Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

The Disney Plus Original series is about a young Cuban-American girl who embarks on a journey to become the future president of the United States. Creator Ilana Peña talks about the very personal origins of the main character, Elena Cañero-Reed: "Elena is very much based on me… I wanted to write about that nerdy, type A, messy middle school girl that I hadn't really seen."   Ilana goes on to discuss finding universality in her own personal story. "We're all human beings, and that's what I want to present on the screen while also honoring my identity and my background. I didn't wake up every day and say, 'Another day as a Latina!' I woke up and I was like, 'Did I forget my social studies assignment?'"   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

The biopic about televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker is based on the documentary of the same name. Writer Abe Sylvia talks about what drew him to the project: "I grew up in Oklahoma in the 80s, and that's right in the middle of the Bible Belt, and while I wasn't raised religiously, it was all around me, and when that scandal first hit, it was everywhere. I wasn't familiar with [Tammy Faye] before that but it certainly made a huge splash in the neighborhood."   Abe also dives into the process of writing and researching a biopic. "I think there's a little bit of osmosis that happens from watching so many hours of footage… the important part of the research was to get it into my own DNA and to separate that from 'How do I include all of these facts?' I think that was the ultimate value of the research."   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Eliza talks to Write On about how she approached adapting a 20-year-old comic book series for FX: “I really wanted to update the way we talk about gender and the diversity of gender in this landscape… it's a more nuanced look at the diversity of the gender spectrum and also making clear that gender and chromosomes are not equal to one another."   Eliza goes on to discuss how she built her writer's room for the show. "We had playwrights [in the writer's room], we had TV writers, we had a novelist, and it was a really exciting group of people who kind of all brought pieces of themselves to the table. The writer's room is one of my favorite parts of television. I really love the collaborative aspect of TV."   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Alissa and Alyson talk to Write On about creating the adult animated comedy series for Adult Swim starring Maria Bamford and Tim Robinson. Alissa explains: "I had this thought, somehow, that [animation] is easier than live-action, and that is not true at all… and I feel so lucky that I was able to do this with Alyson and that we have the incredibly talented team that we do because, I mean, it's not for wimps."   The collaborators go on to discuss what it’s like working together in the animation realm. "I actually didn't even understand how hard [animation] was until we set out on the journey,” says Alyson, “but it also is really fun to write because you can do anything, and it's a way to be silly… the two of us together made more sense for it to be animated."   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

The playwright turned screenwriter talks about what it’s like to write material based on real people for the FX TV series. "My job was to adopt 20-something Monica [Lewinsky]'s point of view… and so I wrote based on Monica's story, and then I had the incredible asset of Monica Lewinsky herself reading my scripts and giving me feedback, so I basically trusted that in the writing of it, the scripts would reflect on how Monica experienced it."   Sarah talks about her beginnings as a writer and how it doesn’t matter where you’re from. "You need something that's good on the page; that's all you need. You can live in Idaho, you can live in Ottawa, you don't have to live in The East Village or Santa Monica… if you are in any position to be able to write, I do think that having faith in what you put on the page is really what matters."   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Brendan Hunt, who plays Coach Beard on the hit show Ted Lasso, talked to Write On about writing the second season of the series along with his co-creators Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, and Joe Kelly: "I think we were very fortunate that we had our first season under our belt pre-lockdown because part of why we were still able to do, hopefully, a half-decent job on Season 2 was that we had the whole crew back plus one, so we knew each other, and we had a sense of each other… it was not preferable, but we made it work." He goes on to describe what he thinks is one of the hardest things to do as a writer: believing in yourself. "If you do the part where you believe in yourself, which is theoretically the harder part, then believe not just that you can do the big picture thing… but that you can do these hurdles. If every schmuck in town has a screenplay, then you can at least be one of the schmucks."

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Our Lady J speaks to Write On about the challenges of creating a show like POSE. "Writing a lot of these storylines for POSE was challenging for my mental health because they were so triggering of experiences that were really hurtful to me and experiences that changed me as a person. But being able to not be triggered while I'm writing, and to work through that was key to the success of getting those stories onto the page and onto the screen.”   Our Lady J goes on to speak about getting her first Emmy nomination, selecting the music featured on the show, and her creative process. "The more we know ourselves, the better artists we are, the better storytellers we are, and the more honest we're able to be in our storytelling and in our relation to others. For character writing, you absolutely cannot think you're better than the character. For story writing, you can't be afraid to go places that might be scary. You really have to know who you are to be able to get to that place as a storyteller."   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Ali talks to Write On about how she selects writers for the Paramount + original series. "For a lot of people, it's about the specificity of 'Can they write for my show?' For me, it was a little bit more 'Can they write?'… Some of the writers that we met with, I just loved the concept of their script, and I felt like they could bring that weirdness that we were going to want."   Ali goes into the specifics of what it takes to craft a TV show for tweens. "You can't try to pander… even with kids - they'll smell it from a mile away. For us, it was 'Does this make us laugh? Does it feel true to the show?' We tried not to overthink it."   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!     Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Stacie was a Grand Prize Winner in 2020 for her feature film script Clementine. Big Break Contest Director Kala Guess talks to Stacie about what it was like winning the contest, how her network has expanded since then, and what it takes to get a screenwriting career going. "You really, really don't know when your script is going to connect with people, so just believe in what you're writing and write what you love, write what you're passionate about."   Stacie also discusses how being bi-racial informs her work: "I am bi-racial, and I feel like people who are bi-racial can connect with each other so much more in regards to identity, regardless of what our racial makeup is because we have so many feelings of not belonging to whichever side or we identify too much with one and not so much with the other, and there's always someone else who's trying to define our existence."   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!     Now available on Google Podcasts!

Following a tragic car accident in Greece, Beckett, an American tourist, finds himself at the center of a dangerous political conspiracy and on the run for his life in this Netflix thriller.   The writer and director discuss what it was like to collaborate. Writer Kevin A. Rice explains: "What was great about the process was Ferdi and I clicked very early, and we just met over lunch. It was very, sort of, informal… at the time, Ferdi had, like, a page description of what he was shooting for with this movie, and I was given that, and I was like, 'Oh yeah, I'd love to work on something like this.'"   Director Ferdi Cito Filomarino goes on to talk about the central character of Beckett and how he subverts the useful thriller tropes. "We set [Beckett] in a way that is basically the worst possible character type to be in a man-hunt-thriller in some ways: the type of person that he is, the type of demeanor that he has, and attitude… By the end of the movie, he basically has to confront all of that."   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!     Now available on Google Podcasts!