Lara Lyn Carter earns Southeast Emmy nod

ALBANY — Albany chef and food personality Lara Lyn Carter’s star is shining brighter now that the four-episode cooking and travel show she created for Georgia Public Broadcasting has been nominated for four Southeast Emmy awards.

Carter, who lives in Albany with her husband, Chris, and their three sons, said she got one of the best surprises of her life Mother’s Day weekend when she learned that “Thyme for Sharing with Lara Lyn Carter” had received the nominations.

“It happened to be Mother’s Day weekend and they announced them on a Friday evening,” Carter said, adding the nomination announcements were lived-streamed. “We (she and Chris) had invited both sets of our parents over to the house that night for dinner. So, we all piled in the sun room and we put my laptop on the table.”

Although the excitement was palpable as everyone gathered around the computer, Carter said part of her didn’t expect what was to come, though she felt in her heart of hearts that she and her team had produced a top-notch product.

“I knew that we had made a good show; we had a great team,” Carter said. “I knew we had been submitted for some Emmys but I did not know if we would actually get an Emmy nod, as they call it.”

And then it happened.

“We got four that we were submitted for. It was unbelievable,” she recalled. “It couldn’t have been any better. To have our parents here, our kids were home, it was just amazing. We couldn’t have asked for better. It was just great. It made for a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend. I didn’t care about anything else. I was done.”

The Southeastern Emmys, Carter said, are awarded by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and are one of several regional award ceremonies the organization presents in addition to the primetime Emmy Awards.

“This type of Emmy differs from what people are used to seeing Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt on in the sense that these are done by regions,” Carter said. “Now, I’m still up against NBC, ABC, Fox, CBS, any of the other networks, but these are done by regions, like the Northeast and the Northwest and the Southwest.

“And you’re judged by a group of your own peers, which I really like. They have a whole criteria. You can’t be someone who just all of sudden went to work at a TV station, and now you’re qualified to judge the Emmys.”

The judges will be considering “Thyme for Sharing” in four categories — lighting, photography, directing and hosting.

As the creator and owner of “Thyme for Sharing,” the host says she’s equally invested in the nominations garnered by members of the show’s production team, including Jim Sichinolfi, who was nominated for his work in the lighting area, and Nick Blitz, Carey Harrison and Kevan Ward, who were nominated for photography.

Ward, a multi Emmy-Award-winning director who was vitally instrumental in making Carter’s vision of “Thyme for Sharing,” a reality, earned the nomination for directing, which was no surprise to Carter.

“Kevan and I connected very well and he had a vision for the show and I had a vision for the show and it was amazing how much they mirrored one another,” Carter said. “He has that ability to look at it. He’s looking through the lens and he’d be like, ‘Come here you’ve got to see this.’ And I’d come around the camera and he’d say, ‘Now that’s a shot that’s going to take people’s breath away,’ or ‘That’s the look we were wanting right there.’ And he was right. He was very encouraging.”

While Carter repeatedly heaped praise on Ward and the rest of the team, Ward said a great deal of the show’s success comes from its creator and nominated host.

“She’s just great,” Ward said. “You walk into a room and even if you’ve never met her before it’s like you’ve known her all your life. She’s the nicest person. Lara Lyn’s a person with great warmth and it really shines through.”

Ward, who had been involved in travel shows, said that one of the reasons he thinks “Thyme” — his first experience with a food show — stands out is its premise, which he said makes it more than just a show about cooking.

“When Lara Lyn and I first met we talked about it and I really liked the idea,” Ward said. “It didn’t look or feel like any other cooking show that’s out there. It’s really pretty.”

“Thyme for Sharing” is designed to combine traveling, history, socializing, creating and cooking.

Ward is quite proud of the fact that the show turned out like it did, considering that principle filming started in January and the first episode ran in June. “It was just a minuscule amount of time to do a whole series,” he said. “The fact that we did it well enough to get four nominations speaks to the ability and dedication of everyone that was involved.

“We put so much into it. It was a labor of love.”

That sense of the show being a labor of love also resonates with Carter, who has no doubt that she and her team created something worthwhile and unique.

“Basically when this got started the concept for it was something that I’ve always been passionate about I didn’t see out there,” said Carter.

Over the four episodes, Lara Lyn and her crew traveled to places like Knoxville, Tenn.; Monticello, Va., and Jekyll Island, where she would learn about the local food and culture before returning to her home kitchen and putting what she learned to use in her own special way.

“I wanted to explore the locations through the food and come back home and take my experiences with travel and put my own twist on where I found inspiration and serve it to my family and friends,” Carter said. “I really wanted to focus on the South, predominantly because of the stereotypical concept that Southern food is all one type of food.”

It was the final episode of the run, one that was filmed right in her Southwest Georgia backyard, however, that helped her capture the Emmy recognition.

“You had to choose one episode to be submitted because the way the judging is done there is no way people could go back and watch multiple episodes,” Carter explained. “The one that was chosen was the one I was proudest of cause it was the one we filmed here in Southwest Georgia at Grey Moss Plantation in Lee County.”

In that episode, Carter and her crew, which for most shoots included eight or nine people, explored one of south Georgia’s signature pastimes and the source of some wonderful meals, quail hunting.

“Every episode had a theme behind it; you were going on location and you come back inspired by dishes in that area,” Carter said. “But I wanted to show, with this one in particular, some South Georgia quail hunting. You know quail hunting is confined to a very small portion of the United States, and in Southwest Georgia, we are dominant in it. So I really wanted to show my back yard so we did quail.”

During the episode, Carter leaned on the expertise of Chokee Plantation hunting guides Jay Kimbrel and Stuart Wiggins to learn about the sport before retiring to the antebellum home that sits on the property, which she said provided some important ambiance.

“The scenery in all of (the episodes), in my opinion, was beautiful, but I think Kevan really wanted to stay true to who I was since it represented me being a southwest Georgia girl,” said Carter. “We served the meal in this gorgeous over-200-year-old home that was built before the Civil War.

“I loved that episode for a lot of reasons. Of course, it being right here, and Jenny Crisp (whose family owns Grey Moss) has become a dear friend of mine. With all the episodes I was able to have either family or good friends in, which made it really nice, but being able to film in that particular old home (was amazing). The the whole team, Beth (Pilgreen), Carey, Nick, Amy (Cooper), Graham (Yost), Ashley (Mengwasser), Kevan, everybody just did an amazing job.”

While the GPB team’s expertise obviously had a significant effect on the quality of the show, at least one person believes it’s Carter’s infectious presence that sets “Thyme for Sharing” apart from other cooking-based shows.

Although he describes the show as “crisp, tight, exciting, (and) as good as you can do it,” Doc Lawrence, who co-wrote Carter’s “Southern Thymes Shared” cookbook and consulted on “Thyme for Sharing,” thinks the secret of the show’s success is its host.

“She’s a Georgia original,” Lawrence said. “She’s a natural more than anything else. You see it sometimes in sports or in the theater with performers. She’s got it. What you see is what you get. She’s a priceless gem.”

Lawrence, who has become dear friends with Carter, said he believes she will ultimately be one of the world’s foremost ambassadors of Southern food and culture.

“She’s going to be bigger; she’s just getting started,” he said. “You couldn’t have a finer emissary than her. She has done more to put the food and cooking styles of south Georgia on the map than anyone in my lifetime. She stands totally alone. She’s like a travelling ambassador for the South.”

Lawrence, it seems isn’t the only one who sees a bright future for Carter.

“There’s no way that somebody else isn’t going to snap her up,” Ward said. “In five years, we’re going to be talking about Lara Lyn, the next network food star. She has the determination to do it, too.”

Carter and her Los Angeles-based agent are currently meeting with several well-known media outlets about her future plans, and they are hoping a regional Emmy win might elevate her to another level of stardom.

“It could do a lot; it could seal a deal,” Carter said. “It’s certainly brought a lot of attention.”

Carter will know whether she’ll be able to bill herself as an award-winning chef soon when she heads to the awards presentation June 11 at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead in Atlanta, where she’ll face some stiff competition.

In the hosting category, Carter is up against established talent, including Adam Schwartz, Heather Catlin and Chip Caray. Regardless of whether she takes home the award, she feels she has achieved something special.

“The people I’m up against, I’m the only in my category that hasn’t won an Emmy, so I’m the odd man out,” Carter said. “Everybody that I’m up against has already won an Emmy. But that’s OK. At least I’m in good company. I’m definitely the low man on the totem pole. But hey, listen, I got on the totem pole somehow, so I’m good. I’m happy.”

Carter is immensely proud of what she’s created.

“There’s that certain amount in your mind, that you go, ‘Wow, I really almost can’t believe it,’” Carter said. “But at the same time, I could see it so clearly when I started with this. I could see this show so clearly in my head. I didn’t know if I’d have the ability to convey it to everybody, but I could see it. And it came out exactly the way that I wanted it to.

“It’s almost like the child that you dream about and you want them to be healthy, and have 10 fingers, and 10 toes. It was kind of that same way because I could see it so clearly. I can get choked up now just talking about it. I can still go back and watch the episodes and get excited again. It came out like I wanted it.”

Carter’s website, laralyncarter.com, features portions of each of the four “Thyme for Sharing” episodes and has links to view the episodes in their entirety.