The new film Golda – starring a bewitching Helen Mirren as Golda Meir, the Iron Lady of Israel, was written and produced by Nicholas Martin. Martin is best known for writing the 2016 film Florence Foster Jenkins. With two amazing biopics about strong, defiant women, we talk about how to find the moment that defines a character and how to focus the story on a short period of time instead of a cradle-to-grave saga. For Florence Foster Jenkins, it’s her journey to Carnegie Hall and for Golda Meir, it’s the 18-day Yom Kippur War. To Martin’s surprise, that focus on the war turned the film Golda into a thriller. 

“The structure was dictated by the phases of the war,” says Martin. “So, it was really a thriller and a war film rather than a personal drama about a woman’s struggle to command a nation at war. That’s what gave it its thriller shape.” 

To pinpoint that moment, Martin turned to a quote from Winston Churchill. 

“He famously said at the beginning of the Second World War, when he became Prime Minister, ‘All of my mistakes have brought me to this point.’ … And then I thought I think this is the same for Golda… We’ve got such a thumping narrative of the Yom Kippur War, such a clear beginning, middle and end and she’s under so much pressure, I think if we cut away from this it would dilute the tension and it would be mixing genres in a way. So, it seems that just sticking to this one story which is complicated enough, let’s try and keep it simple, tell this one story well,” says Martin.   

Listen to this episode to find out more about Martin’s research process, how learning to use a spreadsheet upped Martin’s structure game, and hear why Meryl Streep threatened to never speak to Martin again while making Florence Foster Jenkins. 

The Apple TV+ series Physical, starring Rose Byrne, is set to launch its third and final season on August 2. Set in the idyllic but fragile beach paradise of sunny 1980s San Diego, Physcial is a half-hour dark comedy following Sheila Rubin (Rose Byrne) as she navigates her personal demons, most of which come in the form of noxious self-talk and an eating disorder.  

I talked with series creator and showrunner Annie Weisman about writing this highly personal show that explores the dark undercurrents of the feminine experience. “I think about things like beauty culture and diet culture and it’s easy to dismiss them as something women are locked in, are trapped in,” says Annie, “but in many ways, for a lot of women, that’s all the control they have is their appearance. One of the goals of the show is to show a woman who feels really trapped in that way, really torturing herself, and have her go on this journey of discovering a way – this opening a door – into a new way to be in her body, a new way to be in the world, and a sense of empowerment. But I wanted to be honest about the struggle of it, it’s not easy! It takes three seasons of this show for her to get somewhere!”  

We also discuss her beginnings as a playwright and her journey to making the transition from stage to television. “I didn’t necessarily know a lot about visual storytelling – that was what I had to learn,” says Annie. “My first television scripts were filled with dialogue, I didn’t really understand how the camera worked, I had characters entering and exiting in every scene. I had to learn about the way time works in television and film.”   

Annie also shares her advice for writing original TV pilots and using your own authentic voice. Take a listen. 

When one woman's business trip turns into a quest to find her family, things get super funny in the new comedy Joy Ride, a raunchy road trip movie with a global spin. The film stars Oscar-nominee Stephanie Hsu, Ashley Park, Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu. 

Screenwriters Teresa Hsiao and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, who wrote the movie with writer/director Adele Lim, sat down with Final Draft to talk about writing a passion project they never thought would get made. “We were just going to write this dumb thing together and it's going to be just for us and then all of a sudden people are like, oh, we like it we want to make it, we're like, right now?” Hsiao said.

The writers were thrilled, and they had worked together years before on the animated show Family Guy. “We were well versed in being collaborative and working together so when we started writing the spec it was very natural,” says Chevapravatdumrong.

Listen to Final Draft's Write On podcast to hear about the writing process, the laughs and making a movie they never thought would get made.

Joy Ride is out in theaters July 7.

The world out there is a brutal place. If you have a hankering for some of the rough justice you remember from old-school lawman Raylan Givens – you’re in luck. Justified: City Primeval is about to drop on FX starring the same Raylan (Timothy Olyphant), we all came to know and love in the six seasons of the hit-show Justified. His hair has more sliver streaks, partly due to age but also due to worrying about his precocious 15-year-old daughter Willa (played by Olyphant’s real-life daughter Vivian), in this thrilling 8-episode limited series.

I talked with showrunner Michael Dinner about evolving Elmore Leonard’s beloved lead character in this spinoff that’s set in the mean streets of Detroit, while staying true to the risk-taking Raylan who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty in the hollers of Kentucky. Now the father of a teenaged girl, Raylan’s priorities have shifted – so will he still reach for his gun with the same ease as before?

“In a way, this is the second chapter of his life,” says Dinner. “His first chapter is, ‘You can’t go home again.’ We pick him up 8 or 10 years later, he’s divorced, he has a daughter. I look at the work in these 8 episodes and it’s more adult and I feel he’s made another step – not the actor, but the character. So, I think it’s interesting to look at it with that kind of perspective, that it is a character who is further down the road.”

Dinner also shares his advice for creating characters who ignite conflict and push each other’s buttons in ways that help sustain a show over time and engage the audience in deeper ways. Also, I ask the question, who is Raylan Givens without Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), and if we might see Boyd Crowder anytime soon. Dinner’s answer may surprise you! Click to hear more from our podcast with Dinner about the new limited series Justified: City Primeval. Hear more in Final Draft's Write On podcast. 

Justified: City Primeval comes to FX on July 18.

With an excited fanbase and even more exciting plot twists, the drama/thriller series Cruel Summer is back for Season 2 on Freeform. Final Draft sat down with showrunner Elle Triedman to talk about murders, music from 1999 and the show's impressive ratings. (Season 1 was the most watched series in the Freeform's history!).  

This delicious show tackles teenage friendships, betrayals and characters with very big flaws. Triedman says one of her favorite parts of the show is all the room to play with morality. "Saints are boring. No one wants to write a saint, no actor wants to play a saint," she says.

Character flaws make things interesting, she says. And teenage life is about the bond you create with those around you. “It is that ride-or-die, it is the person where you call and you say I need you to help me... you know, bury a body and they say where should I meet you? That sort of crazy intense with all the highs and all the lows. And so, to build that friendship from ground zero and then blow it up,” she says. It's not only super fun to create, it's fun to watch. Click to hear more from our podcast with Triedman about the new season of Cruel Summer.

The surprise hit and breakout role for Jenna Ortega as the titular character in Netflix's spin off of the Addams Family, Wednesday, was just as exciting to create as it is to watch. "The writer's room started the first week of lockdown, so writing a Wednesday show during a global pandemic felt on brand," says creator Al Gough about writing the pilot before selling the show to Netflix. 

Final Draft's Write On Podcast sits down with Gough and his co-creators Miles Millar to hear about how they revitalized this character with a modern twist and brought back nostalgia with the return of Christina Ricci in the 8-episode series that follows Wednesday's life as she attends a boarding school for other teens with magical abilities. 

Wednesday is currently streaming on Netflix.

Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World tells the emotional journey of the world famous boxer from his poor upbringings in Texas to his rise to Heavyweight Champion of the World and then onto reinventing himself when it was time to look beyond the gloves.

Final Draft's podcast Write On sits down with writer/director George Tillman Jr. (Soul Food, The Hate U Give) to hear the inspiration behind this film. "Biopics are very complicated to do, so I just started falling in love with the idea of this journey that this man took from a young man to an older one," says Tillman Jr. on how he chose Foreman's story. "Everybody knows him as the grill guy, so we really showed how he became the pitchman that led to the grill you know." Listen to hear more about bringing this larger than life man to the big screen. 

Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World released in theaters April 28.

The story of how Daisy Jones & the Six went from book to TV show is a fascinating one. Scott Neustadter, best known for comedies like 500 Days of Summer and The Disaster Artist, was sent the unpublished manuscript about the rise of a rock band in Los Angeles in the 1970s, on a whim.

Little did he know it would become a bestseller. At the time, he had given the book to his wife, with whom he had never worked before. But she just so happened to be at Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine. They loved the book and his adaptation and the show was born. Now, Neustadter is the co-creator and co-showrunner of the Amazon show.

Final Draft’s podcast Write On sat down with Neustadter to hear about his process. “If you're going to write television– it's an important, huge undertaking so you have to have passion, you have to love the thing... It isn't something you can do on the side. It will become your whole life, so you better love it,” he said.

Daisy Jones & the Six is available on Amazon Prime.

Please note: this podcast was recorded prior to the WGA Strike.

Final Draft's Write On podcast series sits down with co-creator Rafael Casal on the second season of his half-hour comedy series Blindspotting. The show centers on Ashley, who lives in Oakland, Calif. When her partner (who is also the father of her son) is sent to prison, she must move in with her mother-in-law, played by Helen Hunt. “That’s a part of writing for actors. You know what they're capable of and so sometimes in the script you're not writing everything they do, but you're writing the window into them having the freedom to do what they do best,” Casal says about writing for actors.

He also discusses what he looks for in a writer when hiring to fill his room. “I don't want somebody who's just trying to color within the lines book, especially for a show like ours that is really non-traditional. I'm looking for people that are willing to kick out an idea and try something even if it only works 70% of the way but you took the swing,” he says.  

Blindspotting airs on STARZ.

Written by screenwriter Dana Stevens, The Woman King is a historical epic about an all-female warrior unit that protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey during the 17^th to the 19^th centuries. The film is set in the 1820s and stars Viola Davis who is tasked with training the next generation of young warriors.  Stevens chatted with Final Draft about discovering the “richness of the story” while writing the script. “I just could not believe that I did not know this story, that I had never heard of it,” Stevens said. “And the more I delved into it, just on my own… I mean, I was watching things on YouTube, like things in French, you know, I was just I was just blown away.”

When asked for advice to aspiring screenwriters trying to break into the industry or write a passion project such as The Woman King, Stevens had some inspiring words. “Go ahead and write. Write a lot. Have a few things you're working on. Have your personal project that you just love, that you think maybe no one will ever make, but also maybe have another project that's your, you know, more commercial thing,” she says. 

The Woman King is now available on a variety of streaming platforms.

Triangle of Sadness is a satirical black comedy from writer/director Ruben Ostlund. The film, staring Woody Harrelson, takes the world of luxury boating to the next level with its wry comedy that exposes many upstairs/downstairs differences among the characters. Ostlund discusses the importance of pitching his project before he starts writing. “If you are a writer or if you are a director, your profession is to be the artistically responsible for the product that you are producing. You are the one that is deciding what ideas should be put into this, what should taken be taken out,” he says.

The film won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. This was Ostlund’s second win at Cannes. He talked about how special it is to him to have had these successes. “I have been kind of lucky because every time that I have finished a previous film and we have had a premiere of the film in Cannes, there's a little table on a small cafe where I walk to with my producer and my mentor. Two of my best friends and we sit down and we talk about what is going to be the next project that we are working on. And so, it is kind of how to say astonishing that we have been on this little cafe and exactly the same table four times now and decided which next project is.”

From visionary director Robert Eggers, The Northman follows a young Viking prince (Alexander Skarsgård) on a quest to avenge his father's murder. Eggers and his co-writer, Sjón, chatted with Final Draft about the collaborative process of working on the script. "I had lunch with Alexander Skarsgård, who said that he wanted to make a Viking movie," Eggers said, "and I said, 'I can make a Viking movie, and I know the perfect person to write it with me,' and luckily, Sjón wanted to... I wrote the first draft, and from there, we just [passed] it back and forth for eternity, all through production, all through post-production."

When asked if they would recommend collaborating with a writing partner on a project, Sjón said, "I really recommend working with a co-writer on films. I've written poetry and novels and all sorts of things, but when it comes to film, I really think it works when you're writing with someone you know because film is already a medium of collaboration, and to go into it from the beginning, from the story level as a collaboration, I think is really great."

The Northman is now available on Amazon Prime. 

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Based on the true story of Mamie Till, Till follows Mamie as she seeks justice for the brutal lynching of her son, Emmett Till. When asked about how she chose to capture Mamie's spirit on the page, Chukwu says, "It's not just resiliency; it is survival, it is an active suppression of certain emotions that Black women are constantly put in a position of having to do; it is a difference between the public and the private self. Mamie was acutely aware of that... when I'm constructing scenes, I am always thinking about masks - who are they when they're all alone? ... Who is Mamie when she's by herself?"

Chukwu goes on to discuss coping with the weight of telling such heavy stories: "Writing these stories that I've written so far, when I write it in a deeply spiritual, all immersive process... I live, breathe, dream whatever it is that I'm writing, and that takes a deep emotional and spiritual toll, and I'm not really good with self-care when I'm writing... Prioritize your own self-care as well - in the writing and in the aftermath."

Till is now playing in theaters.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

From Little Fires Everywhere writer Raamla Mohamed, Reasonable Doubt follows Jax Stewart (Emayatzy Corinealdi), a fearless defense attorney in Los Angeles who bucks the justice system every chance she gets. Mohamed comments on how the show deals with its deeply complex protagonist: "The show is through Jax's eyes and her experiences and what she's doing, and as you can see, she has different relationships with different people, so people are getting parts of her. But [in] the show... we get to see all the parts." 

Mohamed goes on to discuss her choice to have an all-Black writer's room for the show: "95% of my characters on the show are Black, and they're all different types of Black, and I realized I need to be able to have conversations without having to explain to one half of the room what we're talking about - let's just cut the shorthand so that we can actually have conversations... [about] relationships and traumas and love and work and pressures and microaggressions... I was trying to just make it more comfortable and easier."

You can catch new episodes of Reasonable Doubt Tuesdays on Hulu. 

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

From Insecure alumni Jean Elie and Mike Gauyo, Send Help follows a first-generation Haitian American (Elie) struggling to overcome the challenges in Hollywood while coming to terms with a recent family tragedy. Gauyo shares his thoughts on how partnering with the Allblk [All Black] Channel benefited their overall storytelling process: "At the core of it, we didn't have to negotiate our Blackness or our culture in order to make the show... There was already a baseline of understanding of why our characters acted the way that they did or did the things that they did; it didn't have to be explained."

Elie goes on to share how the series came together in the first place: "The pandemic happened, and [Mike and I] were talking on Clubhouse about Haitian creatives and how stories get told, and how we need to not just be in front of a camera but behind the camera in order for our stories to be told in a way that feels real to us... A couple of weeks later, we got an email talking about 'How much you think you need to make the show?'"

Send Help is now streaming on the Allblk Channel and the Roku Channel.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Based on writer-director Adamma Ebo's 2018 short film of the same name, Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. follows Trinitie Childs (Regina Hall), the first lady of a prominent Southern Baptist Mega Church, as she attempts to help her pastor-husband, Lee-Curtis Childs (Sterling K. Brown), rebuild their congregation after a scandal. Adamma shares how a visit from writer-director Damien Chazelle and editor Tom Cross during her time at UCLA influenced her decision to film a short as a proof of concept for the feature: "...they talked about how they made Whiplash as a short as a proof of concept, because in actuality, the movie is a thriller about jazz musicians, and you're like, 'What does that mean?' It's easier to show than tell... I knew it was going to be a pretty tough elevator pitch, and so I was like, 'I need to make something to show for it.'"

Adamma's sister, Adanne Ebo, serves as a producer on the film; when asked what advice she would give to aspiring writers from a producer's perspective, she said, "Read as many scripts as you can. I didn't go to film school… I learned how to write just by working with Adamma... even if you don't go to school for it, even if you don't go about it the institutional type of way, reading scripts will always make you a better writer."

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. is now playing in theaters and on Peacock.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Starring Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg, Me Time follows a stay-at-home dad (Hart) who joins an old friend (Wahlberg) on a wild birthday adventure while his family is away. Writer-director John Hamburg discusses his approach to balancing character and laughs in a comedy: "I really do aim to keep the characters grounded and to treat them as human beings. Frankly, even in a movie as absurd as Zoolander, we tried to give an emotional arc to Derek Zoolander and to Hansel, and it's no different with this movie that takes place in the real world."

Despite having hugely impressive titles like Zoolander and Along Came Polly under his belt, Hamburg still experiences insecurity as a filmmaker: "...it took me a while to stop [comparing myself to others], and I fall into that trap today, having been in the business for more than two decades... I think the advice I would give a younger, more naïve John Hamburg is, 'Just focus on yourself and listen; watch stuff, and get inspired.'"

Me Time can be streamed on Netflix starting August 26. 

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2017 Big Break Category Winner Kevin Bachar stopped by the Write On podcast to discuss his new feature, The Inhabitant, starring Dermot Mulroney and Leslie Bibb. "It's a relative of Lizzie Borden set in modern times," says Bachar, "and she starts experiencing visions of Lizzie Borden, starts getting feelings of hurting her family. The question is, is this a sort of demonic possession? Is it schizophrenia? What's going on here?"

Bachar also shares the secret of how he transitioned from filming content for National Geographic to writing feature screenplays: "I think it's finding any time where you can actually get in front of the laptop. [When I lived in New York] I used to commute into the city, and that was a solid hour on the Long Island Railroad... I made a conscious decision to use this hour to write. and that was it. So that's 10 hours a week that I was able to just really focus on writing. Any time you have that free time, write."

The Inhabitant is coming to theaters later this year.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Created by Bisha K. Ali, Ms. Marvel follows Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old superhero fan who's just trying to get through high school when she discovers she has powers of her own. Ali discusses how she put together the writer's room for the MCU series: "I had a room that [reflected] the experience of the characters that we're talking about... We had to have authentic writers; we had to have writers who understood what intergenerational trauma is, what it is to be an immigrant, what it is to be a second-generation immigrant, what it is to be an outsider... in order to get this arc that I wanted to get."

Ali goes on to share her advice for writers of color struggling to tell the stories they want to tell: "I think specifically [with] writers from marginalized backgrounds... there's this conflict of, 'I just want to do what I want to do, but I've never seen an example of that. I've never seen that made because people like me don't get to tell stories...' Stop worrying about that voice and really push yourself to be true to who you are."

Ms. Marvel is now streaming on Disney+.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Based on the viral YouTube short from 2010, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On follows Marcel (Jenny Slate), a 1-inch tall shell who lives a colorful existence with his grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini) and their pet lint, Alan. When asked about creating and writing for such a unique protagonist, the original video's creator Dean Fleischer Camp says, "I think the thing that's always appealed to me about Marcel is he doesn't think of himself as small or weird or a talking shell or anything, and the film itself does not treat him with anything less than 100% dignity as a documentary subject and doesn't freak out over the fact that he's a talking shell."

Camp's co-writer Nick Paley goes on to share his own take on writing "weird" subject matter: "Do everything you can to cultivate high-sensitivity-listening to your own tastes. I think that is a skill that no one really taught us in film school: to self-authorize around the things that you love, even if you think they're dumb and kind of beside the point or not relevant to what's happening. I think the only type of work that is really special is the stuff that someone is really not sure is going to work for other people, and this film is a wonderful proof of that."

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is now playing in theaters.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Based on George Saunders' short story Escape from Spiderhead, the Netflix adaptation follows inmates at a state-of-the-art penitentiary who volunteer as medical subjects to shorten their sentences. Paul Wernick describes the moment he and co-writer Rhett Reese were introduced to Saunders' story: "Jeremy Steckler was the executive [at The New Yorker] at the time. He put it in front of us when it first was printed about ten years ago, and we fell in love with it. We said, 'We're doing it. We have to write this.' We were so passionate about it... George had laid out what was the makings of a movie, but we had to expand it out."

When asked what advice he would give to his younger writer self, Reese muses, "I feel like a part of what you need to tap into is that naive, ignorant optimism where you just go, 'Look, the odds are against me, and they're against anyone, and I'm going to go write what I want to write... and commit to it with both halves of my brain, and do as great a job as I can, and then keep doing that over and over until I break through."

Spiderhead is now streaming on Netflix.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Inspired by Stephanie Land's memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, Netflix's Maid follows Alex (Margaret Qualley), a young mother who escapes an abusive relationship and gets a job cleaning houses in order to provide for her daughter. Showrunner Molly Smith Metzler recalls the moment she knew she had to adapt the memoir for TV: "[John Wells] handed me the book, and I went home, and I read it that weekend, and I was like, 'Oh, no, I have to do this.' I say 'Oh, no' because I knew it was going to be very hard. It's an incredible memoir, but not a natural fit for television... I knew it was going to be hard to adapt, but I also couldn't picture anyone else doing it."

Metzler goes on to speak on the importance of taking notes and moving on to what's next: "You get all these notes because something is exciting to people, and then what can happen is you just spend all of your time rewriting it... My big advice is when you have the thing that finally gets read and people get excited, don't spend two years rewriting it; write the next thing because you can't rewrite things for different people. You just lose your sense of self, and you'll lose your mind, so always be thinking about the next thing; always be writing the next thing."

Maid is currently streaming on Netflix.

Based on the novel Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s by Jeff Pearlman, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty chronicles the 1980s Showtime era of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team featuring notable NBA stars Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Series co-creator and showrunner Max Borenstein describes the challenges of having to imagine what certain moments and conversations looked like without having been in the room: "Our role is to take the things we know - I look at it as the tip of the iceberg... the role of the drama is to then imaginatively reconstruct what might have been or could have been underneath the surface, and oftentimes.. you're imagining your way into that room where you have no idea exactly what was said."

Borenstein goes on to explain what drew him to tell this particular story from this particular time period: "I happen to be a basketball fan, but what was exciting to me was not just retelling the story of this particular basketball team; it was that this particular basketball team and this dynasty speaks to a change in the way entertainment worked and the way celebrity works... I think the Showtime Lakers [are] a perfect prism through which to view that moment in time."

Season one of Winning Time is now available on HBO Max.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Based on the novels by Julia Quinn, Bridgerton follows eight members of a powerful family in Regency-era England as they attempt to find love. Series creator Chris Van Dusen describes the pressure he felt writing season two after the overwhelming success of the first season: "There were a lot of expectations that were put onto it after it became Netflix's most-watched English language series ever, and it was embraced in such a huge way around the globe. I think going into season two, it [was] a very different thing from creating and producing and writing the first season of an unknown show."

Van Dusen goes on to break down the core themes of the show and how he approached centering a new member of the Bridgerton family in season two: "It all comes down to character and character development, and with Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), we got to develop and explore his story across two amazing seasons. I've always said that the underlying narrative arc of Bridgerton is this question of whether love can conquer all. Season two looks at that question through the lens of familial duty, so we were exploring this push and pull of head versus heart, of love versus duty."

Bridgerton is now streaming on Netflix.

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Set in modern-day America, Bel-Air is a re-imagination of the beloved sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, following a young Will Smith (Jabari Banks) as he makes his journey from the streets of West Philadelphia to the gated communities of Bel-Air. When asked how he got his start in filmmaking, series creator Morgan Cooper says, "I didn't grow up around filmmakers. I didn't know filmmaking was a career, a possibility. I didn't go to college; I didn't go to film school. I was 18. I had to just figure it out, and so I bought a little Canon T2i. After two days of spending time with that camera, I fell in love with it. I really caught the bug and I said, 'This is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. There is no plan B.' And with that camera, I built my career."

Cooper goes on to recall getting the official blessing from the original cast and crew of Fresh Prince to reboot the series: "I remember being on the set of the Fresh Prince reunion, so I got to meet all the original cast. We were all sitting on the set together, and we were all just talking. I remember Daphne Reid - Aunt Viv - she looked at me and said, 'We're passing you the baton. Just run with it. We believe in you.' Having that weight on my shoulders but knowing I had amazing support... I knew we were equipped to get it done."

Bel-Air is now available to stream on Peacock.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Featuring an all-star cast including Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps, and Renée Elise Goldsberry, Girls5eva follows a one-hit-wonder 90s girl group as they try to reignite their pop star fame while simultaneously having to navigate their grownup lives. Series creator Meredith Scardino shares how she prepared for pitching the series to NBC: "I tried to watch as many things and listen to as many things as I could about pitching. I ended up watching Shonda Rhimes' masterclass on pitching, and something that she said put me more at ease when she was just like... 'You're a writer. They know you're not an actor... you don't have to be this incredible, incredible pitcher. You can just try really hard to convey what you want people to know about the show."

Scardino goes on to share her advice for putting yourself on the page: "You have to just make things and trust that the thing that you connect to, someone else will connect to it. A few of the things that I have worked on in the show that have been the most personal have been some of my favorite things, and I feel like [those are] the things that maybe other people liked a lot too... just trust that if you find something funny or if you find something to be true, someone else will also feel that way."

Season 2 of Girls5eva is now available to stream on Peacock.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Starring Academy Award® winners J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek, Amazon Prime's Night Sky follows married couple Franklin (Simmons) and Irene York (Spacek), who discover a portal in their backyard that leads to a deserted planet. Series creator Holden Miller speaks on why he decided to use the sci-fi genre as a vessel for such an intimate character-driven story: "The story really takes on a life of its own, and all the themes that were of interest to me, like mortality and aging and enduring love - to tell that story about these characters seems to demand this science fiction aspect that could add a different level of grandeur and mystery and epicness to this very intimate story."

After being approached by an executive at Legendary, Daniel C. Connolly agreed to come on board as showrunner and pilot Miller's vision. On his experience as a first-time showrunner: "There's a lot of different aspects to this job that I've not experienced before in terms of this [being] my first time showrunning. I think it's just keeping a certain flexibility and trying to fight your ego sometimes when it feels like it's screwing up... it's not that hard, though, when you put the show front and center."

Night Sky is now available to stream on Amazon Prime.

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Disney+ is taking us back to a galaxy far, far away with its upcoming limited series Obi-Wan Kenobi, with Ewan McGregor reprising the titular role alongside Hayden Christiansen's Darth Vader. Star Wars superfan Joby Harold explains what drew him to writing the six-episode series for Disney and Lucasfilm: "I always thought [Obi-Wan] was this great, unexplored character when it came to canon because there is that gap between what Ewan had done with the character and what sir Alec Guinness did with the character... I was just, as a fan, eager to see what they were going to do. When I got to sort of be a part of it and figure out what they had done and what they were looking to explore, it just seemed like a really exciting opportunity."

Harold also shares the screenwriting advice that's stuck with him throughout his career: "I had a screenwriting professor named Lou Hunter who would always say at the end of his correspondences, 'Write on' ... and he would say, 'You're not good until your seventh script.' And I was like, 'I appreciate you saying that, but I feel like I've got this figured out. I know what I'm doing,' and it's just crazy to me how true that was, and I think a lot of writers get caught up in rewriting their first or second or third scripts, just trying to complete that first thought... writing and rewriting different projects is so important to finding the vocabulary of writing."

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MST3K is back! Originally running from 1988 to 1999, Mystery Science Theater 3000 was revived in 2017 due to a crowdfunding campaign led by the show's creator, Joel Hodgson. The show follows a human test subject who is forced to watch "B" movies by evil scientists alongside a group of captive robots who provide colorful commentary on the films. Hodgson explains, "We have kind of a unique relationship with the audience because it's a unique format, and it behaves differently than most shows. For some people, that's very disorienting, and for what we call the 'right people,' it just totally makes sense."

Hodgson goes on to describe what each episode looks like on the page and how they come up with each side-splitting jab: "We use about 10% of what we write. It's more like 7000 riffs that we start with... that kind of gets melted down to about 700 riffs in total. But when we brainstorm... it's wide open, and we're not necessarily looking for great ideas as much as more ideas, and out of those come the good ideas."

You can check out season 13 of MST3K on their new exclusive streaming service, The Gizmoplex!  

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Based on the incredible true story, Pam & Tommy tackles a major landmark in the early days of the Internet: the leak of Pamela Anderson's (Lily James) and Tommy Lee's (Sebastian Stan) sex tape. Co-showrunner D.V. DeVincentis discusses what surprised him the most while researching the backstory of the case: "Something that continued to come up was... how well [Pamela] dealt with it, considering she's obviously very upset by it. I would have completely lost my mind, and she really kept it together. That was surprising to me - the inner strength of this person that is most often not given a lot of credit."

Co-showrunner Robert D. Siegel goes on to share the amount of care that ultimately went into writing Pamela's character: "We were both very, very protective of the character; she's ultimately the hero of the show. There are times during the show when [Rand Gauthier and Tommy] are the protagonists, and then there are times they're also the bad guys.... but we're really with Pam the whole way. It's kind of a love letter to her in a sense."

Pam & Tommy is now available to stream on Hulu.

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Starring Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul, Dual follows a woman (Gillan) who has to fight a clone of herself to the death after she unexpectedly recovers from a terminal illness. Writer-director Riley Stearns discusses how he crafted the film's out-of-this-world sci-fi premise while staying grounded in reality:  "I didn't want the world to feel like this futuristic sci-fi space. I wanted it to still feel like we could relate to it... It's like another alternate reality where everything's the same except for this... How do people interact with each other in a world where this procedure exists?"

Stearns goes on to describe how he's evolved as a filmmaker since directing his first feature in 2014: "I would say that making Dual was the most confident and comfortable I've felt on set... There are times where you second guess yourself, and I still had those moments on Dual, but I think that knowing that your ideas have value, and trusting that, and trusting the people around you, I felt like Dual was just that experience that maybe... you wouldn't be the same person if you didn't learn those lessons."

Dual is now available in select theaters and will be available On Demand on May 20.

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Inspired by the true story of Michelle Carter's unprecedented "texting-suicide" case, The Girl from Plainville starring Elle Fanning is a Hulu miniseries that explores Carter's relationship with Conrad Roy III and the events that led to his death. Show creator Liz Hannah (The Post, Mindhunter) talks about tackling the true crime case: "I think the reaction from the media, the reaction from the general public towards Michelle and towards the case was very vitriolic, very much making her the villain... I'm very interested in the gray area of people and morality and ethics... as you start to peel away the layers, you realize just how little was talked about of what actually happened in this case, and what actually happened between these two people and the sort of mutual toxicity between the two of them."

Liz goes on to talk about how to handle the pressures of writing: "I think I would say just don't take things too seriously, and that doesn't mean that you shouldn't take it seriously.... I take my job very seriously. I feel incredibly fortunate and incredibly lucky to have this job and to be able to tell the stories that I've gotten to tell, and hopefully will continue to tell. I think earlier in my career, everything felt like the beginning or end of the world, and that's just not a good way to be creative at all."

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Based on the 2011 murder of Betsy Faria that resulted in her husband, Russ' conviction, though he insisted he did not kill her. This brutal crime set off a chain of events that would expose a diabolical scheme deeply involving Pam Hupp, played by Renée Zellweger. Creator/Showrunner Jenny Klein talked to Write On about bringing this true crime story to life: "We had a heavy research phase, and talked to as many of the real-life people as possible. And of course, this is a dramatic retelling, and some elements were fictionalized like timelines or composite characters. But we really did need to understand the facts to the best of our ability."

Jenny goes on to talk about her writing process: "Writing is rewriting. I feel like when you're starting out as a writer, I would love my first draft, and it's like, no, that's not the thing. It's going to go through so many phases and just try to find the joy in the rewrite the same way you did with the first draft. Now I love rewriting, and I can't wait to get notes and hear what other people read into it and do the next pass."

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King Richard tells the story of how tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams became who they are after the coaching from their father Richard Williams, played by Will Smith. Academy Award® nominated screenwriter Zach Baylin talked to Write On about getting the depiction of Richard Williams right for this biopic: "Richard was just such a dynamic guy. It was what you look for in any kind of protagonist. [He had] had a very distinct voice… really driven, had very clear goals that he wanted to achieve. But he could be incredibly self-defeating and self-sabotaging, and he could get in his own way and in other people's way... that just felt like such a compelling character to me."

Zach goes on to talk about getting his start as a screenwriter later in life: "I didn't sell scripts until I was 34… when I was writing from the time I got out of college to when I moved to New York and started working in film production solely with the purpose of getting a job as a writer. But I didn't really meet a ton of other writers, and I did it very in isolation. I would say that was a big mistake. I don't know if I was being too private about the fact that I wanted to do it, or that I felt I wasn't ready to show people, but I realize now that just having that network around you of other people who are doing it, who can give you feedback and also give you encouragement -- the whole networking aspect of it is so frustrating, but it's so necessary."

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Winner of the Robert Altman Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, Mass is the story of the aftermath of a violent tragedy that affects the lives of two couples in different ways. Writer-Director Fran Kranz talks to Write On about his inspiration for the film: "It was the day of the Parkland shooting, where I got so overwhelmed. You know, this sounds like a strange thing to say, but there was a kind of timing to it, sort of a perfect timing of a vulnerability where I was just kind of a freaked out dad... feeling anxieties and concerns and fears that I had never felt before… and worried about the kind of country and things that she [my daughter] was going to growing up into. So I went down kind of a rabbit hole that started just mostly because I was sort of this concerned parent."

Fran goes on to talk about his writing process, or lack of one: "I don't really have a process yet, necessarily. I wish I could just like go to a Starbucks and write. I have to, like, disappear, like I have to really go deep and I try to get up before dawn, like before the sun is up so that I'm ready to go... I need as much on my side as possible to get these emotions going."

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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."

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