Chicago has another reason to pay attention to DTF St. Louis. The HBO Max limited series entered this year’s Emmy race with 13 nominations and has already converted six of them into wins, including a pair for creator, writer, director, and executive producer Steven Conrad, a Northwestern University alum and longtime Chicago resident.
Conrad won Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie and Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, making him one of the standout individual winners from Night Two of the Creative Arts Emmys.
The show also collected Emmys for David Harbour as supporting actor, Linda Cardellini as supporting actress, cinematography and picture editing.
And it is not finished yet.
DTF St. Louis remains nominated for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, giving Conrad another shot at Emmy gold when the main ceremony is held September 14.
For Reel Chicago, Conrad’s connection to the city goes well beyond the fact that he graduated from Northwestern University.
Since Conrad graduated in 1991, he has been publicly identified as a Chicago resident for well over a decade. A 2009 Chicago magazine profile described Conrad as living in Lake View, and a 2019 WBEZ interview still referred to him as a Chicago-based writer and director.
That makes him one of those creatives whose career has operated on a national and international scale without fully severing its Chicago roots.
In a 2016 Newcity interview, Conrad was asked why he felt at home in Chicago so quickly. “I had a friend say about Chicago, ‘You don’t date Chicago, you marry it,’” Conrad said. “That’s probably it. It’s a serious relationship. So it’s worth writing about.”
That relationship has lasted decades.
Conrad built his reputation as a writer first, then expanded into directing and producing, with credits including The Weather Man, The Pursuit of Happyness, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Wonder, and the cult-favorite Amazon series Patriot.
That familiarity is all over DTF St. Louis.
The series blends dark comedy, relationship dysfunction, loneliness, infidelity, and murder into a story that deliberately resists easy categorization. It can be broad and crude one moment, melancholy the next, then suddenly turn into something closer to a crime story.
That tonal balancing act is exactly what Conrad has spent years refining.
And Emmy voters clearly noticed.
The show’s six wins so far span acting, writing, directing, editing, and cinematography, suggesting the appeal went well beyond one performance or one craft department.
For Conrad personally, the writing and directing victories are especially meaningful because they recognize both sides of his creative identity.
Speaking recently about why the Midwest continually finds its way into his work, Conrad shared, “I live in Chicago and raise my family here.”
He explained that many of his friends and neighbors are Midwesterners, so when he creates characters, he naturally draws on the people and behavior he knows.
“I just know more about what makes them tick,” Conrad noted. “So when it comes time to make somebody up, I just sort of lean on something that has familiarity for me.”
He did not simply create the world of DTF St. Louis.
Conrad shaped how it moved, sounded, and landed. During a podcast interview, Conrad said his friends and neighbors are Midwesterners, so when he creates characters he naturally leans on that familiarity. He also joked about the contrast between the supposedly exotic energy of the acronym “DTF” and the much less exotic sound of “St. Louis.”
For DTF St. Louis specifically, Conrad has talked quite a bit about the show’s real subject being middle-age loneliness and the fantasy of consequence-free intimacy. He told TheWrap that he was drawn to the idea of married people using hookup apps because they promise encounters without emotional consequences:
“Most of us know better.”
Courtesy of HBO Max
That makes his Emmy showing less of a sudden breakthrough than a long-delayed acknowledgment of a filmmaker who has spent decades making work that rarely fits comfortably into one box.
And for Chicago, it is another reminder that some of the city’s strongest creative voices do not necessarily leave the city behind when Hollywood comes calling.
DTF St. Louis may have St. Louis in the title.
But one of its biggest Emmy stories has been living in Chicago for years. And Reel Chicago is rooting for him on Monday.
