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.

Now available on Google Podcasts!  

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!