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Screenplay & Film Consulting By Susan Kouguell

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Interview with ‘Wicked’ and ‘Wicked: For Good’ Co-Writer and Executive Producer Dana Fox

December 8, 2025 / / Comments Off on Interview with ‘Wicked’ and ‘Wicked: For Good’ Co-Writer and Executive Producer Dana Fox

In this wide-ranging interview, Dana Fox discusses collaboration, the challenges and joys of adapting from source material, and creating emotional authenticity and thematic depth. 

By Susan Kouguell for Script Magazine

It was a great pleasure to speak with Dana Fox about the global box office phenomenons Wicked and Wicked: For Good.  In our wide-ranging interview we discussed collaboration, the challenges and joys of adapting from source material, and creating emotional authenticity and thematic depth. 

Acclaimed writer, producer, and showrunner Dana Fox was nominated for a Critics Choice Award® and a WGA® nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay along with Winnie Holzman. Fox’s feature work includes co-writing The Lost City, Disney’s Cruella, How to Be Single, Couples Retreat and What Happens in Vegas.  In television, Fox is an executive producer for the new adaptation of Little House on the Prairie, and she was the co-creator, showrunner, and executive producer of Apple TV+’s Home Before Dark.

Wicked: For Good (2025). Courtesy Universal Pictures

Kouguell: Last year, in two separate interviews, I spoke with writer Winnie Holzman and editor Myron Kerstein about their work on Wicked for this publication. They were an absolute treat.

Fox: Winnie and Myron are two of the best. Myron is one of my old dear friends; we have done a few things together.  He is so brilliant. I have learned more about writing from watching him edit. He follows emotion stronger than anything else and how those pieces can be used to tell an emotional story.

Winnie is so smart and wonderful. We’re very complementary to each other.  I have a very structured brain; I think in movie trailers, film poster form, and then movie form. My brain is always thinking, what are going to be the big trailer moments, [laughs] which is a very strange thing to do. And Winnie loves to dig deep into characters. I’m always thinking about structure because I think of structure as character; structure is a character’s journey, and it’s where that person is along their journey. And are we hitting those moments in the places that the audience wants to experience that feeling? Also, Winnie is just so beautiful at themes. She’s so careful with words and understands the power of an individual word.

Kouguell: How did you come onto the project?

Fox: I was brought on by Jon M. Chu because he and I had worked together before and we really enjoyed the process. I had said to him, ‘I will do anything for you from now until the end of time’. He is constantly striving for excellence. He’s very collaborative, but he really knows what he wants, and I respect and love that. And so he called me and said he had another project and this one was Wicked. My secret was that I had never seen Wicked in the theatre.  It was the middle of the pandemic, so Broadway was closed, so I couldn’t rush out and see it.

Winnie and Stephen [Schwartz] were generous enough to give me the script of the play, which I read probably 25 times while listening to the music. Jon said we’re gonna be working with Winnie and Stephen to break the stories for both movies, and then you and Winnie are writing them. It was a dream come true.

I had been a fan of Winnie’s for my whole life because I was obsessed with My So-Called Life. I dressed like Claire Danes for all of high school because I thought it was the coolest thing in the entire world. So to get a chance to work with a writer whom I love and respect so much and then to even be in the room with Stephen Schwartz who’s an absolute legend, was incredible.

Kouguell: Tell me about your collaborative process.

Fox: I couldn’t believe my luck to be with Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, talking about one of the most famous plays of our time, along with Jon M Chu. Winnie, Stephen, Jon and I basically sat on Zooms for about 150 hours before we ever even started writing. That was the period where we interrogated the plays.

Kouguell: What were some of the challenges you faced adapting the source material to the screen?

Fox: We knew that we had this source material that was so beloved and that we had to be very careful with how we adapted it, and yet we knew that everything had to be different to give it a reason for existing.  The questions were: how do you make it different? How do you add the things that are not gratuitous but deepens the core DNA of this that people love so much.

We also talked about what are the inherent problems in splitting it up as two movies, and how do we approach it.

It was a very delicate dance we were doing with the source material of both the play and The Wizard of Oz film as well. We wanted to be so careful because that movie was all of our favorite movie. We knew we couldn’t hurt anyone’s memory of the Wizard of Oz either.

Kouguell: In Wicked: For Good there was a nod to the original movie. For example, seeing Dorothy’s dress from a distance I thought that was such a smart choice.

Fox: It was very controversial, apparently. People thought that was a wild choice, but to me, it was the point of the project; which was, isn’t it funny and wonderful that the story that you’ve known your whole life, you’re now realizing that every main character has their own story. And so to me, you have to not show her. You have to have her be on the sidelines otherwise you’re violating the principle of what the brilliant idea of Gregory Maguire was in making this project: The story you thought you knew isn’t necessarily exactly what you thought it was.

Kouguell: And then everyone can impose their own story onto those characters.

Fox: Exactly. And we really wanted people to feel like they could engage with the movies and that the movies were theirs even though it was a very rare experience to be able to make two movies at the same time.

Kouguell: Tell me about your collaboration process with Winnie.

Fox: Winnie and I sort of invented our own version of collaboration, and we changed it throughout the process based on what the movie needed from us at any given moment. We broke both stories at the same time. We did focus on the first one first, and then we moved into the second one. But that only existed on cards, sort of like index cards but on Zoom like computer index cards that gave us the broad strokes of what each movie was going to be.

It was interesting because once we finished carding the second movie, there were a lot of moments where we thought actually, we got to go pop back into movie one and tweak this because we’re setting up that. It was the most amazing gift and puzzle.

Once we had the cards, then we outlined the first movie together, and we started writing the first movie. And, basically, Winnie and I did any version of collaboration that made sense to us.

Either she was writing a scene and I was writing a scene, and then we put them together, interweaving the scenes. Or she would do a chunk and I would do a chunk. We would swap chunks, rewrite each other’s chunks, and then stick them together.

When the first movie was done, Winnie started doing notes for Jon and the producers and that group, and they kept working on movie one. I pivoted over and did the outline for movie two and then started beating out a blueprint version of movie two so that as soon as Winnie was done with those notes, she could come over into movie two. The collaboration just kept evolving with wherever we were in the process.

It was also really fun because I was on the East Coast, and Winnie was on the West Coast. She is a night owl and I’m a morning person. So weirdly, there was a lot of passing back and forth where, somehow we got twenty hours out of every day because of the fact that we were in different time zones. So there was always an elf working on the movies at all times.

Kouguell: The two films felt that each could exist on its own.

Fox: That was a big thing we were trying to do. You have to be able to see them if you’ve never seen the play and still like them. You have to be able to see them if you’ve never seen the Wizard of Oz and still like them.  That was the hardest thing to solve for movie two, which is – can you enjoy movie two without ever having seen either the play or movie one?

We were also dealing with the audience’s expectations that came from having watched the first movie. And the tone of the two movies is very different. It’s almost like asking the audience to go from Harry Potter 1 to Harry Potter 5 within just a year.

Kouguell:  You mentioned that the tonal shift in Wicked: For Good was a deliberate choice.

Fox:  What was so interesting about exploring this particular movie was that Glinda makes bad choices. She doesn’t stand up for what’s right when she should. I really wanted to make her more complicit in that. I didn’t want it to just be like, oops I’m Glenda I forgot to do the right thing because I was focused on doing my makeup over here. I wanted to be like, no, you had chances to do the right thing.

Part of that complicity to me makes it more OK that Elphaba and Fiyero run off together because you chose this. And your choices made you a person that has to live with that, and face it, and you could have stopped it, and you didn’t.

Kouguell: Indeed. Yes, complicity and silence.

Fox: I have studied the time period at the beginning of World War II. I’m so interested in the psychology of when did people know, what did they know, what choices did they make, and how did they rationalize those choices to themselves to not do anything.

Kouguell: Glinda’s complicity and moral struggles can be viewed in a broader historical context and parallels to the past and present.

Fox: That’s why the tone had to be what it was. We did not know that this was the moment we were going to be in when we were writing this movie. We wrote it five years ago so this isn’t about what’s happening right now. This isn’t about a specific person, of course, because it couldn’t be. But what I find upsetting about it is that the reason this feels so timely is because persecution of people by other people who want power is timeless.

It happens over and over again. When Gregory Maguire was writing the book, there was a version of it that was happening. When Winnie and Stephen were writing the play, it was in the shadow of 9/11, and a certain group of people were being persecuted because of fear.

I felt strongly that I wanted to see Glinda’s complicity more because that’s a big part of the emotional arc of her actually changing at the end. Winnie and I talk about this all the time. We want people to interpret it however they want to interpret it. And Winnie and I even have slightly different views of why the Grimmerie opens.

In my opinion, the Grimmerie opens up to her because when Elphaba hands it to her, she says, you know I can’t read that thing. It’s the most painful thing she could admit and it’s so dark for her because it showed her childhood. What Glinda wants is to be magical, and she is not. And so for her to admit her core wound in front of her best friend, that to me is why she earns the Grimmerie opening to her. The Grimmerie isn’t saying, now you’re magic. It is saying, now you get to start the work; this is just the beginning of the work. I love that message because it’s saying we can still do the right thing; it’s never too late to do the right thing. Glinda does it so late and yet it does make a difference.

Wicked: For Good is now in Theaters.

Highlights from the 2025 New York Film Festival The Centerpiece Film: ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ and the Closing Night Film ‘Is This Thing On?’

October 11, 2025 / / Comments Off on Highlights from the 2025 New York Film Festival The Centerpiece Film: ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ and the Closing Night Film ‘Is This Thing On?’

Family relationships dominate the Centerpiece and Closing Night Films.

My article for Script Magazine

Susan Kouguell
Father Mother Sister Brother (2025). Courtesy MUBI

Father Mother Sister Brother

Winner of the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion, writer and director Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother is a study in familial dynamics constructed in the form of a triptych. The three chapters all concern the relationships between adult children reconnecting or coming to terms with aging or lost parents, which take place in the present, and each in a different country.

Siblings Jeff and Emily (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik) check up on their hermetic father (Tom Waits) in rural New Jersey; sisters Lilith and Timothea (Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett) reunite with their guarded novelist mother (Charlotte Rampling) in Dublin; and twins Skye and Billy (Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat) return to their Paris apartment to address a family tragedy.

At the press conference, Jarmusch was asked if he had a particular way of thinking about each story when he was writing the script.

Jarmush: “I always have a kind of haphazard way of writing where I’m gathering small ideas that I don’t quite know the overall structure or picture yet. I write thinking of actors I would like to collaborate with on these characters. I thought it would be cool to make a film with Tom Waits as Adam Driver’s father and really that’s where it started. While writing that story, Mayim Bialik  was a host on Jeopardy and I’m a Jeopardy nerd and I hadn’t really seen her acting on TV. She’s a famous TV actor, right? But I just thought, ‘Oh, wow. That Jeopardy host kind of character could be close to the sister.’

I write really fast in like a month. But it’s hard. I can’t exactly tell you how it works because it’s really collecting disparate ideas that I don’t quite know the overall connect the dots picture yet. It’s always interesting to see how it gets connected from the writing to the filming.

I wasn’t really setting out with an intention. I didn’t want it to really say anything. I wanted it to observe people that are flawed without judging them. The thing about a balance between sadness and humor was important to me to sort of allow them both to exist in the film. But it’s an odd film because it’s very quiet and it doesn’t employ drama, violence, action, sex, you know, almost none of the things you expect. I was just interested in empathetic observation really and as far as families, they are very complicated.  I thought a lot about how parents are not upfront with their children for a number of reasons; either they want to be guides for them or they don’t want to reveal certain mistakes they’ve made or they want to be a kind of role model or there are a lot of reasons why they’re not really that maybe upfront about who they are.”

Is This Thing On? (2025). Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

Is This Thing On?

Will Arnett and Laura Dern play Alex and Tess Novak, whose marriage has reached an impasse. With amicable sorrow, the couple—parents of two young boys—mutually agree to split up. Their separation leads to unpredictable midlife self-reckonings, most dramatically in Alex’s wild career pivot to become a confessional stand-up comedian in New York City’s West Village, where he finds new direction and camaraderie.

Written by Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, and Mark Chappell Is This Thing On? was inspired by the true story of British comedian John Bishop.

The opening of the press conference centered on the evolution of the project.

Arnett met Bishop several years ago and was interested by his story of how he stumbled into stand-up comedy when his marriage fell apart. He convinced Bishop to let him and writing partner Mark Chappell take a stab at a film inspired by his story. Arnett brought an early draft of the script to Cooper who signed on to co-write and direct it. Cooper also has a supporting role in the film where he plays the friend of Arnett’s character.

Cooper was interested in exploring the idea of a guy being able to be honest with a room full of strangers – doing stand up – in a way he never was able to do before.

Arnett: “John Bishop’s story was a big inspiration. When Mark Chappell and I brought the script to Bradley, Bradley said I think this is where it could go and that’s how the collaboration started; he really gave us a lot of direction. Bradley ended up doing this rewrite that really shifted the film and took it to places we could only dream of.”

Cooper: “I was sitting at my daughter’s school in the East Village where we actually shot, and life will tell you what to do. We were sitting there and it was the Chinese New Year Festival and that exact group was there and I was looking at all these parents on their phones and I said that’s the beginning of the movie and I called Arnett.”

The decision not to include any scenes of Arnett’s character at his day job.

Cooper: “At least to me as a viewer if I’m watching something I’m always thinking of it in a derivative way like, oh yeah that’s like that movie or that’s that story. This movie is not about a guy who’s unhappy in his profession, he’s not miserable at work and he’s got to find another thing. I don’t want to meet his other co-workers. It’s not what the story is about. All I need to know is that he works in finance. He wears suits. He drops his kids off and goes to school. And it’s also based on people that I know. It’s not so much that they’re unhappy in their jobs. It’s that they’re not really uncomfortable with who they are. And it’s not necessarily just their job that’s telling them, it’s their life. That was the conscious choice. What (Arnett’s character) is going through it’s a bit like a catharsis not a crisis.”

2025 New York Film Festival Highlights: ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,’ ‘Sentimental Value,’ ‘A Private Life’

October 5, 2025 / / Comments Off on 2025 New York Film Festival Highlights: ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,’ ‘Sentimental Value,’ ‘A Private Life’

Family Dramas Explored

Susan Kouguell

Published Script Magazine Oct 3, 2025 2:07 PM PDT

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025). Courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

Scott Cooper’s biographical drama Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, adapted from Warren Zanes’s 2023 best-selling chronicle of the same title, is set at an early-’80s crossroads in Springsteen’s career when, still negotiating the transformative waves of his rising fame, he crafted the personal acoustic songs that would become his mythic album “Nebraska”—at the same time that he was recording the demos for “Born in the U.S.A.” which would catapult him to global superstardom.

The Q&A with actor Jeremy Allen White and writer and director Scott Cooper, offered insights into the making of the film, including that Springsteen was on set the majority of the time, flying back and forth while touring, and that White had extensive voice, guitar, harmonica, and movement coaching. They described the overarching themes of the film as memory and myth and regret.

Cooper: “Author Warren Zaynes said that he wrote the book because in Bruce’s memoir most chapters were quite lengthy, but the chapter on “Nebraska” was very short. I think it was like a page and a half. So Warren thought, ‘My god, that’s the story I want to know. That’s the story I want to tell.’  I met with Warren and we both knew of course that Bruce was reluctant. He’s always said no to any type of film about his life that isn’t a documentary. Warren and I sat down with Bruce and Jon Landau at Bruce’s house. I told Bruce that I didn’t particularly see the merits of a of a traditional biopic for Bruce, so I said, ‘Bruce, I feel like there’s a real story here that’s a psychological drama, about the art of creation, and I think it can really give voice to particularly men who often don’t give voice to their pain, don’t know how to get the help they need, don’t understand what it is that they’re suffering through. And of course, I never wanted this in any way to be a message movie.’”

Sentimental Value (2025). Courtesy of MK2 Films/Neon.

Sentimental Value

Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Swedish writer and director Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value centers on two sisters who must confront their relationship with their estranged father when he reappears after their mother’s death. 

At the New York premiere of his film, Trier discussed his poignant family drama: “I’m now pondering, what is the provocative counter position to a world where everything is very aggressive and divided? And I thought that maybe now tenderness is the new punk, that we actually need to listen to each other. I made a film about reconciliation, you know, and a family. But I think about that in a bigger way as something we need to think about—listen to each other and not make the other the enemy.”

Setting the film at the childhood home of the main characters offers a particular emotional layer of the story. Secrets, generational trauma, and more are explored as they navigate their respective past and current relationships and the future of the pending sale of the house.

A Private Life (2025). Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

A Private Life

Director Rebecca Zlotowski’s unpredictable and sometimes zany murder mystery stars Jodie Foster in her first French-language performance as an American psychoanalyst in Paris whose tightly knit world begins to unravel after the sudden and suspicious death of a patient. Co-written by Zlotowski, Anne Berest and Gaëlle Macé.

A series of twists lead not only to past grievances but past lives. (And even a cameo by the renowned documentary filmmaker Friederick Wiseman whom I interviewed for this publication.) The tonal shifts might be unsettling for some viewers as it moves back and forth from a drama about families, a comedy of remarriage, and a whodunit. Perhaps the true mystery of the story is revealed by the question (no, this is not a spoiler alert): “Why did you leave me?” 

Highlights from the 2025 New York Film Festival: ‘After the Hunt’ and ‘Anemone’

October 5, 2025 / / Comments Off on Highlights from the 2025 New York Film Festival: ‘After the Hunt’ and ‘Anemone’

Behind the Scenes Writing of ‘After the Hunt’ and ‘Anemone’

Susan Kouguell

Published Script Magazine Oct 1, 2025 9:30 AM PDT

[L-R] Actors Ayo Edebiri, Julia Roberts and director Luca Guadagnino on the set of AFTER THE HUNT, from Amazon MGM Studios. Photo Credit: Yannis Drakoulidis

After the Hunt

The opening night film of the 63rd annual New York Film Festival, After the Hunt, centers on a philosophy professor (Julia Roberts) whose life is thrown into chaos after her protégée (Ayo Edebiri) accuses her longtime colleague and friend (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault.

In attendance at the press conference cast members Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Eyo Edebiri, and Michael Stuhlbarg discussed their flawed and often unsympathetic characters, navigating a world of academia, power plays, and relationships.

“Am I a provocateur? No, I don’t think so. Do I like to make the audience feel what they’re seeing? Yes, I do very much.” – Luca Guadagnino, director

Indeed, After the Hunt is a thought-provoking film with layered characters who make unsympathetic choices and hide their truths. 

Director Luca Guadagnino and writer Nora Garrett discuss the script

Garrett: “My first construction going into writing was not thinking about how many potential buttons to push simultaneously. The genesis of the screenplay really started with the character of Alma, played by Julia Roberts. And I was really interested in her internal struggle; this idea of becoming a very outwardly successful person, becoming someone who was looking for power chasing power, but had this sort of internal compartmentalization based on a certain amount of shame from childhood or from a place when you had a certain amount of plausible deniability about the person you were and the person you would become. So the story kind of grew around that.”

Guadagnino discussed how they worked together on the project. “One of the great pleasures of my life is to work with writers that are brilliant like Nora, and this was quite a brisk process. I read the script, we met, we said, ‘Let’s do it.’ I think when you get a script that is so good and so strong, the duty is to make sure that embodiment is reflected in the script, because we had the privilege of working discussions. We wanted to make sure that every character could become the perfect character for each way, and to get their input into each as well.”

Setting the story at Yale

Garrett: “I did set it at Yale. Truthfully, I was writing this on spec without an agent or a manager. So I kind of thought that would never pass any legal process were this to get made. I am a very visual writer. I had been to Yale’s campus a couple of times. I have family members who went to Yale. But something that really interested me about Yale as an institution is that it’s in New Haven. And so it’s sort of this castle on a hill in an area that doesn’t have the same access to the affluence and power that Yale holds within its walls. There is this very clear stark difference between a powerful institution that comes from a lot of old money and a city that has a lot of economic turmoil surrounding it.”

Guadagnino: “I like to deal with archetypes and to deal with the great American landscape and of course the Ivy League world is so important to America, but also to us as Europeans. It reflects on us a lot. So the idea of telling a story that happened at Yale gives a sense of universality to it and an infrastructure that is so cinematic and as you (Nora) said the idea that Yale is a world within a world of New Haven. You see the different layers of this society clashing. We really shot this in London completely.”

[L-R] Actor Daniel Day-Lewis and director Ronan Day-Lewis on the set of ANEMONE, a Focus Features release. Credit: Maria Lax / Focus Features

Anemone

An emotionally charged family drama – directed by first-time feature director Ronan Day-Lewis and co-written with his three-time Oscar-winning father actor Daniel Day-Lewis – Anemone centers on lives undone by seemingly irreconcilable legacies of political and personal violence on a path toward familial redemption.

At the press conference, Ronan Day-Lewis, Daniel Day-Lewis and actor Sean Bean discussed the writing process, the archetypes of brotherhood, and the use of silence in the film.

Ronan Day-Lewis:  “I have two brothers and I think that there’s this sort of beauty and tragedy to brotherhood; that kind of volatility where things can go from love and volatility in a matter of seconds. I was really fascinated with and we (gesturing to his father) were really interested in the sense of silence and just how siblings can have this almost telepathic communication with each other and how many different silences can exist between brothers, between siblings.”

The writing process

Ronan Day-Lewis: “We started kind of intuitively. We didn’t start with an outline or anything; it was very different from past scripts that I’ve worked on. It was almost like walking into the dark with a flashlight. We had the sense of there being this man who’s living in a state of self-exile and living in this remote environment and his brother turning up after 20 years of no contact. But beyond that, we didn’t really know the circumstances of their pasts and their lives. Their connection started to reveal themselves over time.

There was a lot of improvisation that went into it where my dad would actually speak as the characters and especially Ray. I sort of felt him kind of slipping into that character really early on in the process which was remarkable.”

Discussing why the script took several years to write Daniel Day-Lewis stated: “It took a long time because we only ever wrote when we were in the same room together. So we never tried to do it remotely at any point. Things would occur to us independently and then we would chat on the phone and come together but Ronan’s schedule was pretty busy after college so we just decided that was the way we wanted to do it and I think it worked best for us.”

Ronan Day-Lewis and Daniel Day-Lewis agreed that having that time to reflect and develop the characters in this way also allowed the opportunity to have a shorthand on set and in the monologues, dialogue and silences.

Highlights from the 2025 Locarno Film Festival

August 26, 2025 / / Comments Off on Highlights from the 2025 Locarno Film Festival

Susan Kouguell shares her top highlights from the 2025 Locarno Film Festival.

Script Magazine Aug 25, 2025

Locarno78, Red Carpet, Pardo d’Oro – Sho Miyake, Grand Prize of the Festival and City of Locarno, Tabi to Hibi Locarno78

Locarno78 featured 101 world premieres from both emerging and established filmmakers with 224 films across 11 sections. Japanese filmmaker Shô Miyake took home the Golden Leopard for his film Two Seasons, Two Strangers. The American independent drama Rosemead received the Prix du Public UBS.

IN CONVERSATION

Emma Thompson, honored with the Leopard Club Award, spoke about her latest film The Dead of Winter directed by Brian Kirk, which premiered on the Piazza Grande. This action thriller starred Thompson, who also served as an executive producer.

Locarno78, Conversation with Emma Thompson (Leopard Club Award), Moderated by Manlio Gomarasca Locarno Film Festival

Thompson recounted her path from being discovered as a stand-up comedian, to winning the Best Screenplay Adaptation Oscar for Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. “A screenplay is a very interesting thing. When producer Lindsay Doran asked me to write it, I said I don’t know how to write a screenplay and she said ask around, so I went to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala who adapted Howard’s End and Remains of the Day. Ruth said: ‘If you are thinking of adapting, this is what you do: you adapt the whole book, you dramatize every single scene because you don’t know which ones are going to work and which ones are not going to work.’ Weirdly, some of the most dramatic scenes in the book are not dramatic on film, and some of the least dramatic are very dramatic on film. So I wrote a screenplay that was 400 pages long, and they need to be 100 pages long, obviously. I started to take out the stuff that didn’t work and then started to add things that we needed, because some characters just disappear, and you have to find a way of bringing them back.

It took five years to write. I got some very useful notes, like from Sydney Pollack, he was one of the producers, who said ‘I’m a Jew from Indiana, I’m dumb, I don’t know anything, why can’t they just go and get a job?’ I thought, that’s a really good question. There were no jobs at that time for women in that situation.  

All screenplays take a long time. Nanny McPhee took nine years to write.  You keep rewriting it over and over.”

Award-winning Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof received the First Locarno City of Peace Award, which honors figures from the cultural space who have distinguished themselves in promoting peace, diplomacy, and dialogue among peoples. (Rasoulof was sentenced in Iran to eight years in prison and public flogging for his films. Shortly before his arrest, he managed to flee his home country and currently resides in Germany.)

Rasoulof discussed how cinema can serve as a form of resistance and a beacon of hope, sharing his perspectives on freedom, culture, and the role of the artist in times of oppression. In 2024, I had the privilege of interviewing him about his film  The Seed of the Sacred Fig for this publication.

Two Documentaries Exploring Distinctive Approaches to Storytelling

Hair, Paper, Water…, a poetic and poignant documentary co-directed by Truong Minh Quy and Nicolas Graux, won the top prize: Pardo d’Oro – Concorso Cineasti del Presente. Shot over three years on a vintage Bolex camera, it is described as: She was born in a cave, more than 60 years ago. Now she lives in a village, with many children and grandchildren to look after. Sometimes, she dreams of her dead mother calling her home – to the cave. The film captures fleeting moments of her daily life and the transmission of her fragile language, Rục, to her grandchildren.

The film will have its North American premiere at the 2025 New York Film Festival this fall. Quy’s previous film, Việt and Nam, was at the 2024 New York Film Festival, which I wrote about for this publication.

KEROAUC’S ROAD: THE BEAT OF A NATION (2025). Courtesy Universal Pictures Content Group. Locarno Film Festival

Kerouac’s Road: The Beat of a Nation explores how the legacy of Jack Kerouac’s iconic novel On the Road reflects in today’s America. The film interweaves stories of modern-day “on-the-roaders” who share connections to Kerouac’s life, alongside those influenced by him or knew and loved him. Featured participants include Josh Brolin, W. Kamau Bell, Natalie Merchant, Matt Dillon, Jay McInerney and Joyce Johnson.

Director Ebs Burnough stated: When my producing partners, John Battsek and Eliza Hindmarch came to me three years ago with the idea of doing a film about Kerouac, I had reservations. I had previously directed The Capote Tapes, and I was not immediately drawn to telling the story of another male writer in America. But this film was different. It was never intended to be a Kerouac biopic; it was always a meditation on On the Road. As we developed the story, I became vested in telling the story of America through the book. As a black filmmaker who grew up in the States, and has spent a career in political campaigns as well as in government, traveling across the country myriad times, I was deeply aware of the different experiences people have while “on the road” and very aware that my relatives could not have taken the trip Kerouac did.

Susan Kouguell interviews Frédéric Hambalek about his new feature film ‘What Marielle Knows’ at Tribeca Festival

July 23, 2025 / / Comments Off on Susan Kouguell interviews Frédéric Hambalek about his new feature film ‘What Marielle Knows’ at Tribeca Festival

For Script Magazine

About What Marielle Knows: When titular character Marielle, 11, inexplicably gains the ability to see and hear everything her parents do, the illusion of the perfect family shatters.

I had the pleasure of speaking with writer and director Frédéric Hambalek during the Tribeca Festival about his sophomore feature, What Marielle Knows.  In our wide-ranging discussion, Hambalek spoke about his writing process, genre, and family privacy.

What Marielle Knows
What Marielle Knows. Courtesy of A-One Films Courtesy of A-One Films

Kouguell: This is such a thought-provoking film.  How did the story evolve?

Hambalek:  I had this idea about 10-15 years ago, when I saw a baby monitor with a built-in camera. The image of someone watching a sleeping child felt strange and wrong. I thought a lot about privacy in a family. I asked myself:  ‘What would parents do if they were monitored by their kids?’ I thought about how parents relate to their children and vice versa, and the power structures that exist and shift within a family.

The second aspect of this is how kids see their parents. A young child sees their parents as almost gods who know everything and can do anything. But then they start growing up and realize that these gods, their parents, make mistakes.

Kouguell: Tell me about your writing process and how as the writer/director one might influence or inform the other.

Hambalek:  I started out at 18, I made films you make with your friends, and at some point, I realized you need a good script to make a good film. The process I follow: after expanding on notes of an idea, I work with index cards and see if I can get scenes out of that and have that before me and see that film in front of my eyes. Then I write the treatment, to see the structure, and finally I write the script.  There are many rewrites that follow.

Kouguell: How much story and/or dialogue input do you allow the actors?

Hambalek: Not with the story, but I definitely allow them a different take on the dialogue. They rarely do some improvisation.

Kouguell: Marielle’s sudden telepathic powers force her parents to tell the truth about their lives. There is no privacy.  You created a compelling triangulation between Marielle and her parents with shifting alliances.

Hambalek: That is what the film is about:  how does surveillance change your behavior, and as you said, how would feelings change for each other, how would those feelings play this double-edged game. That’s always the center of it.

Kouguell: Let’s talk about the genre.  It’s a drama with comedic moments. It’s edgy. Sometimes there’s a wink to the audience, such as with the incorporation of music. How do you see it?

Hambalek: I never really think about genre. This film has a supernatural edge, but I didn’t want it to have horror elements. I wanted to create a feeling in this film so the audience doesn’t know how to take it.  I like when a situation or a scene can be many things at once. 

Kouguell: Yes, and that’s very effective. Without giving away too much, the film allows the audience to impose their own ending. 

Hambalek: I would love people to see the film with an open mind and take away what they want; that will be great.

Susan’s Interview with “Villa Encanto” Writer and Director Joel Perez for Script Magazine

June 23, 2025 / / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with “Villa Encanto” Writer and Director Joel Perez for Script Magazine

Susan Kouguell interviews Joel Perez, recipient of the COLECTIVO, a new filmmaker program through Tribeca Studios and the Miranda Family Fund, about his short film Villa Encanto at Tribeca Festival.

Susan Kouguell
SOURCE: TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

Villa Encanto is a story about grief and belonging told through the eyes of a young girl navigating her rapidly changing world in 1960s New York. When her life is uprooted after her mother’s death, she’s brought to a Puerto Rican summer resort in upstate New York and rediscovers joy, identity, and community through music. 

—Joel Perez 

In 2020, co-writer Sol Marina Crespo sent Joel Perez an article about Las Villas and they decided to write a story in that setting. A draft of the then TV pilot was read aloud with actors in Los Angeles in the summer of 2021. When Joel was contacted about submitting a project to COLECTIVO, a new filmmaker program through Tribeca Studios and the Miranda Family Fund, Joel and Sol adapted Villa Encanto into a short film script and it was accepted into the program. It went into several months of script development with Tribeca Studios and the Miranda Family Fund teams. 

COLECTIVO selects a cohort of three emerging filmmaking teams to receive funding, mentorship, and the opportunity to world premiere an original short film at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. With guidance and training from Tribeca Studios and the creative team of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Luis A. Miranda, Jr., and their extended network, each participating filmmaker produces an original short-scripted film, highlighting Latinx stories and/or talent in front of and behind the camera. 

It was an absolute pleasure to speak with Joel Perez about his short film, the musical drama Villa Encanto. Full disclosure: Joel was my screenwriting student in the Tufts University Drama and Dance Department years ago. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch, and it’s been an incredible joy to see his career soar.   

Joel Perez

Kouguell: With your extensive musical background as a singer and actor on Broadway, films, and television how did that inform your directing?   

Perez: As an actor I know the kind of set I like to be on, and the direction I like to get, so I don’t want a toxic workplace and try to let everyone shine.  

I’m always thinking about music, whether I’m on set or in the edit room. When we wrote the script, I didn’t expect to think I was making a musical.  

Kouguell: You also wrote the lyrics to the songs. 

Perez: We were going to use pop songs from the era but that was too expensive. It was a blessing in disguise. I collaborated with composer Jaime Lozano to write original music and make them our own; it was reflective in the story.  

Kouguell: Tell me about your writing process with Sol Marina Crespo.   

Perez: Sol, who also plays the owner of the club, sent me this article in 2021 about Las Villas— summer resorts built by and for Puerto Rican families in upstate New York. As a Puerto Rican, I’m always looking for stories about Puerto Ricans and I didn’t know this place existed.  

We wrote this originally as a pilot for a TV show, we did a reading, but we never got the green light. When I had the opportunity with COLECTIVO, we reimagined it as a short. We trimmed some characters and focused on the father and daughter story. We had a couple of months of script development with Tribeca and the Miranda Foundation, and it changed quite a bit. In production we had to think about how to stay within budget.  

Kouguell: The father/daughter story is very powerful, relatable, and is successfully executed without melodrama.   

Perez:  On set it was a subtle turn with the character of Teresa to show she is not a petulant child; she is seeing her father for the first time as a broken person who’s hurting too. It’s a fine line not to dip into melodrama and not spoon-feed the audience, and that came from the edit. It was the first time I worked with our editor Cecilia Delgado who was the editor of Boca Chica.  

She loved the music and resonated with the father and daughter dynamic.   

Kouguell: Tell me about your collaboration with producer Helana Sardinha.   

Perez: Helana was a producer on the Disney Launch Pad short; that’s how we met, and she was incredible. She ran such a great set. We then worked on my short The Upper Room, and then applying for this program we had to apply with a producer. Many of the team from The Upper Room, the DP, first AD, department heads, and PAs, came back to work on Villa Encanto. 

Kouguell: You shot this period film in four days on location. That’s quite a feat! 

Perez: We had a lot of meetings with our production and costume designers, hair and makeup, did many mood boards and location scouting. The COLECTIVO program was hands-on; they gave us notes, we shared rough cuts of the film, and it was great. This film was done on a low-end budget.  

Kouguell: On another creative note, you play Overlord Valentino in the animated series Hazbin Hotel. 

Perez: I always wanted to voice a character in an animated series. After 10 years of wanting to break in, it happened. 

Kouguell: As always, it’s wonderful to catch up and I’m excited to see where your artistic journey takes you next. 

 
To learn more about Joel Perez visit his site. 

Susan’s Interview with ‘Honeyjoon’ Writer/Director Lilian Mehrel at Tribeca Festival

June 14, 2025 / / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with ‘Honeyjoon’ Writer/Director Lilian Mehrel at Tribeca Festival

For Script Magazine

Susan Kouguell chats with the award-winning writer and director about her feature film debut, blending lightness and darkness in her writing, and more.

About Honeyjoon: Persian-Kurdish Lela (Amira Casar) and her sensual American daughter June (Ayden Mayeri) travel to a romantic Azorean Island, for the one-year anniversary of Dad’s death. They planned this trip to be together, but Lela and June have opposite views about why they’re there, how to grieve, and June’s tiny bikini. Surrounded by honeymooners, doom-scrolling for Woman Life Freedom, and taken on a tour by their hot philosophical guide, João (José Condessa); Lela and June find each other… coming back to life.

Honeyjoon

Lilian Mehrel won the 2024 AT&T Tribeca Untold Stories award for Honeyjoon. She was selected for the 2025 SFFILM Rainin Grant, TorinoFilmLab 2024 ComedyLab, Cine Qua Non 2024 Storylines Lab, Warner Media TFI Co/Lab, and a Marcie Bloom Fellowship. Her films have premiered at Tribeca, Clermont-Ferrand, and the American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at Cannes. She earned her MFA from NYU Tisch Grad Film, and her BA from Dartmouth with a Senior Fellowship, and is a PD Soros Fellow.

It was a great pleasure to speak with Lilian Mehrel about her debut feature Honeyjoon, which she describes as a sexy, emotional comedy about … a mother-daughter trip. It was quite evident during our lively discussion that Mehrel is passionate about this film and filmmaking itself.

Kouguell: Congratulations on your film and receiving the AT&T Tribeca Untold Stories grant of $1 million. Tell me how this award enabled you to bring Honeyjoon to the screen.

Mehrel: I wrote the script on my own and then found myself a wonderful, Oscar-shortlisted producer, Andreia Nunes. It turns out all we needed was a million dollars to make the movie (she laughs)—once we received the money everything quickly fell into place.

I developed the script at the TorinoFilmLab and the Cine Qau Non Lab. We were selected as one of the five finalists. You pitch live in front of hundreds of people. It was an amazing experience, and a high-pressure situation, but it was a hint of the future audience and their expectations. That same day we pitched, the judges deliberated, and we made it, and then got selected for the Tribeca award.

Kouguell: Let’s talk about your inspiration for the story and how the script evolved.

Mehrel: As a filmmaker, the stories I love to tell are funny and moving. I went on a trip to a beautiful island in the Azores, when I was going through something hard. There, I realized the very dark and funny premise of having a mother and daughter grieving on this beautiful, romantic island surrounded by honeymooners. There was this blend of light and dark, and I was thinking about when hard things happen, life can still be sweet, and being alive means all those things.

Kouguell: The screenplay was developed at the TorinoFilmLab. Tell me about this experience.

Mehrel: We had workshops in Torino, Italy; it was an inspiring location. It was the first year they were doing the comedy lab. One of the things they were looking for was features to connect with a wider audience by using comedy as a way to bring people to cinema.

Kouguell: That’s so interesting because on the surface Honeyjoon leans more to drama; the humor/comedy avoids the slapstick and predictable comedy tropes.

Mehrel: The process was amazing.They brought in four comedians, who improvised scenes with us. One of my tutors, the filmmaker Laura Piana, played a therapist and had her ‘patients’ played by our characters, talk about their childhood and parents. We discovered deep thematic things about the characters. It expedited my development and writing process, seeing actors embodying scenes.

The Cine Qau Non Lab focused on the skeleton of the story, helped with pitching, and also shooting on the island, with ideas on what I needed to do to tell the story.

Kouguell: The film was shot on location in San Miguel, Azores, Portugal. What was that experience like as your first feature and shooting on location, not to mention in another country where you are reliant on the weather and light with all your exterior shots?

Mehrel: It was an incredible experience and made me a stronger director. I had an amazing team, working with collaborators and a great cast. It was very magical.

Kouguell: The beautiful and tranquil locations contrast—even highlight—the tensions in this poignant mother and daughter relationship.

Mehrel: I love that you used the word ‘contrast’—comedy lives in contrast. You have these characters going to a romantic island, they’re in paradise but they’re grieving. They reveal the absurdities of being human often with humor.

Kouguell: We were talking about your being a daughter of immigrants from a mixed background, living in a multicultural world. This is a major theme of the film, which is successfully executed, particularly because this experience is quite universal.

Mehrel: I’m glad you said that because I’ve been getting reactions from diverse audiences, telling me that they see themselves and their family on screen despite their various backgrounds.

Kougell: As a daughter of immigrants, I definitely related, but also to the mother and daughter relationship, while often so funny, it’s honest and raw. Also, placing mother and daughter on an unfamiliar island, away from their comfort zones, forces various issues, including their generational differences and culture clashes to the foreground.

Mehrel: I love road trip movies, and this film is about characters going on a trip. When you go somewhere unfamiliar you discover new things but there are also those differences within this one family, external and internal differences, but it highlights their connectedness underneath. These are two women who have different approaches to grief.

Kouguell: Final thoughts?

Mehrel: This is a sexy darkly funny life-affirming move. I don’t claim to have answers, but I explore questions. We shot some of the film on Super Eight; those visuals make it feel like a memory; and this idea of fleeting memories and moments passing is also a metaphor for this story.

Susan’s Interview with ON A STRING writer, director, producer, and star Isabel Hagen at Tribeca Festival

June 14, 2025 / / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with ON A STRING writer, director, producer, and star Isabel Hagen at Tribeca Festival

Tribeca Film Festival 2025: Interview with ‘On a String’ Writer/Director/Star Isabel Hagen for Script Magazine

Susan Kouguell chats with writer, director, producer, and star Isabel Hagen about her film debut, how she found stand-up comedy amidst her Julliard training in classical viola, and more.

It was a pleasure to speak with the multi-hyphenate Writer/Director/Producer/EP and Star Isabel Hagen about her first feature, On A String, during the Tribeca Festival. 

As a classically trained violist myself, (but not Julliard-trained like Hagen) we shared many funny—OK, sometimes tragically funny stories of our musician experiences, but she’s a professional stand-up comedian and thankfully I am not—as well as the profound influence music has on our respective writing and filmmaking.

Isabel Hagen is a nationally touring stand-up comedian and classically trained violist based in New York City. As a stand-up, she has been featured twice on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and as a New Face of Comedy at the Just for Laughs festival in Montréal. Isabel started stand-up immediately after earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in viola performance from The Juilliard School. As a violist, she has played in the orchestra of many Broadway shows, and worked with artists such as Bjork, Max Richter, Japanese Breakfast, Steve Reich, and Vampire Weekend.

‘On a String’

About On A String: Isabel (Isabel Hagen) is a young, Juilliard-trained violist still living at home with her parents in the heart of New York City. She’s trying to make a living playing gigs with her friends but when her toxic ex-boyfriend reappears, who also happens to be the Philharmonic’s “newest, hottest cellist,” he informs her of a viola opening in the prestigious orchestra. Nothing can go wrong, right?

Kouguell: Tell me about your decision to transition from music to filmmaking.

Hagen: It was a couple of things. Partly it was my deep love for stand-up comedy, and I had a repetitive stress injury in my hand from hours of daily practicing, so I had to take time off playing. I tried open mic, and I knew that it was something I wanted to explore. After graduating Juilliard, I did more stand-up. Writing for stand-up got the wheels turning to writing other things, and then I did the web series. 

Kouguell: I watched your five-part web series is a violist, which is not only so funny, but it captures the lives of classical musicians with all their flaws, quirks, painful rejections, and honest realizations.  Did you study screenwriting/writing and/or filmmaking?

Hagen: No. I learned by doing. It came out of doing stand-up comedy. 

Kouguell: As the writer, director and star of this film, how did you approach the filmmaking process?

Hagen: There was a time I thought I’d bring in another director, but ultimately it was such a specific story, I felt that people had to have a deep understanding of this world. It felt right to direct it as a first feature.

‘On a String’

Kouguell: You mentioned that it’s such a specific story, which it is, yet it feels universal.

Hagen: Sometimes the more specific you get—and in this film, about a classical musician navigating a specific world, which many might find unfamiliar—the universality aspect was important. That experience of following your dreams, accepting unexpected challenges and limitations, is something most of us feel.

Kouguell: How did your stand-up comedy evolve?

Hagen: Years ago, when my brother watched George Carlin on TV, I became interested. I marveled at it. When I had a little space in my schedule at Julliard, I tried it out. Initially it was never a goal to become a stand-up comedian.

Kouguell: Let’s discuss your writing process. 

Hagen: It’s always driven by music. I start by latching onto a piece or a song or the essence of it. It will inspire a scene I want to capture. So much of this film, I was writing with music in mind, such as Schubert’s Death and the Maiden. I draw inspiration from music. 

Both classical music and pop songs follow a strict form, and that’s what makes things interesting. I wanted this whole film to feel like a piece of music; recapitulations, incorporating certain motifs, the structure, and so on.

Kouguell: We’ve been talking about your role as the observer when performing as a violist at various events such as weddings. You mentioned that On A String is not about someone driven by a desire for success, but rather by a need for true connection to the world around her, with no idea how to find it.

Hagen: I always felt like an observer, which is not necessarily bad or good. I’m always watching how people talk and at certain times I wanted to mimic it. So much of comedy is observational and I realized a lot of work I did was the role of the observer like watching a narcissistic conductor and watching people how they behaved.

Kouguell: The film features live-captured musical performances, and the musician characters are almost entirely played by trained musicians, including your real-life brother, pianist Oliver Hagen, who portrays your character’s brother in the film. How was it to work with him?

Hagen: Working with Oliver was great. He’s not a trained actor but he is an accomplished musician who I have always looked up to.

Kouguell: What’s next for you?

Hagen: I’m continuing to tour as a standup and performing with the indie rock band Vampire Weekend, And working on new ideas for another film.

To learn more about Hagen’s projects visit her website.

Susan’s Interview with GOVERNMENT CHEESE Filmmaker Paul Hunter for Script Magazine

May 6, 2025 / / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with GOVERNMENT CHEESE Filmmaker Paul Hunter for Script Magazine

Paul Hunter talks about the inspiration for his new series, breaking the rules of TV, and creating outside of the box.

It was a pleasure to speak with showrunner, executive producer, writer and director Paul Hunter about his new series Government Cheese, which is now streaming on Apple TV+.  In our wide-ranging interview we discussed his inspiration for the series, breaking the traditional rules of television and creating out of the box. 

Government Cheese is a surrealist family comedy set in 1969 San Fernando Valley that tells the story of the Chambers, a quirky family pursuing lofty and seemingly impossible dreams, beautifully unfettered by the realities of the world. When Hampton Chambers (Oyelowo) is released from prison, his long-awaited family reunion doesn’t go quite as he’d planned. During his absence, Hampton’s wife Astoria (Missick) and sons Einstein (Ellison) and Harrison (Di’Allo Winston) have formed an unconventional family unit, and Hampton’s return spins their world into chaos. 

David Oyelowo in “Government Cheese,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

KOUGUELL: The series is loosely based on your family.  

HUNTER:  It was from a time growing up in the San Fernando Valley. I was thinking about my childhood. The Harrison character, who’s into the Native American stuff, was inspired by my neighbor, a Native American Apache, who was like a mentor. I was excited learning about his culture. My brother, who’s more like the Einstein character, was kind of odd, he loves language and yo-yos and all sorts of funny things like that.  

My dad was incarcerated for a little while when we were young, and we used to go visit him. My mom was always kind of creative. She just always encouraged us to be open about things no matter what was going on. And my dad as well. All that wrapped up into my thoughts. After I shot a movie in 2003, I wanted to do something that was personal, something that I could speak to, and something that’s unique. My family is a little odd and funny and quirky, and I thought, there’s no Black characters out there like that. I want to show the other side. So that’s where it comes from.  

KOUGUELL: How did your family feel about writing about them?  

HUNTER:  They’re tickled. At one point, we rented out a stage, had actors come in and we did performances there. We all read the script together. My family’s been involved in it for so long. It’s just a dream come true. 

KOUGUELL: Your characters have such distinct voices. Let’s talk about your writing process.  

HUNTER: What helped me figure out how to express myself better in scripts is that I took some acting classes. It was really helpful having that so that you can build from an emotional place; like finding the nugget in scenes and working on making sure that the emotion and that nugget is pulled through in a scene and in a story. It was learning to be available and being open really helped my confidence in writing and directing.  

I love to build things from a place of truth. With the Hampton character, his whole thing is about, are you going to go back to what you’re comfortable doing or are you going to trust and have faith in something that you have no control over. The obstacles that are in his scenes and his overall arc are all about testing his faith. 

Evan Ellison, David Oyelowo, Simone Missick and Jahi Di’Allo Winston in “Government Cheese,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

KOUGUELL: My interpretation was that it’s not necessarily only his religious faith, but also faith in himself as well as his faith in his family. 

HUNTER: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. He’s like a modern-day Jonah. At its core, that’s been the journey of this project; it’s been about perseverance. Even as a filmmaker and as a writer, it’s not an easy journey. A lot of times you’re getting reset and you become unsure about what you want and how to get there. Figuring out what you want to say is a big process. It’s not always a straight line. 

KOUGUELL: In the series you allow the viewer to find their own meanings and interpretations.  

HUNTER: That’s how I really wanted to express this story; to show it as much as you can, visually and poetically, so that the audience can interpret things the way they want. And, like you said, not force feeding it. And so, there’s more nuance. I think that also makes it interesting for the actors to perform because there are layers in there.  

KOUGUELL: Tell me about your collaboration with Creator/Executive Producer/Showrunner Aeysha Carr. 

HUNTER: It’s always great to have creative partners, especially when you’re trying to expand stories and look for different points of view. Aisha has more of a traditional television background, and it was helpful to have that type of creative person to bring a structure to it like with this 10-episode structure.  

I wanted to challenge any kind of traditional structure so that it pushed the project into a new space. I was really resisting the television format, and I wanted to try to chip that up as much as possible and make each episode feel like little indie movies but still have their arc.  

Aisha came in to help pull the thread, pull the arcs through the episodic world and then I tried to kind of chip it back. When you have that creative dance, it’s a nice thing.  

Working with Aisha, but also, working with the actors and the crew, it all goes back to the acting classes that I took. It’s all about how you communicate the story you want to tell. The acting classes were for my writing and then you thread that all the way through all of your departments: casting, costuming, cinematography, production design, writing—all of that pulls through. 

KOUGUELL: We were talking about creating out of the box and breaking the traditional rules of television. What was your inspiration? 

HUNTER: My mom and my dad; they always encouraged us not to be a follower and not do whatever anybody else is doing. You don’t have to be that. You can do your own thing. It’s like we’re our little Addams family here and don’t be afraid to be different.  

I really wanted to show Black characters that you hadn’t seen before. It was important to be, as you said, out of the box or just different. And that’s hard when you’re in this industry. When you come out with something different, it takes a minute for people to wrap their head around it, which was the journey of the feature script that I started with, which is now this television show. Then, you can relate that back to, OK, well, it’s a story about perseverance.  

If you look at the Hampton character, he has all of these challenges, and so it’s about his perseverance. How is he going to get this drill sold? How is he going to get his family back? How is he going to be able to stay on the right path? So, the emotions behind it are continuing to thread through. 

Watch the trailer here. 

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