A Night in the Writer’s Room: Drama Panel

From the first question, Variety‘s A Night in the Writers’ Room meeting of five drama showrunners was a lively affair as the writers compared their notes and reflected on how much television has changed in a short time.

But nothing led to the session, moderated by Emily Longeretta, Variety‘s senior TV editor, like discussing how each showrunner prefers to work — and what it takes to actually get work done.

For Jennie Snyder Urman, showrunner and executive producer of CBS’ “Matlock,” she has to tear herself away from her desk to get the creative juices flowing. The effort she puts into getting her work done surprised her fellow panel members.

“My writing process is connected to my walking,” Urman said during the panel at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. “I do that every day. I take my scripts for walks. My husband gets calls like, ‘We saw your wife in Tarzana and she’s in sweats and she has papers and she’s talking and he says, ‘she’s at work.’ I just think better when I move.”

R. Scott Gemmill, showrunner and executive producer of HBO Max’s “The Pitt,” says he completely rejects the idea that writers’ rooms have to work all night.

“I’m pretty lax about the writers’ room. I only work with the writers ages 11 to 2. I feel like a small, quick meeting is something much more effective,” Gemmill said. “I encourage them to stop living so they can bring stories to the room. I don’t believe in staying in the room for eight hours. I would sleep deeply. They would have to wake me up four times.”

Sterlin Harjo, creator and showrunner of FX’s “The Lowdown,” chimed in with his favorite schedule: “I do 10 to 4.”

Gemmill added that there is another important consideration for shows taking place in Los Angeles. “We show up to work and it’s like, do your job and get out of here and avoid the traffic, and let’s do it again tomorrow.”

Brad Ingelsby, creator and showrunner of HBO’s “Task,” brought a very different perspective. He is a one-man band in his series starring Mark Ruffalo.

“I’m just at home in my office. I sit in the chair every day. I get up early in the morning every day and write until the kids get home. That’s my trick,” Ingelsby said. To which Gemmill said, “Would you like to come and sit with us for a while, just have some friends?”

Ingelsby took the joke, adding, “When people ask me for advice about writing, I say 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 picked up the thread.

“I admire that because it’s what I want to do. What I want is to be a disciplined writer,” Harjo said. “And I try. I’ll do certain things, but I usually end up driving to a coffee shop, to the office, home, to a coffee shop, on a walk to something, and then, never writing again.”

Harjo’s candor probably encouraged Ingelsby to confess that he never writes scripts based on outlines. That also brought up several perspectives.

“I don’t even know how to outline stories. That’s probably why I sit in my office for so long every day. My brain doesn’t work like that,” Ingelsby said.

“Do you just write freely?” asked Urman.

“What I love about writing is discovery. And when I do an outline, it’s so strict and I’m so married to an outline that I lose that discovery,” Ingelsby explained.

“Part of what I like 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 when I’m so married to a beat sheet, I feel like there’s no discovery anymore. I’m putting in these beats as I go. So I have a few ideas. I kind of know where it’s going emotionally. I think I know where the characters are going, but I can’t outline it very well, which I know some executives don’t do. nice, 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 an author adapting her own trio of YA novels. When asked by Longeretta about the process of delivering episodes over multiple seasons, Han admitted that her roadmap for the TV series changed over time.

“My vision was always to just make the three seasons, for the three books,” Han said. “And I think it was during season 2 when I realized — or maybe it was the beginning of season 3 — that we asked for a new episode and they said, ‘Great.’ And so we went from 10 to, it was seven first season. In the second season we had eight, in the third season we had ten. And then I thought, ‘I think I need another one.’ And then I think, actually I think I need a movie.’ And fortunately Prime Video was happy to accommodate that wish.”

(Photo: R. Scott Gemmill, Jenny Han, Sterlin Harjo, Brad Ingelsby and Jennie Snyder Urman)