It’s an adaptation of a memoir called The Pink Marine by Greg Cope White. I can’t say too much more about it because they haven’t done a press release on the show yet.

 

2.) What inspired you to create this show?

I didn’t create it. It came from Greg’s own life experience, and it was adapted into a pilot by my showrunner Andy Parker. I have been involved since October 2021, though, and have had a hand in creating the show’s world and characters.

 

3.) Tell us a little about your writing journey to get to this point.

I started out as a playwright and ended up in The Juilliard playwriting program from 2008-2010. I was also producing the veterans writing project for WGI at the time for veterans and family caregivers which I did from 2008-2018.

 

Tom Fontana hired me in 2010 to be a freelance TV writer on his show Borgia which aired on Canal Plus and then later on Netflix. I also worked on Copper for him on BBC America too. After many detours, I eventually wrote a pilot, and about six months later, that pilot was read by the showrunners of American Odyssey on NBC. They hired me on a Skype meeting. I had five days to get to LA to start work, and I had 150 dollars in my pocket. Long story short, I was in LA a week later, working in this room, and that’s when I started learning what it was like to be a staff writer in room. I did some bouncing around where I would work in a writers’ room for a year, then be out of work for a year. It was really hard and scary. You can’t see what’s around the corner and that is an occupational hazard in this business. Your lifelong dream or your worst nightmare could happen in the next five minutes. Anyway, I always worked several freelance jobs. It was struggling and a blizzard of 1099s for a long time and I also taught TV writing privately, which I love doing and went very well for me.

 

I did three years on Mayans MC on FX, which taught me many dos and don’ts and I was very grateful that the showrunners let the rest of us produce our own episodes which is happening less frequently industry-wide and is folly in my opinion because writers on set, learning to produce is a critical experience — it’s great on the job training for those who want to showrun eventually. And it benefits the studios and networks to have writers learn it because then they’ll have more competent showrunners down the line. It’s a smart investment.

 

Producing also gives you a better understanding and appreciation for the incredible talent, innovation and artistry and passion that designers, heads of departments and the crews that work for them bring to realize a show. From set designers, to the art department, hair and make-up, costumes, to camera, to catering, to transportation and office support staff. Every show hires hundreds of people who work really really hard to create the worlds and characters that draw their first breath on the page. It’s very humbling and inspiring to see that.

 

After Mayans MC, I was fortunate enough that Andy Parker read a pilot of mine. We hit it off, and he hired me first as a Supervising Producer and then later bumped me up to Co-EP and asked me to come with him to get the show off the ground in New Orleans which I’m doing right now until the end of September.

 

4.) When & where can people tune in?

Netflix in the first half of 2024.

 

5.) How does writing differ from producing?

Writing in TV is a fundamentally improvisational and collaborative process when it’s working well. And in that way there’s not too much day light between writing and the kind of producing writers do in TV. Writer-producers differ from other types of producers like Producing Directors, Line Producers, Post-production producers, etc. Those producers are, of course, creative, but they really get into the weeds with budgets, schedules, and managing the needs of every department on the show. Producing Directors, for example, will spend a lot of time early on creating pattern budgets for the show, determining how many days each episode would need to be shot, helping the showrunner get crewed up with heads of department (meaning the lead designers for costumes, hair and make up, sets, cinematography, music, sound, props et cet). Line producers and Unit Production Managers keep track of production expenses on a line by line basis and work very closely with the producing director.

 

In my experience, showrunners and the writer-producers assisting them go from creating and writing the show in the writers’ room to then working with directors, producing directors, line producers, and department heads to materialize the show which necessarily evolves the story itself. Writer-producers are responsible for synthesizing and incorporating notes they may get from studio or network execs in a way that makes sense for the budget and the time they have in their schedule.  The scope of writer-producers’ thinking has to be both expansive, covering the whole season itself down to the granular — for example, considering what a character wears or what kind of car they drive and what story that tells about them.

 

For early to mid-level writers who get to produce their own episodes, their job is to absorb the showrunner’s vision for the episode and then sit on all the department page turn meetings during pre-production where the producers and first Assistant Director will take each department head and their teams through an episode, page by page, and discuss any relevant elements that specific department needs to prepare for shooting that episode. They’ll take notes on what decisions are made in those meetings so that when they go to set, they can make sure the showrunner’s decisions are being carried out, and when changes have to happen, writer-producers can run interference and get the showrunner’s sign off. Writer-producers also have to do this while respecting the director’s space on set. The main priority though it to be of service to the showrunner and the scripts. Meaning — doing whatever makes the SR’s job easier — covering the meetings that need to be covered, doing whatever rewrites they ask of you, keeping track of all the little nit picky changes that come up. Giving honest and respectful feedback on not only script related issues, but other issues that come up when you’re managing 300 to 400 people.

 

I guess the short answer is that producing is the stage where you concretize the world you created and letting other artists in — the good ones always bring options that give even more life and dimension to characters and the world through the specificity of physical objects, clothes, light, and locations.

 

6.) Any guidance, tips, or advice for folks about television writing?

Get really, really good at writing beats and weaving them into 3 acts for a half hour show or 4-5 acts for an hour show. Then write outlines before you write a script. Beats and outlines will be 80% or more of your job, so learn to love it and get good at it. It’s what I teach, I am dogmatic about it because it brings efficiency to your creative mind and teaches you how to quickly identify story issues when you hit a wall in a writers’ room — and there will be many. If you hate writing outlines, take a fiction writing class or some other kind of class that will force you to write in prose that is economic and vivid. That rigorous skill will translate into your scripts, outlines, and pitches and make them even more engrossing. It will make you a better dramatic writer.

 

Besides that, do your best to stay out of debt but most importantly, take care of your body, mind, and soul. This is a tough business in a tough world, and capitalism is a bitch. You are not in control of most of it. You are in control of how you show up on the page and in the rooms you step into though. Just remember that and continue to live and enjoy your life.