Less than a year after creating a searchable database of TV writers of color, CAA is once again striving to make the television writing landscape — and the path to showrunning — more inclusive. The talent agency has begun the Showrunner Mentorship Program, an initiative that pairs veteran showrunners with mid-level writers of color, according to Vanity Fair. The goal is for experienced CAA showrunners, such as Misha Green (“Underground”) and Courtney Kemp (“Power”), to guide emerging writers from the agency, including Janet Mock (“Pose”) and Marquita Robinson (“GLOW”), through “the often problematic path to power.”
As CAA agent Brandon Lawrence told the source, the transition from writer to showrunner can be a difficult one. “[As a showrunner,] you’re running an almost $80 to $100 million enterprise with 100 people working for you, and you’re balancing people from every single aspect from network to studio,” he said. Showrunning duties include everything from shaping the show’s creative vision to deciding which actors, directors, and writers to hire. The writer-to-showrunner career path is especially unwelcoming for people of color: 91 percent of showrunners are white.
“Luke Cage” writer Matt Owens, Green’s mentee, believes the program is teaching him how to lead. “I don’t know how to run a writers room and be in the position of power,” he said. “So hearing how she deals with it is incredibly valuable, even if it doesn’t end up being my exact experience.”
The program is helping Crystal Liu (“American Horror Story”), who is working with “The Walking Dead’s” Glen Mazzara, figure out exactly where she wants her career to go. “My career is so embryonic right now, and everything takes on so much weight and importance,” she described. “It feels like, this is the only idea I’ll ever have in my life! But at our first meeting, Glen said, ‘This is not about the next three years of your career. It’s about the next 30 years of your career.’ I legit had never thought about my career lasting 30 years.”
For Green, who co-created the upcoming “Lovecraft Country” for HBO, CAA’s Showrunner Mentorship Program is a welcome alternative to other initiatives that want to make diversity hires without actually listening to diverse voices. “You come in and you are excited and then you realize, ‘You don’t actually care about anything I am saying, you just got me for free . . . and you can say you have diversity on the show,” Green explained. Stressing the importance of hiring multiple writers of color, she added, “Just having someone to talk with and say, ‘Actually, that is crazy!’ Or ‘that has happened to me a lot’ — you feel less like you are being gaslighted when someone tells you how they dealt with it.”
