Take 1 - Screenwriter Adele Lim, Crazy Rich Asians and Raya and the Last Dragon

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Any of us who've been in it for long enough, our entire career has been littered with jobs that we didn't get, projects that we thought were gonna go for sure, dozens of unproduced scripts littering the oil.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

All of us are running into both major and minor failures in Hollywood every single day.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

For every success, there is most even failure.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is here.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

I was being told by my manager it's yours to lose. And I promptly lost it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I blew my one-big shot. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Welcome to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about failure, rejection, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am one of your hosts, Dan Rutstein, broadly successful, and I have co-hosting with me a man for whom rejection is almost his middle name, Noah Evslin.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Might as well be my middle name. I'm legally changing it in the next couple of weeks. We have a really great guest with us today, and her name is Adele Lim. You've probably heard of her uh recently in the news for a number of big movie announcements, but she started her career as a TV writer. She was on shows like Private Practice with Me. She's worked on Lethal Weapons. She was the uh showrunner on Starcrossed, uh, she's been on Dynasty, One Tree Hills, and so many more. More recently, she's was the writer of this, you know, teeny movie called Crazy Rich Asians that obviously was a huge success. And more recently, a movie that I'm really excited about and my kids are really excited about, but it hasn't actually been released yet, which is Disney's Riot and the Last Dragon. Uh Adele, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Thank you. It's so nice to be here, Dan and Noah. And by the way, I take issue with you describing yourself as a failure. You have, for those of you who don't know, Noah has got this gorgeous family, and they're right now living in Hawaii. So honestly, of all of us, you are living your best dang life right this second.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

The first question, you know, we we want to start off not with your successes, of which Noah's mentioned many. We normally start off with a rejection question, but let's start off with a failure question. You have described yourself as a failed backup dancer for a Malaysian pop star. Let's start with that failure.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, I think honestly, the only reason I'm working as a writer in Hollywood right now is because I didn't make it as like a backup dancer back in Malaysia. So I grew up there, dance was, you know, I always written, I think from a very young age, but when you grew up in Asia with Asian parents, nobody ever thinks that thinks that's you know a viable vocation going down the road. They don't think that about dance either. But I got, I think one of my earliest jobs were, you know, in dance, and you do it with these like Malaysian pop stars. You get on stage, you do your thing. And I um I was so proud because there was a moment where the the performance was going to be nationally televised, and then you know, you'd be legit. I was, I think I was like 16 or 17 at the time. So my parents, my friends, I told everybody, everybody's waiting and waiting. And we get on stage with our, you know, with our pop star, Ningbai Zura, me and my best friends, you know, so it's like the teenage dream doing our thing, shaking our money makers. And then we're told by our very um Muslim information minister that we're showing too much skin, it's not doable, you're out. So, you know, our pair with our parents like recording this on VHS, like they never got to see it. As far as they're concerned, I probably made the whole thing up.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Was that a good preparation for Hollywood being yanked off by the stage by a cultural minister?

SPEAKER_00 4:05

I like once you've once you've had your dreams crushed as a young girl, you know, everything is just gravy after that.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

You've worked with Noah. So you've been in a room together. This is always a sort of thing I find quite interesting. So, you know, this is years ago, you're on a show, you're on private practice, great show. And then, you know, the show ends or people leave. Some people drift off and work on a different show, some people drift off and become Uber drivers, other people drift off and write crazy rich Asians. You know, when you're all in a room together, can you sort of work out who's gonna be the successful one and who isn't?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Oh my god. I mean, you know, sometimes you think you can tell there are these people who are just like superstars in the room and you think, you know, they're gonna do great, but you can't, you know, you can't really tell because Hollywood like life, it's you know, cruel and capricious. Um, and you know, since this is a show about failure, I think, you know, private practice was probably, you know, if I were to put it in the ledger of like successes and failures, you know, was a little bit of a failure for me too. Like not being on the show was great to be on the show, and I was surrounded by amazing writers. But I remember my very first script, you know, like I just didn't entirely get it. And also it's the kind of show where, you know, no one can talk about all the characters of ethical dilemmas, and but it was already an established show, so you got to get that. And beyond getting what you think the show should be, you're also trying to write to, you know, your showrunner, um, like our head writers and um and also Shonda Rhimes. So see, you know, and all you want is to like knock it out of the park. All you want to do is be like, oh my God, this is the best thing ever. We barely have to touch it. And that was not the case in my situation where, you know, like I felt like I had an idea what I was doing, but you know, it just like didn't quite hit like, you know, their kind of happy spot. And they were, by the way, they were great about it. Um, you know, we still trucked on. I still went on, you know, to write other episodes and produce on set and all of that, but it is that grim feeling of like crap, you know. And by that time, I wasn't um a writer who was just starting out, or you know, I was sort of like in the mid, mid to higher level on the writing staff. And it's always, you know, it's always a sobering feeling when you realize like you didn't quite do it.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

And that was a surprisingly hard tone, if I remember, to that show to actually hit correctly. It's it seemed easier than it really was, which was a show about five doctors and and just their interpersonal relationships and the medical. And it was all sort of breezy, and yet it wasn't at all on the page to kind of nail that tone. And I remember coming in, and you know, I was actually at that time the medical researcher on the show and kind of helping navigate some of the medicine for the writers. And it was, it was, it was surprisingly hard for everybody, especially when you're writing for someone like Shonda Rhimes, who you know has this sort of idea, perfect idea of what her show should be, and and for you to get it there.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Right, absolutely. And especially either if it's your first year on a show or it's a brand new show, usually that the only person who really has that voice down is the showrunner. And you know, you're and having run a show, you realize how rare that is to have another writer be able to sort of immediately replicate that voice. What has been my experience is generally, especially in the first year, showrunners have to rewrite every single script because it's it's it's a process, it's an arc of being able to get everybody thinking, sounding the way you need the characters to sound and think, the way the showrunner sounds and thinks. And to step it out like a little bit more, especially I think for people who feel like outsiders anyway. So, you know, when I started out, I was an immigrant, I'm like Asian, I'm female, and there really weren't a lot of us around. And when you go into a room and everybody kind of has a shorthand that they have like a shared cultural history, they have shared things of, you know, stories about prom and um bands that they loved or sports teams, and none of these things are things that I knew anything about. So you already feel like you're you know you're starting from like um your back foot. So that you know, there's always a culture to kind of to kind of like get caught up with. And, you know, for a while, for a long time when I started out, I remember thinking like, just Jesus Christ, like, you know, get on it, like, you know, get with the program, like, you know, try to keep up. But sometimes, sometimes you can't. And I don't think that necessarily needs to be seen as a failure. I think um, you know, we're in this time in the entertainment industry right now where I I think studios are beginning to appreciate that this diversity in points of view and you know, different kinds of storytelling, different kinds of perspectives actually does you know bring something to the table and help. But again, when you're when you're in it and you're you know, and you're feeling all your damn lonesome um in a big old writing staff, uh, monolithic writing staff, it's it's easy to kind of get like crestfallen.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

So I was I wanted to sort of hold back the question a bit later in the podcast about the effectively is it harder for you question. But you've already raised this, so we'll go straight into this stuff. You know, as a an immigrant as a female, did you feel sort of the extra pressure that your script had to be not just as good as other people's, but maybe slightly better because maybe there'd be an inbuilt prejudice?

SPEAKER_00 9:05

I don't, you know, I think in the beginning I wasn't really thinking about any of that. I I was just thinking I'm just lucky and grateful to be part of the party. And, you know, I think it I'm old as F. And so when I started out, like that was about 20 years ago, and that it's a very different environment where um, you know, a young Asian female writer is starting out right now. But when I when I did start, I I don't know if I thought that I had to necessarily be better, but there is this sort of intangible quality to, you know, to your writing, to how you are in the room, to just how you connect with people. If you didn't grow up of a certain culture, and again, it doesn't, it's not necessarily because I was foreign, but you know, that they I knew I could sense like there were other writers who didn't quite fit in because at that time when I was starting out, a lot of the writers are these not just you know white guys, they're like white guys who went to really exclusive East Coast schools and knew all, you know, knew each other and had a certain way of being, you know, what they found interesting, movies that movies that they loved, the kinds of characters that they were drawn to, you know, and so with all these things, like you feel, you know, that you're not entirely getting that also is reflected in your work. And so because what we do is so insanely subjective, it's not like you can put a script up and go, well, this is like an 87% script, you know, me not being able to hit that voice or you know, like get that exactly right to me felt like a failure. And so it wasn't about like, oh, I need to be better than everybody else. I mean, I I 100% did in all the other ways of like feeling, okay, I've got to come with like lots of stories to pitch. I've got to be the person who's like, you know, you're always reading every piece of material. You're always um, you know, you're always on it. You're never the kid who's slacking off. Because if you're on a writing staff, you know, it's easy to get complacent sometimes, you know, when you've just been hired. And you see, you know, there would be other senior white guy writers who'd be like barely there. They kind of come in, pitch this half-assed idea, and people still love him, and you know, and on the page, it's lazy, like, you know, it's like sentence, you know, paragraphs aren't finished. And some people think like, well, if that guy can get away with it, I can get away with it. And at that point, particularly, it's like, no, that is not true. Because looping back to your question, it's not so much that I felt like, you know, I have to be so much better in my script than every anybody else, but I felt like if I missed the mark for any reason, my otherness was going to be held against me. That it is very easy, and again, it's it's human nature, it's a go-to. And what I've what I've noticed is um having been in a lot of writing rooms, you know, if a writer doesn't quite get a voice, if that writer is a person of color or it's a woman in a largely male room, that otherness is sort of blamed for them not getting the voice of the show. And it is easy for the showrunner to write them off of like, well, you can't genetically change somebody. And, you know, so there the idea is that a young white guy writer might be able, you know, he might not, you know, knock it out of the park, but the showrunner still sees, you know, himself in that young writer, might, even though he can give that writer a hard time, will give that writer more chances to get the voice right because he thinks he knows that there's a possibility of that writer improving and being able to adapt to the voice of the show. Whereas, you know, if it's again a woman, a person of color, they more often go to the thing of like they're never going to get that voice. Um, you know, they're never going to understand it. And so, you know, you get you it's easy to get written off that way. But I'm I'm hoping that um show writers are a little bit more cognizant of that right now.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

When you were in it, as you said, and obviously for every good script, you know, every writer, even the most successful ones, for every good script, there's some bad ones as well. Were there were there any times where this otherness got to you so much that, like your backup dancing career, you thought maybe you should give up?

SPEAKER_00 12:53

No, no, no. I mean, listen, I don't have a lot of other like, you know, viable life skills here. Like, there's no option B in this. I think the option B, my mother had this grand plan for me when I was growing up, um, which was she wanted me to major in finance. She wanted me to go into the science stream and um, you know, just be, you know, just have a more serious career going forward. And that was never going to happen. So, you know, when I when I came out here, really, you know, I knew I wanted to be a writer and it and um TV, I grew up with on TV. Um for a moment, because both of my parents are in advertising, I thought, well, you know, that's a way you make money as a writer. You become an ad copywriter, you do that thing. Um, and all it took um was me pitching, doing one creative pitch to realize like I can't do this for the rest of my life. I think we were selling um baby formula, you know, and Asian, Asian moms at the Asian market, they like fat babies. And so I'm out there like doing my song and dance about, you know, buy our formula, give you give you a big fat ass baby, and thinking, what am I doing with my life? But anyway, yes. So no, I I I didn't hit any moment where I thought, like, you know, I have to, you know, I'm I've I have to quit the business altogether. I think the the good and bad side of our business is everything is, you know, we're kind of gig based. You're not on a show and you know, for five years generally. Like this, it does not, your the one show that you're on does not define you.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

What was the longest you went without work? I mean, it looks like if you look at your IMDB, it looks like you pretty continuously went from gig to gig, but sometimes the IMDB profile isn't actually the reality of your own experience where you come off a show, the phone's not ringing, or the phone is ringing, and you're just not booking the gigs and the months are clicking by. Were you pretty, you know, was it a pretty easy jump for you at some point from show to show, or was there those lag times?

SPEAKER_00 14:45

A couple of things. I think I've I've been very fortunate in that I've continually worked since I started working. The only times I had to not work were when the writers were on strike. But I think the the big thing, the only time I ever felt really angry at the industry was the two times I got knocked up and pregnant. And, you know, um, in the days where staffing season is only like two to three months a year, and you have to kind of land your job for the next year in those two to three months, when you waddle in like eight months pregnant, you are instantly out of the running. And I don't think I've ever felt as vulnerable or angry about things as I as I did then. Um, in in terms of like other lags, I it was mostly in the beginning, um, you know, where you go through staffing season and you know, you're you're praying, you go for all these meetings. And, you know, especially early on, I didn't really understand what how to give good meeting. I didn't know how to really meet with the showrunner and and talk about the show or even in my generals. And it really wasn't until one or two years in where I had like a ton of meetings one year where I realized, like, oh, like there's a whole game to it, you know, when when executives ask you, like, you know, how's it going? Blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, they're they don't really give a shit like how it's going. They just want to see if, you know, you're a person that's going to spark you that they're going to find memorable, that they find interesting, that they're not going to look like idiots recommending you to a showrunner. But before I figured all of that out, you know, absolutely, in like I had my first job when I had to look for a second job the second year because the first show didn't get picked up. It was that thing of like, you know, going on all these meetings and feeling like I was doing okay, but not getting any offers. And that's a huge problem. Because in staffing season, you have to get multiple offers because you don't know um which shows are going to get picked up. Or, you know, and especially if you are a staff writer or a story editor, you're lowest on a totem pole. They have to figure out all the big money important people before it trickles down to you. And you're just kind of waiting, waiting, waiting. So it's a numbers game. And in that first one or two years, you're just like, you can, you know, you're like, I had three good meetings, and you see like show number three gets like cut, and then show number two doesn't get picked up. And then show number one, you're just like, you know, praying, hoping, waiting. And I remember that second year when I was really hoping to get staffed again. None of the shows I I met on, you know, and did and had good meetings on got picked up. Uh and you know, the shows that did get picked up, I didn't get an offer on. And it wasn't until really, really, really late in the game where the uh the showrun who hired me for the first show gave me a call and it was like, you know, are you doing anything? It was just like, you know, it was like by the grace of God. And that's the only reason I got staffed that year. Uh again, just to talk about the lags a little bit, my my whole career before and after giving birth was about being, you know, one of the hardest working writers in the room. And, you know, have and I I prior to that been like hired because I worked with a bunch of writers who really liked me and you know kept pulling me onto things. And it felt like all of that had gone out the window just the second anybody got any sense that I was pregnant. Um, because it's not something, you know, I could even hide at that time. But in retrospect, looking back at it, those those periods were probably the best things for me. And when I tried them down, those were the moments where because I was, I couldn't work for a few months and I was so angry. I wrote all this different material because I was just determined to, you know, shoot out of the gate the second I could and show people that I really had it, that I wasn't, you know, I didn't want to be considered irrelevant because I was out of the game for half a year or a year.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

It's great that you used the sort of fuel of anger and effectively discrimination to do your best work. At what point did you realize that you were going to be very successful? Or have you even realized that?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Um God, I'll tell you when I get there. I do think probably Crazy Rich was the big turning point because then, you know, it just had a lot of visibility and you know, in terms of the kind of movie it was, and because it was full of Asians and Hollywood hadn't done that before. But honestly, in my head, it's it's the same way I felt with jobs where on years where I got offers or jobs where I, you know, didn't do as well, which was I'm the same writer, I'm the same person who's been doing the work, you know, it's just that there's a different point of view, or this thing happened to do well. And, you know, as you know, it's such a collaborative medium what we do in television and in and in movies. You know, you as much as showrunners like to think like it's all us, like, you know, it's all it all just starts on the page and you guys are lucky. Like it has everything to do with your actors and your directors. And in a way, it takes a little bit of the curse off of you, you know, feeling like, all right, I was successful, but I I tend to look at it as it did well because, you know, we were ready for the opportunity, and then we also got incredibly lucky. So you, you know, it's it's sort of like banking on all things, like you be as prepped as you can. And a lot of times it doesn't work. A lot of times, you know, I've had um projects where I thought the stars were aligned, this is the best writing I've ever done. I've got my dream team, and for some reason the alchemy just doesn't work and it and it just sputters.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Is there is there a particular rejection that you've had that's hurt more than others?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

They've been several, they've been several and they all hurt. They're all like they're all a dagger through the heart. Like, but I think the ones that probably hurt the most are probably earlier on, because you know, I when you've had a number of years in it, you start to, you know, you have enough capital to sort of like bank on for other things. In the beginning, you think you you place so much importance on that one job that it means everything. And I think the one that probably stung the most was just, you know, very early on, and I hadn't been staffed yet, and I'd spent years as a writer's assistant and a script coordinator. And um, I was put up for, I was put up for this job, and it was about, I think it was about Wall Street, except, you know, Wall Street and all the dirty, sexy things that happen behind, and you know, being put into this meeting and being told by my manager, you know, it's yours to lose. And um, I promptly lost it. And I remember thinking, like, well, that's it for me. Like I blew my one big shot, and you know, and uh it's gonna be all awful from there on out. And I think what I've realized from that moment is like you, it's never one, it's never one big shot. It's never, you know, there will be other shots. It's just that it it feels so real at the time. The other ones that hurt are the ones that are that feel like they're going all the way. You know, I had um, I had a piece of development. Um, I and also it was also where I was in my life. I just gotten divorced, but I, you know, I had this project that I was so excited by, and everybody was jazzed by it. I think it was uh I developed it with John Chu, actually. So we sold a pilot to um Fox about dancers. He has a thing of like, you know, of dance documentary, I have my background in dance, as I've shared with you. And you know, we we had that, and we were told like Fox really wanted like new faces, new things, like you know, uh uh a whole new jam. And so we had this thing that we So excited by I had, you know, I'd spent months going to these underground dance clubs, um, you know, getting kind of entrenched in like the lives and the worlds of these dancers, um, and was told every step of the way, um, you know, in the development process, particularly towards the end. So the way it works for network development is like kind of come December, like all the scripts are due, and you begin to get told, like, is if it's gonna go or not. And everybody, you know, kept saying from the studio and the network, it's like, no, this is exactly what you need, you know, we need, and you knocked it out of the park, and it's so great, and you've got John Chu, it's all lining up. Um, you know, and they will keep asking for you know, little adjustment rewrites, they're like, because it's so close. And deep into like through January and through February, it kept going on of just like, you know, just like do one more thing, just to like fix this one thing because we're right there, we're right there, we're right there. And then suddenly, boom, you're not like it's just gone. Where I am right now, I really, really believe like there's no, there's no such thing as a mistake or a failure. That what I learned from that experience, it really didn't matter, like what all these development executives were telling me on the studio, the network level, that there was only one or two people with green light power. And if they weren't involved in it, then and they don't feel it, then it's gone. So in a way, it was liberating because you realize at the end of the day that you can do your best at something, but you don't necessarily, you know, that doesn't your efforts aren't the reason a project goes or doesn't go. And I know it can sound depressing, but you know, that's kind of the reality of things. And because the way they always phrase it to you, you know, it's like, oh, well, you know, your script just didn't get there, or you know, that there's a lot of ways writers who are self-flagellating like masochists anyway, you know, put it on themselves. But it in I think the big lesson I took from that was, you know, sometimes it doesn't go your way. And ultimately it's gonna be okay. And for me, it did end up being okay because even though that project didn't go, I had a great relationship with John Chu. And so then, like a couple of years later, he called me out of the blue. Um, I had no interest in doing feature films. He called me out of the blue because he and I had a great working relationship and you know, said he had he was being pulled on to direct a movie called Crazy Rich Asians. And would I like to come on and you know, um, do a pass on the script? And I was like, sure.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Now that we're on that, and how you just never know where your career is gonna go, and and it's always based on these relationships, most often, right? That that something can go really wrong for you in the past, or it could feel like it's really wrong, but really it's the relationship that's important and is moving you forward to this next stop. But you have commented publicly, and I I just want to say I'm a huge fan of Crazy Rich Asians. I dropped your name a hundred times. I know her, I know her, it was such a good movie. I love that movie when it came out. And you talk, obviously, we'll talk about that, the movie, and then the sequel as well. But you talk about, you know, coming on as an Asian female writer sometimes and being asked to sort of be the soy sauce or what what we would call the shoyu in Hawaii, which is the flavoring. And that's a really pointed comment. But it doesn't necessarily sound like that's what John wanted you for crazy rich Asians, but that that that is a reality in in the in the in Hollywood right now.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Yeah, well, two things. It it is a reality in on many projects that wasn't the case in Crazy Rich. But even though it wasn't the case and for that or like other pro other um uh minority-centric projects, that's the industry perception. And that's kind of what I'm I was fighting against, also, which was which is especially in features where there are way fewer women and people of color, oftentimes, you know, because we're a cynical crew and we know how it works, the the main go-to content creators, the director, the writer, you know, producer, they're like these white guys, and then they real they realize late in the process, like, oh shit, we've got a thing about a you know, a movie about a black family, and we, you know, to inoculate ourselves from um being criticized as to not being culturally sensitive. Let's pull in a junior writer, you know, for optics. And I think with Crazy Rich, like that wasn't the experience I was having. And I knew, you know, I came on, I I believe what I my work was substantial in terms of what I contributed to the project. And again, this is with all respect to Pete Corelli, you know, but I was brought on for a reason and I did my job and I was, you know, working on it while being on staff. And I think that, you know, then the script was what it is, not because I'm like some phenomenal, like, you know, amazing writer, but the script benefited from the fact that I'd been working as a television writer for 17 years. Like I know how a scene is going to turn out. Because in TV, you write a scene today, it's got to shoot tomorrow. You you got to make sure that it's right. And so I felt like, you know, I was bringing all my expertise and also, you know, the cultural specificity of it. I'm, you know, Chinese, Malaysian, you know, I grew up, it's the same, I'm not rich, but you know, it was the same culture and you know, the auntie dynamics, the aunties and the moms going to church, like all that business, the languages, the food. You know, that's something I grew up with and knew about intimately. While I was, I think my my big reaction after the fact was that that I knew that the industry perception is often that the substantive work is done by, you know, the white guy, and then you know, the the chick or the minority gets pulled in to kind of like flavor it to make sure like you know the throw cushions are right in the house, but is it credited with building the house? And you know, and I really did not care for that to be the perception, you know, for me.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

And and I mean, I really feel like, and and and this is sort of a broader comment that we're always taught as writers that that specificity is so important and that uh that it can't be something that comes later. It has to be built in, like you said, to the DNA and the blueprint of the proper of the project. And what made Crazy Rich Asians so special to me as an outsider, but who grew up primarily in an Asian community in Hawaii, is how specific it was. And it felt like embedded, and obviously there was a book and there was the director, but it felt like from the script up that when I was, and obviously I haven't read your draft or the early draft or whatever, but I just always knew that your contributions had to have been very large. And those contributions, if I could sort of parse them out, would be like, this is what made the movie really special to me. But can we talk a little bit about the very public debate that happened later for the sequel of Crazy Richards?

SPEAKER_00 28:39

Yeah, and again, because you know, we're talking about failures. When you are kind of cut out of a process, you know, or your your value, you know, um is being questioned, like that to me like felt like a huge failure. Like I was completely flabbergasted. Um, because you know, that's a world in which like you think you're doing fantastic work and you're doing great and everyone's happy, and you know, they're like, let's just go knock out the next two sequels and we'll be one great happy family, and it'll be great. The first movie I wrote for next to nothing because you know, I'm a I was a TV writer, I was like running a room on Lethal Weapon, but this thing was really um a labor of love. Um, and you know, it was it was fine. But then because the movie was so successful, I just assumed that, you know, then there would be some acknowledgement of that moving forward. Um, or at the very least, that you know, my co-writer and I would be, you know, sort of held to equal standards, and that really wasn't the case. So there were many ways to kind of go about it. I think when I was in it, there was the thought of it's I should put pride aside, and that a movie like Crazy Rich only comes along once a generation, you know, it that I would be a fool to um detach myself from the project. But I think at the end of the day, for me, I there was two things. It was my my own issues about, you know, how I was valued for that project, but also I became very aware that this was an ongoing problem for the industry, that there were very, very few um female feature writers or uh feature writers of color at the highest levels. And the argument that was leveled at me was I hadn't written any other features before, um, and therefore, you know, the business affairs was viewing me and and a kid who just graduated from USC on pretty much the same at the same level. And my argument was that no, I spent all these years as a working television writer kind of really grinding it out in writers' rooms. I've written like, you know, uh tons of hours of produced entertainment, um, and that should all be considered as well. But uh in the moment where I had to kind of pull the trigger and decide, you know, I was definitely going to um step away from it. I think they they had the idea that I was just playing hardball, that this was a negotiation tactic. And by that point, I kind of I think I was done. It was that feeling of this is not great. I wish, you know, people, I wish, you know, the lawyers um and the accountants and were part of the creative process and were willing to give me what I wanted, but they were not, and they were they were not changing their minds. Um, and I and I just you know bit the bullet. I was like, I I I wouldn't feel good about uh continuing with the project on those terms, so I stepped away.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

What was the reaction in terms, I mean obviously this is a big story, but in terms of sort of, if you don't mind telling us some of this, if sort of private messages given to you by either people who worked with you on the movie or other people in the industry, you know, how did people react to your decision to you?

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Well, first of all, I didn't want to hurt the project at all because I I love John Chu, I love all the actors, I'm still friends with all of them. Um, I didn't want it to hurt the the um the movie or the movie franchise, but I was blown away by the reaction. I don't think I was any of us were expecting anything like that at all. There was this huge outpouring, not just from um the industry, but from women everywhere. And I would get these, um, I would get these DMs from um other TV writers, screenwriters, women in tech, women in finance, all of whom, you know, were had had similar experiences. And the ones that were most gratifying were the ones where, you know, women who were very aware that they were being paid much less than their male counterparts, um, but had just been kind of going along with it, you know, and but also feeling that they were doing equal work, if not more. Um, but they just had to be satisfied with it, you know, were now feeling like there was enough public awareness that they could kind of push it a little bit. And the part where I take, you know, um gleeful delight in um is I've had a couple of uh screenwriter friends and TV writer friends who, you know, um when they were lowballed on an on an offer, which very often happens with a lot of minority writers, they were able to push back and you know use me as a threat almost of like um you you know, you don't want to be publicly shamed the way Adele Lim did with you know Warner Brothers. And and and saying that though, I want to make it clear that, you know, I wasn't out, it wasn't my intention to go out and give anyone like a public spanking. And and no writer wants to be the face of pay parody. I just wanted to be like a, I just want to do what I love. I want to be, you know, I want to be a good writer and I want to be paid my worth. And that really was it. I don't, I, after that initial Hollywood Reporter piece came out, I didn't do any interviews for months. I didn't want to talk to the press. I didn't want to, you know, um make a big thing of it because I'd said what I needed to say, and that was, you know, I felt like the rest of it was for the studios to be aware of the outpouring and how this wasn't um, I was not an isolated case.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

You you you had to make a decision, though. I'm curious about this part to actually go public with that Hollywood reporter article. Um, and I'll talk about after you enter that, like the response that on my side in the room I was in was all really phenomenal. But like at some point, there had to have been a decision that I was gonna very publicly say something that most people don't talk about, yet you decided there was value in this conversation. What was that thought process to say, I'm actually gonna go very public with this?

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Yeah. Well, most writers don't come forward with issues like this because the fear is that you are going to be labeled a troublemaker. And in an industry where it's all about word of mouth, you don't want to be known as the problem writer who's, you know. And also part of my fear was, I know how this industry talks. Like, you know, those white guy showrunners, by the way, who are close friends of mine and I love, you know, I know how they talk behind closed doors. I I've been in many rooms where it sounds weird, but they will literally forget that I'm a woman or that I'm Asian and they'll start saying certain things about, you know, whether they want to hire another writer or not, and whether, you know, if I I've been in conversations where they talk about not hiring a black script coordinator because they're worried about their, you know, the insensitive comments in the writers' rooms. And so maybe we shouldn't hire that, you know, a particular writer because of race. And I knew, even if it's not my fronts, like the I just know the type of people in our industry that they're, that they were going to come at it from a place of, well, maybe she didn't contribute that much, and that's why she didn't get offered as much, and she's just making a big stink about it. Um, so there's that fear, the the fear that you're going to be the person talked about behind closed doors with senior white level, you know, white male gatekeepers and showrunners saying what's on everybody's mind. We're just like, well, maybe she just, you know, um didn't bring it. Um that was that. So early on, I had no interest in making this up in making this public at all. But when the story came out, I had already left um eight months early prior to that. And there were some, there was um a Hollywood reporter, reporter, Rebecca Sun, who knew about it and approached me about the story. And I said I really didn't want to talk about it. But as the months went on, um and you know, this talk of the sequels with her and I think Variety, they said, like, this was going to be news, it was gonna get out. And I didn't think it was gonna be a big story. I'm just like, whatever, like who cares, you know, um whether the writer stays on or not. But I think Rebecca made the point that the story was gonna come out regardless, and that if I could contribute to it, that I could at least kind of tell my side of the story or control the narrative somewhat.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

You you just so you know, I was in the uh Hawaii 500 writers' room, and it's I mean, it's not terribly difficult to derail a room with you know it'll be like you know, Trump said this or whatever, or food orders. But the but the Hollywood Reporter article dinged on a few of our phones, and we started, and everyone went silent as they looked at it and then read it. And and a couple of the female writers knew of you, but did it, and they're like, oh my like, like, how do we meet Adele? I want to meet Adele. This is the the amount of sort of empowering conversations that that happened, and I think for the next hour, there was sort of a conversation about pay parity and people weighing in on features and second deals, and just and that you spoke up and you said this thing, and that it was gonna be seismic, and it kind of was, you know, in at least in our industry. But like you said, it trickled out to so many industries. The effect was huge on people saying it's okay to speak out and it's okay to ask for things, and you know, it doesn't always go your way, like in that case, eight months ago, you had already left the job, but but it's okay to speak, and it's like it was almost like you gave permission to so many people who didn't feel like they had permission to speak. And so I like I said, I was I love the movie and I was so proud of you for writing the first one, and then I was even more proud of you for that article, and it was just you know, I hadn't spoken to you in years, and it was just it was such a nice, substantial moment in my life, even.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Thank you, thank you so much for saying that. And you know, because it just it does feel like a bad low moment, you know, it did when it first happened, and you know, just like tracking the arc of the change. I remember my having a conversation with my mother, you know, and a lot of my friends saying, like, just take the money, like you know, you know the the money's gonna go up. It may not be exactly how you want it, but or under the auspices of how you want it, but just take it and you know, just go make the next thing great. And but after all of it, all of it became public, um, I had this con another conversation with my mother who, and she's been a working woman her whole life. She was in advertising, having to deal with, you know, like mad men level kind of sexism in the workplace. But after all that broke out, she came around, she was just like, I am so happy you went forward. You you came forward with it, because I think she in her generation felt like they couldn't say anything. And I think what we're seeing now with, you know, and again, it's not a thing that's exclusive to women or minorities, there are a lot of um, you know, there's a lot of like white guys like on writers' rooms right now, being treated horribly or being sexually harassed, you know, either by women or men, like, and who feel like they cannot say anything about it, and that they their inability to cope with it um, you know, is a failure, um, and that it's something that they have to live with. And I think what we've realized, whether it's I need to or time's up, but you know, that speaking up isn't about whining or complaining or or snitching, it is really just being vocal about you know a perceived injustice. And then what you find when you speak out is that you are not alone. And not only are you not alone, that this is a big widespread problem. And it is this weird sort of you know, don't snitch code of silence thing that has allowed so many, you know, monsters in our industry and like, you know, Noah, like you've worked for them. And, you know, there are these people who are have just been given the green light to run roughshod and be abusive and do, you know, harmful, illegal things to people, you know, much more so in entertainment than I feel in most industries, although I feel like it's you know across the board.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Yeah, people don't realize how you talk about how abusive some of these relationships can be and how people aspire to get these rooms and work so hard, but that gives some a particular type of showrunner sometimes license to push them harder than people should be pushed. And I think that's you know, if for the we're we're hoping to have uh a number of aspiring writers listen to this and to hear that it's you know it is a dream job in so many ways, but it also can, it has its other side, and we should start talking about it a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Yeah, and so I'm so glad you're doing this podcast. You know, I even when you talk about, you know, people not understanding how abusive these relationships can be. I remember talking to a friend and saying, like, the closest thing I can think of, you know, in terms of a depiction in entertainment is whiplash, where you, you know, you sometimes have these showrunners who, you know, again, some of them are sadistic, some of them are not, some of them are just so in their own dysfunction that they can't tell, they don't realize how um abusive it is to keep your staff in like all hours of the night, you know, expecting them to work at two, three o'clock in the morning, or, you know, belittling people's efforts or cutting them down. And for the writers out there, you know, because all you want to do when you're on staff is just like, you know, make your boss happy and write a great script, that it does feel like a failure when you cannot hang in there. You feel like I'm not tough enough. If I just found a way to make him like me. And the thing to recognize is like it's like being in an abusive relationship. Sure, you can get the guy to like you for a few seconds, you know, for a few minutes and he'll buy you flowers the next day, but this is not how you want to live.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

So when you she obviously said, you know, part of the reason you were worried about doing what you did was can I, you know, will I be branded as a troublemaker and so on. When you landed your first gig after all of the story broke, was there an extra sort of sense of relief that actually this hasn't killed my career, or you were not worried about that anymore?

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Uh you know, I I think what what I came to was this. I thought, you know what, if I burned my bridges in features, um, even though I had a good experience, you know, doing it, if this story is the thing that kills my career, I thought, you know what, I can go back to TV. In TV, people know me. Like, you know, the execs know me, the other writers who run shows know me. I felt um that I had a backup. And and because of that, I felt more comfortable about speaking out, um, because there are a lot of feature writers who don't have that luxury. And so, you know, some people were like, oh, it's great, you're so brave for speaking out. And I, and it really isn't that. It's like I just got really lucky because I felt I had a whole career in TV before this. If if Crazy Rich had been, you know, if I was a feature writer, and I I think I would have thought a lot harder and longer about uh coming forward with this. Um, but the and and also I think at that point, you know, because jobs in our industry are so transient, I was lucky because I picked up the job at Disney work um writing Ryan the Last Dragon, even before Crazy Rich had premiered. So I'd already started, it was going to just be a temporary gig. I thought, like, you know, I'll just do this. It was supposed to be like um a six-week gig or something before I go back and start writing the Crazy Rich um sequels. But, you know, because Crazy Rich went the way it did, I and I had a great experience with Disney. I just um Disney was like, stay on. And I was like, absolutely, you know, I'll do that. Um and coming out of it, honestly, I wasn't prepared for it, but there were so many um so many supportive executives in features that I really wasn't expecting. And um after Disney, I sold a I sold a screen. To Lionsgate, and you know, I um with Nathan Cahane um and they were so supportive of what I'd been through. I felt like that was just uh them buying the script for me and wanting to continue working with me was a reflection of that. And I and I'm very grateful for it. I don't think that was the you know, I don't think that might have been the case like five or ten years ago. I think we're in this moment of change in the industry, you know, that I'm really excited about. It's got a lot of growing pains, but you know, I think it's a move in the right direction.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

So I think Noah touched on it about sort of, you know, your story inspired the people in the writing room that he was in. Um and you said you had lots of people approaching you. So we're on to the last question, which is one for uh, you know, as Noah said, some of our listeners are going to be sort of people who want to get into this industry. We're probably a better place than anybody. What piece of advice would you give to somebody who is thinking, yeah, despite all the rejection, I think I want to work in Hollywood?

SPEAKER_00 45:01

That's all of us. Uh the advice is you look, think of the most successful writer you can think of, and you know, whose career you want to have, like, you know, pull up their IMDB page, like, you know, stare at their picture on the Google website, and understand that that writer has dozens of unproduced scripts littering his floor. Like, I guarantee you that any any of us who've been in it for long enough, and even if we're perceived as being successful from the outside, our entire career has been littered with, you know, jobs that we didn't get, up and down, you know, um projects that we thought were gonna go for sure. Um, you know, the number of times you're told that, you know, it's just not good enough for whatever reason. And the difference between the writers who've made it and the, you know, is like you stick with it. You stick with it. And so that when you're lucky enough, because a lot of it you do you have no control over, that when an opportunity, the right opportunity shows up, you're ready for it. That, you know, it's really easy to get, you know, and I've a hundred percent been in that space, it's very easy to get bitter in a writer's room or as a writer, because you'll see, like, you know, whether it's oh, you know, this writer who's, you know, kind of phoning it in and showing up drunk, you know, like half the time is like he's getting picked up because he's the the boss's buddy, or he's um, you know, writers who you feel aren't, you know, have a special connection or an in, you know, getting projects picked up, that we've all dealt with a huge amount of rejection in our time. And, you know, you just, you know, you stick with it and so so that you're ready. You're ready when your time happens. Well, the other the other thing I want to add in, because I've just been hearing this and it's been alarming the crap out of me. You know, a lot of writers are being told by their management of like, oh, you know what, you're a white guy, and so like I just can't get a white guy staffed right now, or like I can't get a white guy like an overall development deal. You know, I and I'm sure like that's also part of the, you know, the algorithm, you know, for for some studios, but if you look at the numbers, it's still overwhelmingly male and white, you know. And if you're not getting a break, it's like there's tons of all of us who aren't getting breaks. You know, it's not like you just have some magical um, you know, minority lady pass and you know, they just show, you know, usher you in. It's a struggle for everybody. But I have noticed that with a lot of representation, blaming the lack of their clients' traction on their race or their gender is kind of like an easy, it's it's an easy explanation and it doesn't, and it takes the onus off of your representation from either helping you get your material, you know, in the kind of shape, or it takes the responsibility, the responsibility off of them. You know, if they're not getting you meetings, it's because they're not getting you meetings, not, you know, not because I'm grabbing your slot.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

If if you look, if you go to any WGA meeting, what Adele is saying is going to become very clear that it's the majority still, and a lot of necessary adjustments are happening now, but the majority of writers are sort of older white male writers, and there are a lot of them are still working. Most writers' rooms are like 75% white. So it's yes, there's there's some adjustments being made, but those adjustments are necessary, and and everything is sort of in a nice flux now where they're realizing the importance of specificity and the importance of voice and the importance of inclusion and the importance of all these different things that they gave lip service to, but they really, I don't think really did find them that important until really recently, where this seismic change is happening.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

Well, look, Adele, thank you very much for coming on. And Noah, the reason you can't get work at the moment is actually just because your writing's not very good. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 48:42

All right, that's a wrap on this episode. If you want to leave us any feedback, go to hollywoodabyss.com.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

And if you'd like to subscribe, we won't stop you. And if you want to leave a review, we certainly won't stop you. In fact, we'll be incredibly grateful.

SPEAKER_01 48:56

And we have a couple of thank yous before we go completely. We want to thank James Launch for the intro and outro music. We want to thank both our wives who allowed us to hide in our respective basements while we record all of these interviews.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

If you want to find us on Twitter and join in the conversation, I'm at Dan Ruxley, and Noah is at M Epslin. Please come and find us, please say hello, and if you really want to, please give Noah a job.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

Yes, I am looking for a job of any sort. I can polish shoes, I can write copy, I can even be in a writer's role. So if that's the case, feel free to reach out.

SPEAKER_02 49:31

But you definitely can't podcast.

SPEAKER_01 49:33

I definitely this is not the thing that I do well.