You have questions. I have some answers.
Q: How many Oscar winners have had their own TV shows?
A: Would you believe dozens? While there was a time when a major movie was thought as higher status than a TV role, even acclaimed actors have long gone to whichever form offered work. In fact, we can break the Oscar/TV names into categories: people who won Oscars and then did TV, people who were TV actors and went on to win Oscars, and even some who won Oscars while working in TV.
That last category includes three winners of supporting actress Oscars: Allison Janney, who won for “I, Tonya,” while starring on “Mom,” Viola Davis, with “Fences” and “How to Get Away With Murder,” and Patricia Arquette, who won her Oscar for “Boyhood” about two weeks before her series “CSI: Cyber” premiered.
Another supporting actress winner, Lee Grant in “Shampoo,” picked up her Oscar about five months after her short-lived sitcom “Fay” was taken off the air. NBC showed some leftover episodes after Grant’s Oscar win.
As for Oscar winners who afterward had TV series, the long list goes back at least 65 years, when Loretta Young hosted an anthology drama and goes on to Walter Brennan, Shirley Booth, Donna Reed, Anthony Quinn, Shirley Jones, Broderick Crawford, Patty Duke, Cloris Leachman, Timothy Hutton, Marlee Matlin, Mary Steenburgen, Dorothy Malone, Maggie Smith, Anna Paquin, Reese Witherspoon and Whoopi Goldberg, among others.
People who were famous first on TV and then won Oscars include Sally Field, George Clooney, Art Carney, Martin Landau, Robin Williams, Jamie Foxx, Mo’nique, Melissa Leo, Denzel Washington, Red Buttons, Lee Marvin and Henry Fonda. (Fonda was, of course, one of our greatest actors, but he did not win an Oscar until shortly before his death in 1982, and he’d starred in several TV series before then.)
Q: What happened to “The Blacklist”? NBC listed it as renewed, yet it’s nowhere on the schedule.
A: NBC did order another season of the thriller starring James Spader, but is holding off its telecasts until January 2019. It then plans to put “Blacklist” on Friday nights, paired with another series, action drama “Blindspot.”
Q: Long ago, on “In the Heat of the Night,” Althea Tibbs left the show with the explanation two weeks later that she’d taken the kids and moved back to Philadelphia. I don’t remember hearing any reason for her leaving the series. What happened?
A: Anne-Marie Johnson, who played Althea on the 1988-94 drama (inspired by the movie of the same name), reportedly decided to “pursue other challenges” when she left the series in 1993. But she told the show’s fan club in a 2013 interview that “I knew Howard (Rollins, who played Althea’s husband Virgil) was moving on and storylines were being created for other characters. ... I had a great run and I wanted to leave before Althea was phased out.” In the same interview, though, she said “there were other factors I won’t go into, but the timing was right and I was fortunate to move on to other respected projects.”
Q: I have recently been bingeing the series “Heartland.” I was wondering if the lead actors Amy and Ty are really a couple. They are great together.
A: Amber Marshall, who plays Amy Fleming on the Canadian drama, and Graham Wardle, who plays Ty Borden, are impressing you with their acting. They are not a real-life couple. Marshall, in fact, is married to Shawn Turner, a photographer.
