale,” he said. “If anything The Night Manager was under-read as a novel, but The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is Le Carré’s most famous book, and built the genre, the modern spy story.”

Character Seven has a slate of five projects beyond the Hulu and Le Carré projects.