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Sean O'Malley expects to be less nervous this time.
The Youngstown native and 1998 Ursuline High School graduate is nominated for an Emmy award for the second year in a row.
This year he's up for outstanding sound mixing for a limited or anthology series or movie for the Netflix show "Beef." Last he was nominated for outstanding sound mixing for a comedy or drama series (one hour) for HBO's "Euphoria" (the mixing team from "Stranger Things" won).
"I was busy working on another show (last year)," O'Malley said. "I stayed until about midnight the night before. I was very nervous and we got there a little late. I was the one who was supposed to talk if we won and didn't have time to work on a speech. I had something written on my phone, my eyes were getting bleary and I remember thinking this is why I gravitated toward the technical side instead of the acting side.
"It was a lot of fun, and I had a blast. We lost really early in the day, so I was able to relax. I'm glad we weren't the last category."
The Creative Arts Emmy Awards will be presented over two days this weekend and will air on FXX at 8 p.m. Jan. 13.
O'Malley, 44, did dabble on the acting side growing up, being involved in youth theater at Youngstown Playhouse from age 10 through high school.
"I wasn't into sports at all," he said. "The typical things kids are sort of ushered into weren't working for me, but I was an extrovert and needed something to channel that energy to ... Soon as I got on stage, I loved it. I've basically been in some form of the entertainment business ever since."
Interest in the tech side of entertainment started when a friend of his mother bought him a four-track recorder, and he started recording himself and his friends making music. At Bowling Green State University, he minored in audio recording.
After graduation with little money and no connections, he moved to southern California with dreams of working in the music business.
His timing couldn't have been worse, He arrived when the recording industry was feeling the effects of Napster and other illegal downloading sites. CD sales were cratering, and companies were laying people off, not offering opportunities to newcomers.
At the suggestion of a friend, he started looking for work doing sound for film and television.
"My first job I got off Craigslist and it paid zero dollars, but slowly I built up a resume of low-budget films," O'Malley said.
He went from low-budget film to reality TV because the pay was better. According to his IMDb.com page, O'Malley did more than 120 episodes of TLC's "Four Weddings," several episodes of MTV's "Punk'd," a "Top Chef" on Bravo and other reality programs.
The money was better, but it wasn't satisfying work.
"I came out here to do things I'm really in love with, and I was not finding joy in this," O'Malley said. "From now on, my focus is going to be high-level scripted stuff. I really wanted to do an HBO show."
The person who helped make that a reality was actor / writer / director / producer Mark Duplass. He had worked with Duplass before and saw him at a party. Duplass was doing a low-budget film that he could only offer O'Malley about $100 a day to do. However, if he took the film, he was also doing a pilot for HBO, and he'd hire him for that job as well.
"I give him all the praise because he actually followed through," O'Malley said. "I had done scripted movies, but I was not used to working in that environment. I'm sure a line producer said we're going to use the sound person we always use and Mark said, 'No, use my guy.' It's hard to do that."
He did 16 episodes of Duplass' "Togetherness" and 16 episodes of "Room 104," an HBO anthology series Duplass created. That experience helped him get "Euphoria," and "Beef" was produced by the same production company as "Euphoria."
Sound mixing involves two facets. O'Malley is the sound mixer on location, the person trying to capture as much usable live sound as possible. The other unit does post-production work, adding sound that couldn't be captured live.
The sound team for "Beef" is nominated for "The Great Fabricator," the ninth episode of the 10-episode season. He described it as an episode full of challenges - gunfights, explosions, yelling on sets with lots of echo and recording actors in a scene where everyone is wearing masks.
"We try to grab as much of the organic beauty as we can get, but it's always tricky," O'Malley said.
Between the writers' strike and the actors' strike, O'Malley was out of work for nearly a year. Now that both are settled, he's getting ready for season three of "Euphoria," which should start shooting in the first part of 2024. It's exactly the kind of show he dreamed of doing.
"Shows like `Euphoria' are so good. Actors do low budget movies for the opportunity to showcase their skills. Working on a series like `Euphoria' has all of that, but it's also a big-budget HBO show."