Sorcery and Truth

When the red carpet rolls out for the 75th anniversary Emmy Awards broadcast this winter, two Barnard graduates will be among the invited glitterati. (The awards show, which is traditionally in September, has been postponed until January 2024 as a result of the labor dispute involving writers and actors playing out this past summer.)

Donna Zakowska ’75 (below, left) — two-time Emmy-winning costume designer — is nominated for a fifth time for “Outstanding Period Costumes for Series” for Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Sarah Botstein ’94 is nominated for her work directing two of the three episodes of the PBS documentary series The U.S. and the Holocaust, in collaboration with Lynn Novick and the legendary documentary director Ken Burns.

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“Midge,” the character Zakowska has been dressing for five seasons, “is a perfect Barnard student on every level,” she told Barnard Magazine in 2019. “Because the thing about Barnard is, it’s about being independent. It’s about having your own mind, making your own judgment.” And the designer has helped to bring these very qualities to life for Midge through her dazzling costumes.

A recent New York Times article profiling Zakowska described her as “the sorcerer of costumes” who understands “perfectly the magnetic and transcendent allure that fashion can offer.”

Botstein (below), who has worked with Burns for more than 25 years, described the three-part series as a complicated story that takes an unflinching look at truths about what Americans understood about the Holocaust and when, what citizens and government leaders did and said about it, and how attitudes about immigration shaped the country’s response. The six-and-a-half-hour series won critical acclaim. The Atlantic called it an “excellent project, which should be required viewing for all Americans.” The Hollywood Reporter said it was “one of the most vital projects in Burns’ five-decade relationship with PBS.”

For Botstein, the project carried a deeply relevant personal meaning. “On my father’s side, I’m a first-generation American. I’m the oldest grandchild, and my father was a refugee here himself. He came in 1949. I knew my grandparents and great-grandparents and their friends,” Botstein told Barnard Magazine last year. “So the Holocaust was very real to me. I think the most rewarding experience of working on this film is how much I’ve learned about their history and trying to, in some interesting way, honor their memory and their experience by sharing the stories of people who had different and similar struggles.” 

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Barnard women have a proud tradition of walking off with TV’s top prize, from Emmy-winning journalist Paolo Ramos ’09 and Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon ’88 to television producer and documentary filmmaker Sheila Nevins ’60, who has won more Primetime Emmy Awards than any other person — 32! — as well as 35 News and Documentary Emmy Awards.