With her book, “Just the Funny Parts,” writer Nell Scovell is opening up the dialogue about sexism in the writers’ room, the place where most of our episodic and night shows are born.
Scovell worked her way up onto David Letterman’s “The Late Show” – only the second woman to do so – but quickly faced signs that her colleagues did not treat her like “one of the guys.”
One co-worker insinuated that she was sleeping with her new boss to get ahead. In 2009, Letterman did confess to sleeping with some of the women who worked for him, but Scovell wasn’t one of them.
“It is problematic when it is a manager or someone who has the ability to hire and fire people.”
As we’ve seen with the stories coming out of the #MeToo movement, Scovell’s experience is not uncommon.
Only 33 percent of television writers are women, and a number of shows have no women writers. For people of color, the numbers are even worse. Over 86 percent of writers are white, and some channels like AMC, Showtime and TBS employ only one black writer or none on their shows.
Streaming services fare worse than their network counterparts, with 90 percent of the shows from Netflix and Amazon employing only one black writer or none. Hulu’s shows lack even one black writer in the room.
Scovell’s book encourages the entertainment industry to get its act together and start reflecting the demographics of the world they produce for – which isn’t exclusively white or male.
Some worry that the #MeToo era will break down the “no holds bar” attitude in the writers’ room. “The room has always been, theoretically, a safe space for people to discuss their most twisted thoughts,” “New Girl“ creator, Liz Meriwether, told The Hollywood Reporter.
That approach can have a toxic effect on underrepresented writers feeling vulnerable about their lonely token position in the room. Another showrunner told THR, “Some women overcompensate and try to be more of a dude than all of the dudes. Some just shut down. Either way, it doesn’t make for the best work.”
Gloria Calderon Kellett, the showrunner of “One Day at a Time,” told Variety, “I’ve been around when the boys were being stupid, and I’ve just tried to ignore it. But now that I’m in charge, I don’t have to put up with s--t.”
There are various impediments facing would-be TV writers from entering the entertainment workforce. The industry has always been built on “who-you-know networks,” leaving out people already not in the room and offering little incentive to hire a stranger over a friend.
Making a writers’ room more friendly to different people is easier done than some in the industry may think. Research shows that hiring diverse talent brings other underrepresented writers, directors and producers up in the ranks as well.
On average, a show created by a woman will have more than half of its writers’ room staffed by women. When only a male creator is in charge, that percentage drops to 21 percent. If only 9 percent of showrunners are nonwhite and 20 percent are women, then the conversation about diversifying writers’ rooms doesn’t get far. You can’t fix what you don’t see is broken.
