From the first question, Variety’s A Night in the Writers’ Room gathering of five drama showrunners was a lively affair as the scribes compared notes and reflected on how much television has changed in a short time.
But nothing sparked up the session, moderated by Emily Longeretta, Variety’s senior TV features editor, like the discussion of how each showrunner prefers to work — and what it takes for them to actually get work done.
For Jennie Snyder Urman, showrunner and executive producer of CBS’ “Matlock,” she has to free herself from the desk to get creative juices flowing. The lengths to which she goes to get her work done surprised her fellow panelists.
“My writing process is tied to my walking,” Urman said during the panel held at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. “I do that every day. I take my scripts for walks. My husband’s gotten calls that’s like, ‘We saw your wife in Tarzana and she’s in sweats and she’s got papers and she’s talking and he’s like, ‘she’s working.’ I just think better when I’m moving.”
R. Scott Gemmill, showrunner and executive producer of HBO Max’s “The Pitt,” said he completely rejects the idea that writers’ rooms have to work all night.
“I’m pretty slack about the writer’s room. I only work with the writers from like, 11 to 2. I feel like a small, quick meeting is something much more effective,” Gemmill said. “I encourage them to be off living life so that they can bring stories to the room. I don’t believe in being in the room for eight hours. I would be sound asleep. They would have to wake me up like four times.”
Sterlin Harjo, creator and showrunner of FX’s “The Lowdown,” chimed in with his preferred schedule: “I do 10 to 4.”
Gemmill added that there’s another key consideration for shows that are based in Los Angeles. “We come into work and it’s like, get your work done and get the hell outta here and beat traffic, and let’s do it again tomorrow.”
Brad Ingelsby, creator and showrunner of HBO’s “Task,” brought an entirely different perspective. He’s a one-man-band on his series that stars Mark Ruffalo.
“It’s just me in my office at home. I sit in the chair every day. I get up every day early in the morning and write until the kids get home. That’s my trick,” Ingelsby said. To which Gemmill injected: “You wanna come and sit with us for a while, just have some friends?”
Ingelsby took the joke in stride and added, “When people ask me for any advice about writing, I say that the only valuable piece of information I can give you is to sit in the chair every day. And I do it every day — I just sit in the chair.”
Harjo then took up the thread.
“I admire that because it’s what I want to do. What I want to do is be a disciplined writer,” Harjo said. “And I try. I’ll do certain things, but I usually end up like driving to a coffee shop, to office, to home, to a coffee shop, on a walk to a thing, and then like, never write.”
Harjo’s candor likely encouraged Ingelsby to confess that he never writes scripts based on outlines. That also brought out multiple perspectives.
“I don’t even know how to outline stories. That’s probably why I sit in my office so long every day. My brain doesn’t work like that,” Ingelsby said.
“Do you just free write?” Urman asked.
“What I like about writing is discovery. And when I do an outline that’s so strict and I’m so married to an outline that I lose that discovery,” Ingelsby explained.
“Part of what I love about writing is the more time I spend with the characters, the better I can write them and the more complex and layered they become. So if I’m so married to a beat sheet, then I feel like there’s no discovery left. I’m just inputting these beats along the way. So I have some ideas. I kind of know where it goes emotionally. I think I know where the characters go, but I don’t really outline that well, which I know some of the executives don’t like, but it’s the only way I know how to do it.”
Jenny Han, creator and showrunner of Amazon’s “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” offered the perspective of being an author who is adapting her own trio of YA novels. When asked by Longeretta about the process of pacing out episodes over multiple seasons, Han admitted that her roadmap for the TV series changed over time.
“My vision was always to do just the three seasons, for the three books,” Han said. “And then I think it was during Season 2 when I was realizing — or maybe it was the beginning of Season 3 — we asked for another episode and they were like, ‘Great.’ And so we moved from 10 to, it was seven first season. Second season, we had eight, then we had 10 on the third. And then I was like, ‘I think I need one more.’ And then I’m like, you know, actually I think I need a movie.’ And luckily, Prime Video was happy to accommodate that wish.”
(Pictured: R. Scott Gemmill, Jenny Han, Sterlin Harjo, Brad Ingelsby and Jennie Snyder Urman)
