It is a visible relief to everyone at THR‘s TV Producers Roundtable when David E. Kelley, legend of the medium, insists that no one ever feels like they have this showrunning gig figured out. “You get the hang of a show or a character or a rhythm, and you think, ‘OK, it’s going to get easier,’ ” he says on this late-May evening. “But it’s not going to get easier — and if it does get easier, you’re probably in trouble.”
Still, over the course of 90 minutes, the Margo’s Got Money Troubles boss and five more of TV’s top writer-producers — Lucia Aniello (Hacks), Erin Foster (Nobody Wants This), Bill Lawrence (Rooster, Scrubs, Shrinking), Lee Sung Jin (Beef) and Dan Levy (Big Mistakes) — make it clear that, despite their frustrations with streaming notes, withholding singers and awkward actor interactions, there’s nothing they’d rather do.
What’s one thing you wish someone had told you at the beginning of your career?
BILL LAWRENCE In comedy, your job is not to write what you think is funny. Your job is to write what the showrunner thinks is funny. I got fired off my first three jobs, then I learned that.
DAN LEVY There is this quest for perfection. You want it to be exactly as you’ve envisioned it. I wish I had known that some of the greatest moments come out of some of the most unexpected places. Let it flow a little more.
LEE SUNG JIN Part of my career was so much copying and mimicking. Back then, it was required that you write a spec script [of an episode of another show]. You had to be good at copying. Sometimes that makes you contort a little too much. I feel like I’m just now getting more comfortable being me. I wish I’d heard that earlier.
LAWRENCE He wrote a Scrubs spec when he was 12.
LEE I did!
DAVID E. KELLEY I’m probably glad no one did tell me that you never figure it out. It’ll never get easy. [Dan and I] were just talking about this. You get the hang of a show or a character or a script and think, “OK, you’re a well-oiled machine. It’s going to get easier.” It’s not going to get easier. And if it does get easier, you’re probably in trouble.
LUCIA ANIELLO I would have liked somebody to grab me by the shoulders and tell me to have more fun while I was doing it, even though I don’t know if I would listen — then or now. I put a lot of pressure on myself to just make it really good. But I feel like — especially in comedy — if I had loosened up a bit more and had more fun, it would have been even better.
KELLEY The most fun it ever was for me was my first job in a writers room. Once you are put in charge, it changes things. Doesn’t take the fun totally out of it, but it’s —
LAWRENCE Ninety-nine percent gone! (Laughter.)
ERIN FOSTER Working on a deadline and working over the weekend when you’re burnt out, you’re not going to get the best work. I always felt like I was embarrassed to be the first one to want to go home. Now, our writers room goes from 10 to 3 every day. We get more done in that time frame than staying longer, being resentful and frustrated. Because no one is looking at their phone. Everyone’s doctor’s appointments are dealt with. People are happier. Now I’m very comfortable saying, “I want to take my daughter to school. I’ll be 30 minutes late.” But there [used to be] pride in having stripped your life of joy because you gave it all to your job.
Lucia, there’s a Barbra Streisand song that plays over the last scene in the finale of Hacks. Did you have to write the obligatory long letter to Barbra asking for permission? And, for the rest of you, what’s the hardest you’ve ever fought to clear a song?
ANIELLO No, and we probably should have. We’d been writing toward that song at the end for years. So we cleared it in 2024 or something. We were like, “It must be this! If there are roadblocks, let’s get ahead of them now so that we have time.”
LEE What would you like to say to Barbra in this moment?
ANIELLO It’s funny, we do a Hacks companion podcast, and we pretend that Barbra Streisand has never seen the show but loves the podcast.
LAWRENCE It’s always the finale. You get something stuck in your head. The eighth year of Scrubs, it was a song called “The Book of Love.” It was a cover version by Peter Gabriel. He doesn’t generally clear that, but we were obsessed. We didn’t get permission and doubled down. We shot it with the song playing, edited in time to the song. We got lucky at the last second. Someone had a connection and showed him. He let us do it. It was very cool. We’re best friends now. (Laughs.)
FOSTER We had a song last year that we really fought for. We cut the episode to an unreleased song. It was this big pop artist. He pulled the song at the last second because his girlfriend didn’t like how he wrote about her. It was about him suspecting that she cheated on him. She was like, “That’s a no.” So she made him pull the song, and then they broke up after the season aired.
LEE Season one, I had to write a personal note to both Hoobastank and Limp Bizkit, which was a joy.
FOSTER They hadn’t heard from anyone in so long, they were probably thrilled.
LEE I really wanted to use “The Reason.” They only let you use the remastered version, where they rerecorded their vocals because they had a shit deal in their original recording. But the vocals just don’t hit the same. You can feel time has passed. It just was not working. So I literally was like, “Dear Hoobastank, I was in an a cappella group in college, and we covered you and I’ve been obsessed with you guys forever.” I wrote a five-page letter, and they allowed us to use the original master.
LEVY That’s so nice.
LEE Fred Durst, too. He was just like, “Are you making fun of me?” No. “And this is for A24?” Yeah. “OK.” (Laughter.)
KELLEY This may have been a clearance issue because I’m not sure the artist quite knew what he was signing on to. When we were doing Ally McBeal, one of our characters was obsessed with Barry White and would dance in the mirror to one of his songs [“You’re the First, the Last, My Everything”]. The character he was dating decided to surprise him and have Barry show up and sing that song. So, we reached out to Barry’s people, and we were met with some confusion — some from his handlers and then, ultimately, from him as well. He agreed to do it, but to this day, I don’t think he ever knew what he was signing on to. The scene was scripted for Barry to be singing his iconic song, and our character, played by Peter MacNicol, was to be so overtaken that he goes up onto the stage and starts dancing. The white limo pulled up to the soundstage about 10 minutes before action. Barry’s got his gold outfit on. He goes up on the stage. The song starts on playback. He’s doing his thing, and when he sees Peter get up on the stage — “What the fuck is this?” He thought he was playing a real gig. But, to his credit, we did two or three more takes, Mr. White went back to the limo, and we got it done in the hour.
LEVY What a strange day for him. The most significant for me was in Schitt’s Creek. We wrote a whole season around this Tina Turner song, “The Best,” where it was sung to my character and then [in another episode] I had to lip-sync the song. We needed it twice. And the whole season, we were waiting on the clearance. I couldn’t fathom another scenario. Fortunately, Ms. Turner said yes. Again, I think she probably didn’t quite know. It was just some Canadian show.
KELLEY I can’t get Tracy Chapman to say yes to anything.
LEVY I made the Lilith Fair documentary, and we tried and tried. We came so close. I tried a thousand different ways.
LEE It’d be crazy if Tracy Chapman and Barbra Streisand were [reading] this.
David, you recently compared executives to diners at a restaurant. Back in the day, they would send the food back, maybe ask for a couple of tweaks. Now streaming executives follow you into the kitchen. Does that ring true for anyone else here?
KELLEY It’s not that I harbor a grudge against the executives I’m working with. They’re very smart people, but not many of them are storytellers. They think they are. So that’s the equivalent. I know if I like a hot dog or disapprove of a casserole. I can say I don’t like it. But I would never presume to go into the kitchen and make it. The legacy companies, I think, still stick to the idea that the best path to success is to find creators, turn them loose and let them do what they do. In the tech companies, they think they can design a show and assign a writer to execute. Like we’re contractors, picking out tiles for the kitchen.
FOSTER There’s this fear around being a showrunner who’s not a team player. You have to have this strong will but then say yes to things you disagree with. My experience at Netflix has been that if it’s really important to me, as the creator, they hear me out so that we can find common ground. But you have to talk it out.
LEE Season one, there was a point where we had three scripts written and it was clear we were not on the same page. The notes were getting out of control and very prescriptive. We set a Zoom to talk it out. I was like, “Have you guys heard of this concept called ‘the beholder’s share’ in art history?” No. Then I played a little TED Talk.
FOSTER Can you tell us what it is?
LEE Well, a great painting is great because it allows the eye of the beholder to share in the interpretation of it. A Bed Bath & Beyond painting is just like, “This is a beach.” There’s no share. That’s why it’s $7.99. But the Mona Lisa, you interpret it differently every time you look at it. And so I was like, “This is why I am doing it this way. I can do the other thing, but then people are going to look at Beef as a Bed Bath & Beyond painting. I can do it, but I don’t think that’s why you hired me.” These days, it does seem like you have to explain the why behind it. Usually not all the time, but usually they’ve been able to be supportive.
Half the people here are writing for and/or directing their significant other. What are the pros and cons there?
LAWRENCE My wife was [Christa Miller] one of the leads of Scrubs, Cougar Town and now Shrinking. I love it. I’m always fascinated by the issue of nepotism out here in Hollywood. Look, it’s in every industry. If you have a person that you love or that you’re friends with that happens to be very talented and you enjoy working with them, I think you’re crazy not to hire them again and again. And that doesn’t just go for my spouse. Making a television show is like being at Thanksgiving with your family for six months at a time. If you can surround yourself with people that you would want to spend time with anyway, it’s a massive gift.
KELLEY My wife [Michelle Pfeiffer] and I had never worked together before. We were comfortable in our own professional creative lanes. Why mess with that formula? But with Margo’s Got Money Troubles, when I read the book, I could only see her as that character. The one thing I’ve always tried to pride myself on as a showrunner is you put the show’s best interest first. If you stick to that as your North Star, some of the decisions are easier. I could only see one actress playing Shyanne, and it was Michelle. We broke our rule, and it worked out. She’s pretty good.
ANIELLO [Hacks co-creator and star] Paul [W. Downs] and I met doing improv at UCB in New York. My first day ever doing comedy, to meet your partner is so crazy —
FOSTER Those classes are so awkward, too.
ANIELLO Right? But we come from the world of “yes, and,” which has been amazing for our relationship. We’re kind of engineered to try to bring the best out of each other. In so many ways, that is what Hacks is about: people you find that make you better as a person and as a writer and creative. It is very autobiographical in that way. We also just wouldn’t be married anymore if we weren’t together while we were making the show because it takes up so much of your time.
What’s the most difficult conversation you’ve ever had to have with an actor?
LAWRENCE As a trick, Harrison Ford showed up to the first day of Shrinking wearing a big hat — like the guy from Curious George — and he says, “What do you think of my hat?” What do you say if Harrison Ford says, “What you think?” You say that it’s a great fucking hat, man. He goes, “Cool, I’m going to wear it in every scene.” I’m like, “You can’t wear that hat in all the scenes.” You would think, in the end, he didn’t wear the hat. But if anybody watches the show, the compromise was that he would do all these exterior scenes on a bench in the hat. Beware veteran actors and actresses who say, “What do you think of this outfit?”
KELLEY To replace or discharge an actor, it never gets easy. With Chicago Hope, I got a call from CBS. “We’ll give you another year but at a fraction of the price. You make the choice to stay or go.” We almost said, “Let’s close it down.” Ultimately, we thought that the show had more creative life in it, but we had a cast of about 10 people. We could not afford them all. Five had to go. It was one meeting after another. All the actors understood, but, “Why me? Why my character?” That was a brutal day.
LAWRENCE We used to make pilots, and it was rare that everybody would survive even the read-through, much less shooting it.
KELLEY Even though I’m married to an actor, I cannot imagine it from their side of the fence.
FOSTER I had an actress FaceTime me and say, “Will you put me in more episodes, because [otherwise] I’m not going to get my health insurance?” That isn’t really how we write. I don’t know how to respond to that. This job is so much more than writing a script. And you don’t know that until you’re doing it — and probably doing it wrong.
Among this group, we’re talking about the second seasons of wildly successful shows, a six-year wait for a follow-up and the final season of a beloved hit. When have all of you felt outsized pressure while working, and how did you cope with it?
LEE I don’t know why, but I definitely love reading every single comment on the internet.
LEVY That’s healthy.
LAWRENCE Do you ever respond?
LEE No, never. But I screenshot and remember forever.
FOSTER Bring them to your therapist’s office.
KELLEY I don’t read anything, but sometimes you can’t avoid it. During Ally McBeal, we had good years and bad years. It was almost like sports. “Why is the team performing so poorly?” One year, things were not at our highest creative level. It felt like we were getting blindsided by everybody. It got so bad at one point that we all got together and we went to Las Vegas for a day just to escape the bubble of contempt. We were sitting around the blackjack table and the croupier leaned over and said, “You really fucked up that shit.” (Laughter.)
FOSTER It was a tough season one, and not everyone that was involved came back for season two. I was trying to understand how to do it with new people, how to do it without as much trauma. I was like eight months pregnant when we did season one, so I was in a survival mode that can only be understood by a woman who has been pregnant. You’re like, “Just pile it on! I can take more!” Season two, I panicked that I didn’t know how to do it again. I didn’t know how to do it on purpose.
LAWRENCE “How to do it on purpose.” Stealing that line.
FOSTER I also have a real addiction to seeing the comments. In season one, the comments were all really positive, and so I became addicted to positivity. In season two —
ANIELLO “These are going to be great!”
FOSTER There was way more hate or disappointment. I had a hard time with that. There was a point in the writers room where I had a fight with one of my co-showrunners, who was like, “Stop bringing up the response to season two. You have to get over it.” Well, I’m not going to get over it anytime soon, so I keep looking.
LEE The internet’s also changed in that time.
LEVY It’s [either] “This is the worst piece of shit I’ve ever seen” or “This is the greatest contribution to television I have ever witnessed.” I wonder now how much of it is actually real and how much of it is simply a reaction to the fact that —
FOSTER You have to be controversial.
LAWRENCE To me, it’s the extremes. The review in Time was “Shrinking Is an Insult to Comedy, Therapy and Harrison Ford.” That was their headline. I would have been OK with “I didn’t love Shrinking,” or “This show’s a swing and a miss.” And it wasn’t, Judy Berman!
What’s the professional call you still dream of getting?
ANIELLO Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
LEVY I’ve been lucky enough to have both of them — Catherine O’Hara and Laurie Metcalf.
KELLEY “Come pitch with the Dodgers.” I can’t pitch.
LEE Director Bong Joon Ho showed up on set for season two of Beef when we were shooting in Korea. That is going to be very tough to beat.
Unannounced?
LEE Pretty much. It was because Song Kang-ho and Youn Yuh-jung were in their first scene together in Korean history. Everyone got real quiet, and he came up to the monitor and he elbowed me and he was like, “Are you sure you want to frame it like that?” (Laughter.)
KELLEY So you did get the call!
LEE I would love more calls.
FOSTER Getting a call to be here is cool for me. I think once you’re in the conversation, of being with people you really admire, it feels like you’re on the inside of something you felt on the outside of for a long time.
LAWRENCE Every call is as exciting as the one before. I didn’t expect to be involved in this part of Harrison Ford’s career. It’s a gift.
If you could join any writers room for a week, current or historic, which would you choose?
LAWRENCE By the way, I’ll take that gig tomorrow on any show at this table. I’d also like to write on M*A*S*H because Larry Gelbart was my idol when I was a kid.
FOSTER I was going to say Love Island. A very different route.
LEE I dream of writing for The Sopranos. No question.
FOSTER OK, but Love Island is, like, better, right?
LEVY Sex and the City. I would’ve crushed it. Funnily enough, I had an idea for what would have been And Just Like That … They didn’t go in that direction.
ANIELLO You actually pitched it?
LEVY God, no. I was nowhere near that room. Unfortunately.
ANIELLO Arrested Development. I’d like to just see how they got to some of those jokes. It’s psychotically funny. Jessica Walter was somebody who I think has so much DNA in [Jean Smart’s Hacks character] Deborah Vance. She was really brilliant and so underrated.
KELLEY I was in Steven Bochco’s room, and I don’t think anything could beat that. The standard that he set imprinted on me. The room I wish I was in was probably All in the Family. Norman Lear changed television. I’m in awe of anybody who’s truly funny. Everyone here is a true comedy writer who’s putting drama into their equations. I’m sitting here a bit like the fraud that writes dramatic throughlines and something comes out wrong so people laugh.
LEE The most insane sentence! (Laughter.)
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
Original Article on Hollywood Reporter