USC Scripter Awards: Maggie Gyllenhaal Wins For ‘The Lost Daughter’; Danny Strong Tops TV With ‘Dopesick’

Maggie Gyllenhaal won the USC Libraries’ Scripter Award on Saturday for her adaptation of Netflix’s The Lost Daughter, based on the novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante, making Gyllenhaal a frontrunner to take home the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Since 2011, the Scripters have proven a remarkable bellwether for the Academy Awards in the category, syncing up eight years in a row. They’ve diverged in each of the past three awards cycles, however, though Gyllenhaal is no doubt hoping to start a new streak.

Danny Strong won the TV award for the episode “The People vs. Purdue Pharma” from Hulu’s Dopesick, based on Bety Macy’s nonfiction book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America. Accepting the award, Strong noted that bringing the story of the OxyContin epidemic to the screen was no easy task. “Nobody wanted to make the show,” he said. “We got passed on by everyone but Hulu.”

The awards honor the authors of printed works alongside the screenwriters who adapt their stories.

In the evening’s other award presentation, Barry Jenkins, a TV nominee for Amazon’s The Underground Railroad, received the USC Libraries Literary Achievement Award for his contributions to cinematic storytelling, including his work adapting the 2017 Scripter winner Moonlight and the 2019 finalist If Beale Street Could Talk.