But this came up in the room, which is predominantly African-American, and sometimes things can be generational. WAITHE I don’t have a black executive on the studio or network side, and so there is a level of trust that they have to have for me. WAITHE A big one we had, “Do black people call the cops?” which is very tricky.įUTTERMAN Didn’t they trust you to answer that question? What’s been the biggest debate you’ve had, in that room or with the network, about getting material to screen? Save Peter, who oversees a team of researchers, you all run your writers room. But it’s a bit like a doctor, I imagine, you’re going to go into all areas of medical practice, end-of-life care or obstetrics or whatever it is, and then you do one good operation on an elbow and suddenly you’re the elbow dude. MORGAN I had a fantasy of being able to anything and everything. Mine was always female characters.įUTTERMAN Like ( to Morgan), I think that you should maybe think about focusing on royalty. MILLER It’s also develop your specialized strength, don’t fight it. But getting fired was the best thing that happened to me. There’s a real structure to comedy, and I was incapable of that. You gotta come up with a joke, you gotta come up with a button, you gotta get out of the scene. My first job as a staff writer is on this great show.” But I got fired because I’m not funny. KEMP My first job was The Bernie Mac Show, and I thought, “Oh, this is awesome. I realized I like writing very specific characters, often people of color who are just living their lives - and since those shows are very hard to come by, I created one. The third show I ever wrote on was The Chi. I also wrote on a Nickelodeon show called How to Rock, and I wasn’t good at doing that either. WAITHE I wrote on Bones for a season, and what I learned is that I’m not good at writing that kind of television. MILLER And exactly what you always dream of hearing from your wife. Just tell me now ’cause I don’t want to find out 25 years into our marriage.” ( Laughter.) And when I met my now wife, Anya Epstein, who is the actual great writer in our family, she spent a good portion of the beginning of our marriage saying, “Please just tell me now. It was a quartet of Will & Grace shows called “Fagmalion,” and I was the gay man in training to learn how to properly be gay.įUTTERMAN Yeah. If I scanned each of your IMDb profiles, what would be the most surprising credit, and what did you learn from it?ĭAN FUTTERMAN I played Barry on Will & Grace. Everyone would sit down, and the people on the other side would go, “OK, so who am I listening to?” And I’d go, “Me, the girl from Connecticut, I’m going to pitch you the drug-dealing show.” It’s not a funny story, but it does speak to how much has changed, even in the past five years. KEMP Yeah, I walked into the room with 50 Cent and, at that time, Chris Lighty. I’m turning bright red just thinking about it.ĬOURTNEY KEMP I was very, very fortunate because the first show I ever pitched was Power. You don’t even know how to word anything, I’m just dancing around it as much as my upbringing would allow - and then you realize you’re doing it to Rory Gilmore! But it was fine for them they loved it. Let’s start broad: What’s your best - be it the most amusing or the most horrifying - pitch story?īRUCE MILLER The one that comes to mind is when I had a pitch that we were going to do a female genital mutilation story on Handmaid’s Tale.
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