Former LaMoille woman wins Emmy

Sheila Steele-Taylor (right), 33, of Austin, Texas, formerly of LaMoille, stands with her boss, Beth Sepko of Beth Sepko Casting, following their Emmy win Sept. 8 in Los Angeles for outstanding casting for a drama series for their work on “Friday Night Lights” on NBC. (Photo contributed)

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AUSTIN, Texas — After 10 years of working in the TV and movie industry, a former LaMoille woman made it big when her work on the NBC show “Friday Night Lights” won an Emmy Sept. 8.

Sheila Steele-Taylor, 33, of Austin, Texas, has served as a casting assistant on movies like “Hope Floats” and “Miss Congeniality” with Sandra Bullock, “The Rookie” with Dennis Quaid, and “Secondhand Lions” with Michael Cain and Robert Duvall. She’s also worked on the movies “Sin City,” “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl,” “The Return,” and all the “Spy Kids” movies.

Steele-Taylor, who attended LaMoille High School, moved to Texas in the early 1980s with her mother, Deb Cogdale, and sister, Shelly. Cogdale said her daughter worked as an extra on films while she attended college.

“She would dedicate her whole day to being an extra, and she’d bring her homework to the set,” Cogdale said.

Steele-Taylor dabbled in other work before breaking into the movie industry in 1997. Today she works for Beth Sepko Casting as an assistant to Sepko.

“She volunteered her butt off for movies. One day she was asked to book extras for a film ‘The Quiet.’ She did an amazing thing. They needed 350 extras to work for free, for just a T-shirt,” Cogdale said.

“They started turning them away at 450 people. She got all those people to show up to the set with just a T-shirt as payment. She’s really got a gift for that,” she added.

Cogdale said her daughter decided to switch from casting extras to casting principal actors after years of working long hours. She worked on commercials for a short time before the Beth Sepko Co. landed the local casting work on “Friday Night Lights” in Texas. She and Sepko do the location casting for the show, while the primary roles go through casting agents in Los Angeles.

Cogdale said her daughter and Sepko casted more than 100 principal actors, people who have a role for a single episode, in the first season of the show last year. In August, the company was notified they had been nominated for an Emmy for outstanding casting for a drama series for the 59th Creative Arts Emmy Awards held Sept. 8, prior to the Primetime Emmy Awards held Sept. 16.

They were nominated with “Brothers and Sisters,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” and “The Tudors.”

“I was telling everybody, ‘You know she’s nominated for an Emmy,’ and then they’d give us free drinks,” Cogdale said laughing.

On the night of the event, held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Cogdale was waiting anxiously by the phone, since the creative arts Emmys are not shown on TV.

“I just knew they were going to win. It was just so overwhelming. It’s an honor to be recognized, but then to bring it home is unbelievable,” she said.

Beth Sepko accepted the Emmy on-stage alongside fellow casting agents from LA, Linda Lowey and John Brace, who had been nominated in the same category for “Grey’s Anatomy.”

“It’s kind of a shock. She got up during the ceremony and went out in the hallway after they won. I just started screaming on the phone and called everybody I knew and then some,” she added.

Some of the people Cogdale called were her mother, Gladis Cogdale of Arlington, and her sisters, Janice Wamhoff of LaMoille and Barb Hild of Arlington.

“When Deb called me I started crying. To think of my little Sheila winning an Emmy. I’m so proud of her. She’s my baby,” Hild said.

Wamhoff agreed and said to get recognized for her work is amazing. Despite her time in the TV and movie business, Wamhoff said Steele-Taylor hasn’t let it go to her head.

“She hasn’t let the stars in her eyes get in the way of what really matters. Family is still very important to her,” Wamhoff said.

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