Three-time Emmy winner David Nutter is set receive the Director Guild’s 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Achievement in Television Direction.
The award will be presented February 10 during the 76th annual DGA Awards at the Beverly Hilton.
Working across a wide variety of genres from sci-fi to drama to crime procedurals, Nutter has directed two dozen pilots, 21 of which were picked up to series and were responsible for more than 1,550 episodes of television. He won two Emmys for HBO’s Game of Thrones — one for directing in 2015 and the other for Outstanding Drama Series in 2019 — and another for directing the premium cabler’s 2010 miniseries Band of Brothers
He also won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series for “Mother’s Mercy,” Season 5 finale of Game of Thrones. He has received six other DGA nominations since 2006 for episodes of The Sopranos, Entourage, limited series The Pacific and three for Game of Thrones. He also helmed the series’ famed “Red Wedding” episode.
“David has had a truly phenomenal directing career on so many of the most high-profile series in episodic television. His amazing track record of directing pilots that launched successful series includes: The Time Traveler’s Wife, Deception, Containment, The Flash, Arrow, The Mentalist, Supernatural, Without a Trace, Smallville, Millennium and Roswell, among many others,” DGA President Lesli Linka Glatter said in a statement. To quote the cover of our own DGA Quarterly, David is truly the ‘King of the Pilots.’”
He started his career working on 21 Jump Street in 1987 before landing on The X-Files, where he also directed several early episodes. This move gave him the opportunity to direct his first pilot, for the sci-fi series Space: Above and Beyond, which cemented his status as one of television’s most sought-after pilot whisperers.
“The DGA has always been my foundation, my shining light, my bulwark against the impediments that so often crop up in this industry,” Nutter said. “This is really a career pinnacle of sorts for me and validates what I’ve been doing to such a tremendous degree. Combined with the great support of my family, and my friends, and my fellow crew members and creatives, I can’t think of anything more gratifying than to receive this commendation.”
