From casting to costumes to music direction and composition, three Occidental alumni live out their Hollywood dreams while being honored by their peers
Daniel Selon ’08 was at a friend’s house on July 15 when his phone started pinging non-stop. One particular text stood out from the rest: “Congratulations, you genius witch!”
It came from Jac Schaeffer, creator of Agatha All Along, the Marvel Studios series (streaming on Disney+) starring Kathryn Hahn as the titular witch alongside a coven of costars, including Patti LuPone and Aubrey Plaza. Selon and his team had been nominated for Outstanding Fantasy/Sci-Fi Costumes in the Creative Arts Emmy Awards competition.
“Soon after that text, we had a very emotional FaceTime call with the costuming crew where I got to sob and tell them how much I love them all,” says Selon, an actor-turned-costume designer who won a 2021 Emmy in the same category as an assistant costume designer for WandaVision, the predecessor series to Agatha.
When the Creative Arts Emmys were handed out September 6 and 7 at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles, Selon was not the only Oxy alum in the chase for an Emmy; Emma Choate ’20, a field producer and casting department member for Love on the Spectrum, was vying for her second consecutive win for Outstanding Casting for a Reality Program. And when the Daytime Emmys on October 17 are presented in Pasadena, Kyle Rodriguez ’16 will look to take home his first statuette for Outstanding Music Direction and Composition for the Apple TV+ series The Secret Lives of Animals.
When Selon considers his trajectory as a costume designer, he points to his father’s own path as an architect. The two professions, he suggests, are closely related: “You’re creating forms that go over bodies; you’re creating negative and positive spaces; and you’re turning something you design from two dimensions into three.”
After graduating from Occidental as a theater major, Selon landed bit parts in the occasional commercial and TV show, but what resonated most with him on set were the garments he was given. “I loved how wearing costumes informed and made me feel a certain way as an actor,” he recalls. (Selon learned to sew during his time as work-study in the Theater Department’s costume shop.)
Delving deep into costume design, Selon designed on several shows such as The League on FX, but he found his footing once he began as assistant costume designer under Mayes C. Rubeo on Marvel's Thor: Love and Thunder, WandaVision, and DC’s Blue Beetle. In the wake of WandaVision‘s Emmy win for costuming, Schaeffer offered him the role as costume designer on Agatha—an opportunity he embraced to the fullest.
“With Agatha, it was so intentional about how we told the stories of these witches, with everyone in the costume department breaking out their tarot cards or lighting candles while we worked,” he recalls. “It truly was incredible.”
Every costume tells a story, Selon adds. “I have to come to the table with creative ideas and say, ‘I have this real estate on this cape, it’s going to be on screen a lot, so how can we add to a character’s lore by adding something to it?’ (“I just think he’s a wizard,” Hahn said of Selon when the show premiered last fall. “He was so invested in the soul of this.”)
Compared to its Marvel Cinematic Universe predecessors, “This show is different,” says Selon, who identifies as queer. “It has the most authentic queer representation in any cast within the MCU.”
Although Agatha was unable to conjure up an Emmy win for Selon and his team, he’s already deep into a new dream job: designing the costumes for producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s revival of The Muppet Show, due in 2026. “This is going to be a super fun and energetic and playful show, while paying homage to the original,” he says.
Reflecting on his Emmys experience, he wrote on Instagram: "My heart is full and I'm feeling so grateful to have been on a long and lush journey with Agatha All Along. This project and these teammates mean the world to me. … May the goodness of this show live on and on."
Were it not for her older brother Kyle, Emma Choate might not have an Emmy sitting atop on her fridge (“I know that sounds bad but it has a nice shelving unit to hold the statue,” she explains).
Kyle, who is autistic, found himself gravitating toward the characters on the Australian version of Love on the Spectrum, the unstructured reality series that follows young adults with autism as they navigate the dating world. Emma and Kyle often watched the show together on Netflix, where it first aired in 2020. (The U.S. iteration premiered in May 2022.)
“I really saw my family in the stories that were being told, especially with all the humor and laughter on screen,” says Choate, who majored in media arts and culture at Oxy. “The series showed how people on the spectrum can find love and that they deserve to find love.”
After working on several documentary films for MSNBC as an associate producer, Choate decided Love on the Spectrum was an ideal project for her, and she didn’t hesitate to shoot her shot. She cold-emailed series co-creator and director Cian O’Clery, remarking how she connected so strongly to a show about a family supporting someone with a disability.
Choate joined the show at the outset of the second season. She and her fellow producers are responsible for finding potential romantic partners for the cast, securing the ideal locations for the dates, and ensuring everyone, including the cast’s families, are comfortable on set. In casting the series, “We look for warmth and authenticity in our principal leads,” she says, “and they have to have a certain openness to their personality.”
As a student at Oxy, Choate won the Media Arts and Culture Department’s Chick Strand Prize for Innovation and Excellence in Media Production for her senior comps film Note to Self, which screened virtually during her last semester at Oxy after the pandemic shut down the campus that spring.
“The work that Emma does with participants is really interesting and unique—not simply logistical casting and producing, but more holistic life coaching and collaboration,” notes Broderick Fox, the James Irvine Professor of Media Arts and Culture at Oxy. “She is seeking and finding ways to incorporate purpose, meaning, and ethics into an industry not well known for such things.”
In 2024, the casting team of O’Clery, Choate, Sean Bowman, and Marina Nieto Ritger won the Emmy—a feat that O’Clery, Choate, and Bowman repeated on September 7. “It is amazing to get that recognition and to feel seen for the work that we do because it’s such a small, unique show,” Choate says. (With an additional win for Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program, Love on the Spectrum has amassed seven Emmys to date.)
Since wrapping up season three last fall, Choate has has her sights set on directing documentaries. “At Oxy, Professor Fox taught us the many sides of the filmmaking process, and I love directing,” she says. “I’m looking to continue to work on shows that feel really meaningful to me and that can have a direct impact on people.”
And where, exactly, is her second trophy going? "Right above the fridge,” she says, “next to the other one."
For the Apple TV+ series Jane, which was inspired by the work of conservationist Jane Goodall, Kyle Rodriguez spent many hours in studios finding the right instrument and mood for animals as varied as the music he enjoys. “Doing my ethno-musical research on each animal was a lot of fun,” he notes. “It was great to play a sitar one day, for an animal living in India, and then the next day to learn how to play the guzheng, a Chinese zither.”
When it came to The Secret Lives of Animals, the Apple TV+ nature series narrated by Hugh Bonneville, “the work consisted more of building unique soundscapes and writing bespoke themes for each individual animal,” he says. As lead composer on the series, Rodriguez led the music department as well—producing, arranging, and recording the score with a more than 40-piece orchestra.
His efforts paid off. “When I read the Emmy nomination list, I freaked out,” Rodriguez admits. His nomination for music direction and composition is one of six for the BBC Studios production, including Outstanding Science and Nature Program, as well as nominations for directing, cinematography, single-camera editing, and sound mixing and sound editing.
Because every episode is focused on a different animal, Rodriguez crafted a different musical palette for each episode. “Scenes with a baboon might have a more action-Western feel,” he says, “while scenes with a sun bear climbing up five stories into a tree might have a more warm, cuddly atmosphere.”
Rodriguez began his Hollywood career as an assistant to Emmy Award-winning film and TV composer Nathan Barr on shows including The Americans (FX), The Great (Hulu), and Carnival Row (Amazon Prime). He subsequently wrote the score for AFI Directing Fellow April Maxey’s short film Work, which screened at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
An economics major at Occidental, he credits the College for instilling in him lessons he took to the soundstage. “There was always such a focus on being intellectually curious, forming opinions for yourself and how to be your own teacher,” Rodriguez recalls, “and I truly think if it weren’t for Oxy, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
Reflecting on his Emmy prospects, his tone turns nonchalant. “If I don’t win, that’s fine, because I have a long career ahead of me—I know there will be more opportunities down the road,” Rodriguez says. “It’s an honor to be nominated.”
David Silverberg is a freelance writer based in Toronto.
Top photo: Two-time Emmy winner Emma Choate ’20 with her dog, George, a 2-year-old Belgian Malinois/Goldendoodle mix.
