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When I first started working in tv, I interned at a lit management company. They had just signed a writer who, to this day, had the best sample I’ve ever read. After 10 years in this industry, I’ve read a lot of incredible things. But for me, nothing has ever touched hers.
She was that good. She was nearly flawless on all cylinders. Pacing, dialogue, structure, characters. She had it all. For 10 years, I’ve looked for her name in the trades, but never found a credit. For 10 years, I’ve been waiting for her break. To my knowledge, it never came.
Now, I have no idea what happened. Maybe she decided entertainment actually isn’t for her. Who knows. But what I do know is this: She was Black. And she was queer. And she should’ve been a big f’in deal.
I’ve thought about her a lot in the past decade, but I think about her constantly now as Hollywood/society as a whole faces a reckoning re: how many racial inequities still exist. How incredibly sad it is that she never became the household name she should’ve been.
I can’t say for sure that the color of her skin or her sexual orientation played a factor in why she never staffed. But I do know she faced all the barriers that constantly keep true diversity out of our writers’ rooms:
She had no real connections. She didn’t have the means to take shitty assistant pay and work up that ladder. She was Black. She was queer. Those barriers exist now. 10 years ago? You had a better shot winning the lotto than breaking in when that was your hand.
I wasn’t supposed to do this, but I printed her script that 1st time I read it. I still have it. I read it every month (no joke). At first, I thought it’d be a “learn from the script that put her on the map” thing. Now, it’s a cautionary tale that merit only gets you so far.
I have like, 4 followers and no real point to this thread, so I don’t know why I’m talking into the void. Maybe I’m just tweeting for me, because I just finished my monthly read & I still can’t believe 10 years have passed and the best screenwriter I’ve ever read never made it.
She never had a shot. And for as long as the barriers to equitable access remain, so many voices like hers will be lost, too.
