Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

WATCH: Shira Haas can’t curb her enthusiasm about ‘Unorthodox’ Emmy nod

One of the time-honored traditions of any awards season is watching actors pretending to be caught totally off guard by news of their nominations. Desperate to seem “chill” and “relatable,” these celebrities want us to believe that they are too busy running errands or watching tennis to pay attention to the highest prizes in their craft.

Not so for “Unorthodox” stars Shira Haas and Amit Rahav who, like reasonable people, spent yesterday morning waiting with bated breath to see if the Netflix series, which follows a young Hasidic woman as she leaves her Williamsburg community for a new life in Berlin, would snag an Emmy nomination for Best Limited Series or TV Movie.

Reluctant spouses on the show, they’re also real-life neighbors in Tel Aviv, and they watched the virtual nominations announcements from a laptop propped on Haas’s bed. They may look like your average hyper-photogenic couple effortlessly rocking silk loungewear in the middle of the afternoon, but they’re as tense as anyone should be who may or may not win a huge award. You can see Haas perk up and deflate when a nomination for the series “Unbelievable,” titled similarly to “Unorthodox,” is announced. And when they find out that “Unorthodox” really is in the running, they make some of the craziest noises the Schmooze has ever heard.

As Evan Ross Katz, the writer who posted the video put it, “This is so pure.”

Haas, who was also nominated for Best Actress in her category, spoke to a series of breathless interviewers in the hours after her nomination was announced and sounded as adorably astonished as she was in the video. Asked if she expected to receive her first Emmy nod by the age of 25, she replied, “The answer is definitely no, but I feel so very, very grateful. And I always believed in the show, but I’m surprised, to be honest.”

Irene Katz Connelly is an editorial fellow at the Forward. You can contact her at [email protected].

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.