Take 76 - TJ Brady and Rasheed Newson, showrunners Bel-Air

SPEAKER_01 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 floor.

SPEAKER_04 0:13

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

SPEAKER_00 0:20

For every success, there is most, sometimes even years, of painful failure. This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.

SPEAKER_04 0:31

That's the norm to be able to persevere. Like everything in our business here, it has a counter.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

That process takes care of that doesn't matter overnight. 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_00 1:00

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection failure and adversity in the entertainment industry. When I say welcome back, I I mean welcome back because you haven't had the chance to listen to our Dulcit Tones for 10 weeks now. Noah, tell people what we've been doing, or at least what you've been doing for the last 10 weeks.

SPEAKER_04 1:20

First off, I fetched a little bit more excitement. It's been 10 weeks uh since we've done this and seen each other. Actually, we've recorded a few in the interim, uh, but it's the first time we've recorded a prologue in preparation to drop a new episode. What have I been doing? I moved uh from Los Angeles to Hawaii, so that was a pretty major endeavor that took a lot of time, was one of the reasons why we had to take a little mini break in between seasons. Uh Dan, what were you doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Well, you moved to Hawaii. Oh, I see. I I thought you were just annoyed at me about one of my mean tweets, and you just weren't sort of hanging out with me anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:57

Well, I we did that as well. That was that that those two things can exist in the same universe.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_04 2:02

How's Hawaii? Hawaii is everything you hope it to be, and a little bit more. Um, it's really great to be out here. It's fun to be near the production where I'm working. Uh, we are just getting back settled into Hawaii, a Hawaii way of life, which is a little bit slower, a little bit more laid back. We loved LA, we loved our 15 years there, but it was a time to come home, so to speak. And uh we've been enjoying, you know, sort of every moment since. Granted, life continues to move on. I got to work, I have to record. Obviously, I don't have to record podcasts, I enjoy recording these podcasts, and even if you know that means chatting with you. You've had some changes as well, though, I think, in between the end of our or right at the end of our season and in the start of you know, a couple weeks into our break, I think.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Yeah, so I moved to house as well, although slightly less dramatic. I didn't uh go to the airport and fly somewhere. So it's worth noting, I drove you to the airport. Um, so for those people who think that driving people to the airport in LA is not something you do casually, um, despite my terrible relationship with Noah, I literally drove him to LAX at like eight o'clock in the morning. Um, just want to put that on the official record.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

It was seven in the morning, but and if you're wondering if Daniel was the type of person not to mention these things, uh, like driving someone to the airport, he is the type of person to mention that he drove us to the airport. But we realized, by the way, had you not driven us to the airport along with a giant Uber, I don't think we would have been able to catch a plane. We had too much stuff, we had a dog, we had a cat, we had a lot of luggage, uh, but we made it.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

So obviously I drove him to the airport, he didn't tip me. Um, and then I actually gave him $40 because he thought he might have to tip the fly cap people, whatever the sky cap people. Um, and then I think he just kept the money. Um, so uh that's something we need to talk about offline. So I I moved house, I literally moved one street from one street in Woodland Hills to another to the point where when I moved my son's basketball hoop, it was easier to just drag it across the street than it was to try and pour out all the water and disassemble it. Um, but buying a house in America is not a straightforward process, so that took up a lot of time. And then at work, uh I was uh what was I head of international at Orange County Soccer Club, and then the president left, and then I became president, so I got promoted. So I'm the equivalent of the showrunner rather than just the lighting guy. Um uh so actually, like a showrunner, I have about eight different jobs now, so I'm uh yeah, president of the soccer club, which is wonderful but very time consuming, which is another reason we've had this break, and it probably lasted two weeks longer than we had hoped for. But we're very excited to get back to recording. Now, what's going to be different about the second half of season two?

SPEAKER_04 4:51

Well, I think the first thing it's worth mentioning to everybody is we have a sponsor, and this didn't come sort of easily for us in the sense that we weren't looking for a sponsor. We had been approached by a couple of people, as Dan says, they were like mattress manufacturers, and that didn't feel like a great match uh for our podcast. So we kind of passed on those opportunities. We were trying to sort of stay uh, I guess, organic under the radar. What do you call it? On the down, there's a word for it. We were trying to stay uh uh well free and and my mind is breaking here. What's the word when we're uh uh Well, I thought you were a writer.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

I think the word you're looking for is authentic.

SPEAKER_04 5:33

We're saying yeah, we're trying to stay authentic. And and we, you know, we a lot of other podcasts get sponsors, and eventually we got to the size where people were approaching us and nothing seemed to be the right fit. And then one day uh I had tweeted something. I think Dan will give you some more details about that, and uh lo and behold, a sponsorship opportunity appeared, and we actually couldn't turn it down. It was too perfect for us.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yeah, so Noah's right. I mean, obviously, we have nothing against people who ruin podcasts by having loads and loads of adverts in them, uh, but we just didn't want to do that. It's not fair on you, the listeners. Um, so we did turn down Instacart and mattress companies and all that sort of stuff. And then one day Noah was being very American on Twitter, and uh he was commenting on the quality of a uh writing software program, and then put some sort of sad American over-commercial begging tweet out saying, you know, this isn't an ad, but if you want to sponsor our podcast, you can. And obviously, as a British person, I was highly embarrassed by his behaviour. Um, but wasn't that upset when they came back and said, Okay, we'll sponsor your podcast. So uh apparently in America, if you if you sort of nakedly commercially lack any moral sort of backbone and just sort of beg for sponsorship from software programs that you use, they might sponsor your podcast. And so we're delighted to have a software program who are sponsoring our podcast. Now, I have absolutely no idea how it works or how it helps you as a writer, because as I may have mentioned once or twice, I am not in the industry. But tell me about, well tell us about scriptation.

SPEAKER_04 7:13

Yeah, so I mean, you can't see me, but as Dan was leading up to this moment, my face lit up because I genuinely like this product, this thing, and and I'm very excited. Uh they're sponsoring us because as I told Dan as we were talking about it, it's like the perfect Venn diagram of the perfect product for our podcast. Many of our listeners are writers and aspiring writers uh or in the industry. And scriptation is this annotation software that I didn't know I needed. I thought I had all the bells and whistles that I needed to succeed in this business. And then I was on set one day, and the props guy was writing notes in this really cool program on his iPad. And I said, What is that? I could see the script. I could see he was putting in notes and pictures and layers and all these other things. And he's like, Oh, it's a program called scriptation. And I'm like, I've heard of that once. I even think I tried it, but I wasn't quite sure, you know, all of the things that it did, and how is it any different than Adobe Acrobat or something? And he showed me all these different functions. So one of the coolest functions of all is I don't know if you if you're in production, what you'll know is you start to get many different drafts of scripts and they go through colors. They go through white and blue and pink and salmon and double white and double. And every time you get a new set of pages, in the old days, you had to collate your script, which was this kind of a nightmare where you had to take the pages out, put the pages in, uh, add new pages to your script. And the reason you just didn't print out a new script was you wanted to keep your notes. And so you wanted to make sure that if you wrote a note on the first draft of the script, you in the old school, you know, hard copy printout version, you all the notes would remain in the script as you updated drafts. Well, somehow, like magic, scriptation does that for you. So every time a new draft, a new color comes out, you can put it into the scriptation program. And all of the notes that you've written automatically go to the new draft. And I don't know how it works. To me, it's like magic, but it really saves me a lot of time. And I used to in my old office, again, when I was recording this podcast, you couldn't see it, but Dan could. I had all of these scripts on the wall that I had just every episode, every draft of every episode, I had to keep track of. And then I got scriptation and I realized to get rid of all of this paper. So suddenly I went completely paperless with an iPad on the scriptation program. I love it. I think you should buy it. This is uh, I guess this is an ad because we are now, you know, scriptation is our sponsor, but I'd say that even before they were sponsoring us. I love this program. I think you should buy it. And I'm excited to, you know, be pairing up with them for this next round of episodes. Now, again, this podcast isn't just about uh product scriptation. It's also about the guests we're bringing on, and we're super excited. We are now rounding up a whole new batch of guests, but our theme is going to remain the same. And what is that theme down?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

So the irony is, of course, that the uh the guy who founded scriptation is, I think I'm allowed to say this, even though he's just become a sponsor. He's basically a failed writer. Um and he, you know, he set up the program because he had frustrations. But he's not quite a failed writer, but he's a failed writer in the sense that every writer's a failed writer. Like he's written in real rooms, but he is now the running uh a very impressive software company. But we'll probably get him on at some point to talk about his failures in writing because he told us he had lots. So I hope I haven't offended him, and by the time this comes out, uh he's no longer a sponsor, but I'm sure he'll trust me. Because if you say mean things in a British accent, somehow it doesn't count as mean.

SPEAKER_04 10:26

That was the fastest sponsorship agreement we've ever had. We're gonna have it in the very first episode and we got on the second. No, I do want to say that he has succeeded because he did work on shows um as a writer, but he was also a script coordinator. And if anyone knows, you know, what different people do in our industry, a script coordinator is in charge of all the scripts. So he saw some of the weaknesses and some of the gaps, I guess, in technology as a script coordinator, worked as a writer, kept on thinking about, you know, again, we're gonna bring him on and he can talk about it himself at some point, but like saw uh like this little window where he could create a product that would work and would really help people. And and this business is so crazy, and you're gonna find out in this episode that's about to drop that, you know, some people, some big writers don't even suggest you become a writer anymore. Maybe you should found a company that helps writers, you know, write with different programs because it's things have gotten really difficult.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Yeah, and uh as a promise to our listeners, uh obviously it's very exciting to have a partner. Um, we promise not to have loads of other partners, so we're still not gonna have mattress companies or uh Instacart or any of those other annoying ads that you get on people's podcasts. I think the only other podcast partner we would take is a whiskey company, uh, because I like whiskey. Um and Noah likes writing software, I like whiskey. So, but other than that, we promised to keep this relatively ad-free. So, anyway, let's get on with the show. Um actually, I suppose we should tell you who's gonna be on the episode that you're about to listen to if you haven't just wound through this bit. Um, noah, who have we got on?

SPEAKER_04 11:56

We have uh the writing partnership of TJ Brady and Rasheed Newsen. You're gonna hear in a second their official introduction. They're the showrunners of Bel Air, and they've done many other things. I think these guys were, it was really fun to have a pair on. It's been a while since we had a writing partnership on, and obviously we kind of dig into them about the nature of their partnership. Dan tried his best in the course of the 40-minute interview to break them up. I think he was unsuccessful.

unknown 12:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:22

Uh Dan, what do you think about what happened in the next you know 30 or 40 minutes of this interview?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah, and interesting. So actually, if you had these guys on, probably on any other podcast in the world, the first question would be please say something about Will Smith. But because that's not what our podcast is about, we didn't even think about asking that question. Um, even though it probably fits somewhere into the rejection, failure, and diversity portfolio. Uh, we just asked them about their writing, and it's a great way back into the episode. So uh I hope you missed us as much as we missed making these and enjoy the show.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

Yeah, we'll talk to you guys next week.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity, brought to you by Scriptation, a software program that makes the hard world of Hollywood a little bit easier. As ever, I am Dan Rotstein, your non-entertainment, polite British co-host. Uh, and we have Noah.

SPEAKER_04 13:20

And I'm your even more polite, yet in the industry, co-host Noah Epslin. On today's podcast, I'm thrilled to introduce TB writing and showrunning team Rashid Newsen and TJ Brady. They're currently the EPs and showrunners of Bel Air, but I've also worked on shows like The Hundred, Narcos, Shooter, The Fix, and The Chi, amongst others. Welcome, guys. We're excited to have you.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Thanks so much. Really thrilled to be here, guys.

SPEAKER_03 13:45

Yeah, thrilled to be here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

So I guess we'll start with an easy question. So we've had writing either writing pairs on before or people who are part of partnerships. And obviously, it's a slightly different industry for you guys it is to everybody else in terms of how you work together. So we'll start with something easy. So I'll ask, I guess I'll start with Rashid. What's the worst part of working with TJ as a co-writer? How much time do you have?

SPEAKER_03 14:13

Oh my goodness. Um, you know, really the the the the toughest part is whenever the two of us walk away with different ideas about what's supposed to be done. Like you've both heard the note from the boss, but one of you think it's supposed to be in a different tone than the other. Because then we have, you know, I don't mind arguing with other people. I don't really want to argue with TJ. So that's that's been the toughest. And also, and also not to be too saccharine, but there are times where I've been writing something and I've said, oh, I'll take this storyline, and then I get in there and I'm lost, or I don't understand it, and you feel like you've got to go explain how you're gonna, I'm gonna let you down. I didn't I didn't do what I said I was gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

So actually that was a remarkably benign answer, but it's actually that's quite an interesting one because one of the things we've talked about a lot on the show is is notes, both from you know how people give notes and how people receive notes. So in terms of that point about the notes, when you both take a note differently, what what do what how does that actually play out? Does somebody brave enough to go back and say, you know, did you mean X or did you mean Y? Or do you just sort of muddle through it? How do you actually deal with that reception of notes? Because obviously it's a tough thing anyway, but when there's two of you understanding it differently, I imagine that creates another layer of intrigue.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

So we have learned to go back and get clarification. I don't have a problem bothering the hell out of anybody who gave us a note to really get down to what they mean, because more often than not, the notes we get, there are a lot of words there uh that you could take any which way, and I think that's by design. It's it's sort of like we want you to change it, we're gonna give a bunch of ideas. If you take those ideas and nobody likes them, that's not my fault. Uh, and if you do something on your own, I can just point to the thing and say, Why didn't you do what I want to do? You know, so if that's the case, uh we like to get people on the record for what they mean. Do you want this in? Do you want it out? Do you want it to be a blue parakeet or a green parakeet? You said it should be a blue parakeet. If we change that, is that going to satisfy you, or is there something deeper here? Um, so we have learned to get there. Um, other times, if we are getting notes and people aren't available or we're kind of on our own, we have a system that's like, who's more passionate about this? Like, if if I can see Rashid is ready to like, you know, kick a hole in the wall because he feels really strongly about it, and I don't, he's gonna win. I don't care, you know, and that's not a card we play too often. Nobody abuses the I'm the most passionate about it card, but it's there, it's there.

SPEAKER_04 17:12

Well, I want to actually flip this question out because I'm really interested in this, not getting notes, but giving notes, because you're two bosses in a room, often in the writer's room, or to the production crew. Do you try to speak with one voice? What happens? I guess my real question is what happens when you guys are not 100% in an agreement. Do you try to speak with one voice? Do you sidebar? How do you best relay and come back to your group?

SPEAKER_03 17:38

Uh we, I mean, we you know, we try not to fight in front of everybody else. I mean, that just seems like the whole everybody would lose all their confidence in us if that happened. So we do talk a little bit about it. I will admit that I uh tend to be the one who wants to push it maybe a little further. I mean, you know, TJ is more likely to say, Rashid, you know they're gonna kill that. You know, like what are you? Why are you, why are you even, you know, why are you serving that up? Um, and then there are times where I think we agree. I'm like, well, let him shoot it down. I I just I still wanna, I still want to try. And we try to, I think, give each other that leeway. But you really do want to have it, you do want to speak with one voice because we've been in those rooms where there have been multiple people, you know. So maybe there's a creator and a showrunner, and you what you're watching them have a civil war with your fucking script, and it's it's it's horrible. It's horrible. You're like, you got they're not gonna actually come to a resolution, they're just gonna argue. We've been in those, remember, TJ will remember this. I mean, we've had a notes meeting between a showrunner and a creator, and it took like five hours. I can't, I still going back. I don't, there were multiple bathroom breaks. We broke for lunch, but for five hours, these two entities argued over this script that was maybe 50 pages long. And and we don't want to recreate that nightmare.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

It was almost line by line. There was almost a line on it would have been quicker for them to rewrite it from page one, I'm convinced, than give us the notes for as many hours as we got on every single line. Um, I know exactly the situation, it's mind-boggling. I really strive to you know make it the case that we are not those bosses. I'll back him up a hundred times out of a hundred, even if I don't agree. Because it all works itself out later. Everybody acts like, oh no, if that goes in the outline, then everything is screwed. It's not true. There's gonna be a script, and there's gonna be a revised script, and another script, and another and yellow pages of the triple goldenrod, and then you're in post, and you get a chance to fix it then. So there's nothing worth um going to war on most of the time about this. You put it in, you see what happens, you figure it out.

SPEAKER_03 20:04

Also, I would just say about giving notes is we've learned, I mean, you know, you can't give people 40 notes, like they can't process that. You're asking them for like maybe half a dozen things. And if there are other things you want to do, then TJ and I will just do them ourselves. Like, I mean, if if it's that, if you're gonna get that nitpicky, or if you if your laundry list is that long, congratulations, you're the boss. You go in there and you you do the line share of that other stuff. But most people can only digest about six, six notes or so of real like story changes.

SPEAKER_04 20:38

I I want to circle back eventually to the things that you've learned in the present, but you've had a long career together, uh, you know, starting all the way, you know, in the trenches from the very beginning. Was there ever a time that we're gonna go you know, go backwards in time now? Was there ever a time that one of you wanted to quit or give up and the other one wouldn't let you, or vice versa?

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Quit or give up. Um, I mean, not the business.

SPEAKER_03 21:04

There may be some shows here here and there were there were some I remember walking with you and there were some fans, you were gonna open up uh like a restaurant on an island.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Yeah, I mean, no, there was there were times where here's what I've said. I've said if this is what it's going to continue to be like, you know, given a you know a certain bad situation, if this is all it was gonna be from now to the end of our careers, I'll do something else. But the good news is in Hollywood nothing there is no prison sentence longer than six months, really. I mean most jobs don't last longer than that. So if you can just sort of gut through that most of the time you get yourself in a new situation.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

And I I mean, and to follow that, I mean I have at times you know, you sometimes I mean there are jobs that are so bad you wonder you you question your choices. Why, why am I doing this? Is this the state of the business? Is this all there is? I mean, we were happy we're showrunners. At one point, it seemed so elusive. I mean, unless you had a project that had, you know, IP and an actor and a director and all these things sewn up, you were never going to get in that seat. And certainly I think TJ and I, you know, we've been number twos on a show. We've been in those, you know, in the hierarchy. If you had told me that was going to be the rest of my career, um, I either would have had to have figured out a way to give less or walk away.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

So I feel a little bit bad about asking this question, but equally, you did agree to come on the show, and there's two of you, so you should probably expect it. So obviously, Noah asked a question about did one of you want to give up or not. My slightly nuanced version of that is because obviously in your world, there's people around you, there's your agents and there's managers and all that sort of stuff. Have you ever, or or indeed maybe executives, have you had a situation where somebody has tried to break you up, as in someone said, Look, Rashid, you know, TJ's holding you back, why don't you come and do this? Or the other way around. Just like, does that I don't know how that works, but has been a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

I'm pretty sure Rashid is controlled that on a bi-week weekly basis these days. Um the yeah, there was somebody who didn't do that. Uh, they said that we got let go from a show, and the person said, I I want you to know if it was just you, I'd keep you, but uh whatever. And it didn't have the guts to say it to Rashid. It was a very cowardly, cowardly move. And I I actually called him out on it, and uh, you know, it was it was I had nothing to lose at that point, and and so so when he said that to me, I said, you know, saying something like that, I mean, that just proves you're an asshole. So we're better off.

SPEAKER_03 24:01

Yeah, I mean, I don't I haven't had that. What I've gotten is people will will come to me with some idea and they'll say, Well, do you always have to write with TJ? And I'm like, I don't have to, but I like to. You know, it's like it's all I'm doing. Um I have I've had an we've been at this long enough, but I am firmly convinced that we are better off together than we would be on our own. If you doubt that, the marriage, I'm sure, dissolves pretty quickly because the pressure is so intense. So, yeah, I mean, I think um, you know, people we we've had some scrapes. We we've we've been asked to leave jobs or not come back. And um I will I will raise my hand and admit that uh I'm probably the one who's been singled out as the loudmouth who you know earned RSR walking papers. Um but you know, I TJ's never wavered. And and I've and I've had people who basically came to me and said, well, there's this project I'd like to do with you, or I think you'd be right for the unique TJ. And I don't, I don't, I don't entertain those ideas.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

So I know Noah's gonna want to ask you about some of the you've you've said things like bad jobs and shows you've got fired from, and obviously that's the the bread and butter of this show. So if we're gonna be delving into those, but just before we do, I've got I guess this might be my last sort of couples therapy type question, but it might not be because this is fun. Um so actually this was less this mean actually, it's just quite I'm just interested. So, both in terms of when something goes really well, how do the two of you celebrate that? And when something goes badly, how do the two of you handle that?

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Um, when it goes well, you know, we've had times where we were on location somewhere and we're like, you know, it's around the corner, and we gone and had a drink, you know, you know, when they're setting up the lights or something. Or um we one of my favorite memories is after we wrapped season one of Bel Air, you know, first season of showrunners, we made it to the finish line. And I'll tell you what, that was not always a certain thing along the way. So um it was, I don't know, like one in the morning. I had some friends meet at my house, and Rashid came over, and we sat in my house and you know, killed a couple of bottles of bourbon with and just told stories about the season. And you know, everyone took an Uber home because it would not have been. I mean, just it's it was kind of um this sort of fellowship around having gotten to the finish line on something and really taken the time to to mark the moment and remember, and like no matter what, we did it and nobody could take it away from us.

SPEAKER_03 26:57

So I don't know, alcohol, I guess is I'm wondering if it makes us look back because I was like the answer to both of them is we go have a drink, right? Like if we're celebrating.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

We get we went when we've been fired, we always go have a drink too. Yes, we go to a bar.

SPEAKER_03 27:11

Yeah, that we always we just go okay. Um, honestly, I would say, I mean, I think we're okay. I think that there's more drinking when we're happy. You know, we don't we don't tend to we don't tend to clear a couple bottles when when it's not so happy. Um, but it is, it's just sort of going a drink. I mean, we are very good friends. My feeling is that television is sort of the the the byproduct of our friendship. That if we'd been born somewhere else like on the coast, we might be fishermen and we'd spend all day just on the boat catching fish. We happen to be in Los Angeles, we make television. But it it there's no one show that is worth, you know, at this, certainly at this point, tanking the friendship for. So it they don't, they don't, it doesn't even come close at this point.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Yeah. There's absolutely nothing wrong with uh alcohol being the answer to both of those questions. But uh, if if somebody ever, if Noah and I ever become successful enough on this podcast and someone asked us the answer, it wouldn't be alcohol, but it would be, you know, when when something goes well, we go to Vegas to celebrate, and when something goes badly, we go to Vegas to commiserate. So it's just about something you share that works for ups and downs.

SPEAKER_04 28:21

Anyway, so I was waiting, by the way, for Dan to plug and I'm gonna do it for him. His other podcast, which is a whiskey drinking podcast. So this is definitely an alcohol-friendly podcast.

SPEAKER_03 28:30

Oh my goodness, we're gonna be crossover guests. I can't wait.

SPEAKER_04 28:34

You might come on to two different podcasts. But I do, I do, I would be remiss. And our bread and butter of this podcast is is sort of horror stories. And you have referenced now bad days at work and bad jobs. You do not have to name the show, but is there like a night in particular or a day where you guys were like, what the hell? Like, what's like one of the worst experiences you've gone through if you can sanitize it?

SPEAKER_03 28:56

Um, well, this was this was an odd set of circumstances anyway. But at one point, TJ and I, for most of the season, worked on two drama series at once, having gotten sort of the wink wink nod nod from both parties, both showrunners.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

It's not allowed, just to be clear. Yeah. We were clearly in violation of things, you know, of rules.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

But some one show got delayed, the other show got picked up early, and it went, and they both wanted us, and we were like, sure. And so we were working on one show from 10 a.m. to one, and then we worked on another show in the afternoons on another lot, and we just drove back and forth. And it did become this sort of mind-bending nightmare because on the show that happened in the morning, we were wonderful. We the showrunner listened to us, we were like number two. Everything that we said was great. In the afternoon, we were hacks and they hated us. And we'd been hired by the boss, but nobody else in the room wanted us there, and the boss wasn't there every day. So it was like this squabbling, mean, vicious sort of setup. And it played tricks with your money because you'd you know, we'd be heading back to our cars after the day and be like, are we shit? Are we hacks? I mean, it they just attacked us, and and you know, we made a lot of money, but I sometimes say things can get so bad you you want to give the money back. That was pretty damn close.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

For me, uh it sticks out. So part of this, we live in LA, was a long ass commute to where the writer's room was. It was just epically long. So that's you start and end the day and a you know, long, uncomfortable time in the car, minimum of an hour, if you're lucky. Um we had worked on this thing for six months, and then uh all of a sudden they threw the whole season out, uh, fired the showrunner who had hired us, and then basically producers and a director came in to like run the writer's room and talk to us like we had never even like seen final draft script writing software, like that we were morons that we didn't know what we were doing. Every day started with basically how bad we all were at our job for having been a part of that first six-month effort. Now we're just mid-level people. We we we just would show up every day and pitch ideas, but these these guys could not resist shitting all over us to start the day every day, which is a tough place to do your best creative work, right? And then they would just sit there and talk to themselves all day, and we had to sit in the room. They didn't no one cared about what we had to say. Nobody acknowledged when we would pitch an idea. It was, I felt like I was being punked or I was on candid camera or something. It was kind of like, how much can someone take before they absolutely lose their shit? Was that experience? So I could not wait for that job to end.

SPEAKER_03 32:12

Now, the thing, I'll say the the show I was talking about, and then the other show that TJ was talking about, what they had in common is the people in charge believed that they were doing groundbreaking work. I mean, that they were that these shows, I mean, they were reinventing all of television. I mean, really, maybe the narrative itself. And of course they came out and they were hits to some degree, but there was no revolution. They were not, you know, they were not recognized for their their you know, brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

There were no awards, not at all.

SPEAKER_03 32:50

No, there were no, they didn't even win awards, right? They didn't even win awards. And yet everybody there was made to feel miserable because they didn't fully turn themselves over to the cult that said that we are going to, you know, just revitalize television in a way no one's ever seen before. Yeah, I I have a thing I like to say.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

As a creator, creative person, as an artist, you're not allowed to put yourself in context. You're just not allowed. You don't get to brand yourself this, that, or the other thing. The public gets to do that. You know, you're and it should be about your work, you you know, not even about you. And so people who try to put themselves in context as the greatest thing ever to hit the airway or whatever, before the thing has even aired. I have a problem with them on a philosophical level. And so we're off to a bad start already. If if somebody's just up there proclaiming their greatness without any receipts and uh any anything like that. And the other part is these are TV shows, man. I mean, this is not people who lose sight of what we're actually doing. I love it. I feel like I was born to do this, I was put on this earth to make TV shows. That said, I don't think making TV shows is more important than I don't know, I can name 50 other occupations or or pursuits that have arguably more worth and more than that. I mean, the number just goes on and on. So when you get a combination of those things, it's a bad start because it also does this. If what we're doing is so important and so groundbreaking and revolutionary and it's gonna change the world, but then those people feel they have a right to treat other people like shit in pursuit of achieving whatever ideal it is that they've set out. And that's just, I don't agree.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

I want to stay on this for a second because this is fascinating. But I want to rewind a little bit to something you said in the very beginning. You talked about having a show that loved you and a show that hated you in the very same day. Now, many of us have worked on simultaneous development where one set of producers love you and the other set of producers are souring on you and hate you, or you're in a room where one show owner likes you and the other one doesn't. And all of a sudden, how do you deal with the schizophrenia of that? Because we all are, you said you don't do your best work when you're operating in this place of fear. What do you how do you process it? We've had a lot of guests who do therapy. Do you guys talk it out together, wives, sit like siblings? Like what how do you work through this? Because it's hard.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

I I mean, it I I don't think in the very beginning, I don't think we processed it well at all. I mean, we got in the car every day and would complain to each other for like the 40-minute drive home. I mean, it was just and and really were like, why are we doing this? And what are we going to do? And can we get out of it? And who can we talk to? And how do we make it stop? And why are they? I mean, it what we were miserable. Um, I think the thing that came out of it that I took with me was eventually it dawned on us, we're the same people, no matter you know, throughout the day. Like it can't be that I'm brilliant in one room and an idiot in the other. Like, that's not about me. That's about the other people I've surrounded myself with. And so at some point we did, we did realize, like, okay, this isn't about us. And I'm glad they kind of happened at the same time because if we had just been in the miserable room, I think it could have done incredible damage to our confidence and self-esteem at that point. But we did have the morning room where it was like, oh, actually, this is this is going great. And they really do adore us. Um, to your other question, I do see a therapist. Um, and I see a therapist, I mean, I don't, we don't, my therapist and I, we don't really talk about my marriage, we don't talk about my kids. We talk about this industry, we talk about this business. My main um goal with her is that she makes sure that I don't sort of fall into some sort of Stockholm syndrome where I come in one week and tell her these people are horrible, but through abuse and abuse and abuse, I come in months later and tell her, you know, it's really okay. I've seen the light. I understand now that they want the best for me. She's there to say, hold on, you said you weren't gonna let this swallow up your life. And and and it holds me accountable because that's that's that can happen. I mean, we all want these things to work so badly, and they like to pretend that if you just give a little more, if you work a little harder, do one more draft, we'll get there. And and it's it's mostly a lie.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

Yeah, art is not a license to be an asshole, art is not a license to abuse people, uh, you know. And those who think so are just people that I don't think we'd get along with. And knowing that up front is is a good thing. So um, yeah, I I would like to think that our legacy to this this business and this earth is about being good humans, putting something positive into this world. Um, because I believe those things, you know, resonate and reverberate longer and matter more in the long run than almost any piece of art I can think of. We can debate that all day. I'm not really interested in debating it. My mind is made up. So um uh yeah, that I mean, and I I do uh uh I I audit Rasheed's therapy. He gives me some clip notes at the end of each session, um, which I appreciate. Uh and I just the way I deal with it is I dive into you know my relationship with Rasheed. I lean on that heavily heavily. My marriage, my wife, I lean on her heavily. I dive into my kids. I have four children, and uh my family means everything to me. So when I'm not feeling the love over here, I will make sure that one, I don't take it out on the people I love, uh, and two, that I just dive in and appreciate and soak up all these other blessings in my life. That's that's about it.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

Brilliant. If I may, um, excellent answers from both of you to uh probably an average question from Noah, but very good answers. Um so sorry, I I'm slightly obsessed now with trying to get you two to argue with each other. Um so credits. Uh when you who whose name goes first? Is it always the same way round? Does when did you decide who's who gets to go first? Do you ever argue about it? I just I'm fascinating. I as a non-industry person, I don't quite understand exactly how all that works. I'd love to know.

SPEAKER_03 39:35

It's all it's always Brady Newsom. It's alphabetical. Uh that has never changed. I don't think it will change. I mean, the the you know, if we can flatter ourselves, the the precedent we used is it was always Lynn and McCartney. You know, like that I don't care what songs they did together, it's always Lennon McCartney.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

Yeah, I mean, and here's the thing. I'm not walking around with a swollen head about I could if it was, you know, we just had to choose at one point, and that's the way to if you want to hear us argue, you could let's let's talk about like self-promotion and social media. Like we have different opinions on that. I just maybe it's because I'm old, I just don't care. I, you know, Rashid, Rashid I think cares more than me.

SPEAKER_03 40:18

So they I think I think there's value to engaging the audience. And my thing to writers is it's something you take with you from show to show that to the extent you build up an audience or people who are following or interesting in your work, it helps. And certainly if you have work outside of television, it's easy to leverage. I wrote a novel called My Government Means to Kill Me. And boy, did I tell that TV audience all about it.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Fantastic. Um, so I understand the Brady Newton thing. Obviously, the other way of looking at it is obviously R comes before T in the alphabet in the same way that D comes before N. So there is there is another version of it where you do it with first names. Um in terms of writing pairs, did you have any when you were coming through the system, were there any writing pairs that you saw that you worked with that were role models, either in a positive sense or in a not positive sense?

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Our first show, uh Lie to Me did a good first season, but then there was kind of a regime change there. And um Lizcraft and Sarah Faint, they had been around the end of our first season, like got put on as consulting producers, and we got to know them and helped them. And then when Sean Ryan took over season two, they vouched for us and said, Why don't you keep these guys? Uh, we've since gone on to work with them a couple other times on the hundred, the fix. Just we we have lunch with them every, you know, once or twice a year. We catch up. We're we're friendly socially and we've done things with them. Um, part of that is just because they're fantastic people. Um, but there will always be the gratitude of knowing that we might not be here without them.

SPEAKER_03 42:16

Yeah, I mean, they saved our career in its infancy. And so you you tend to you tend not to forget that. But they've also been incredibly helpful as we've moved up the ranks in sort of helping us navigate the big picture. I mean, you know, when you are um a lower-level writer, you basically can't think of you can't you don't imagine anyone except the people in the room with you. As you go up, you need to think about the executives, the people who who run the studio. I mean, the names get bigger and bigger, and you get a better view of how you work in that ecosystem. And they were very helpful in helping us figure that out.

SPEAKER_04 42:55

Yeah, we we we love them. They actually came on our show. I unfortunately wasn't there that day because I had to uh go to a medical appointment, but Dan got it covered and they were lovely guests with really fun stories. In fact, they were one of the only few. We have a number of writer writing partners on the show individually. They were our first to come on as a pair and sort of set the precedent for us. And they have a great podcast of their own, and they are totally lovely people. But I do want to go back, you mentioned um social media as a sort of a problem point between the two of you. I'm not gonna probe into that. I definitely have mixed feelings about social media as well. I'm on it, but like, man, I've seen careers tank, right? Because you overshare or you oversay something and you all watch your own stuff. But as you've seen the industry change, one of the things that you might be getting asked now for Bel Air or for other shows is to like, well, I'm not sure there's a live drop, but like the live tweeting elements of things of like being socially active. And obviously for one of you, maybe that's okay. For the other one of you, you want to stay off social media. But what other things are you seeing in the industry that sort of keeps you up at night? Because you've been around for a while and you're seeing sort of seismic changes.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

I it's not that I'm not on social media. I mean, I post pretty pictures of flowers and the occasional photo of my family once in a while. Like, I don't think it should be abolished. I just I am very, very judicious about what I post and share. Um the the the change is it's a part of this industry. I I can't deny that. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. I know it's important. I think I'm just um a little resistant to how important it actually is. And I'm glad I have a partner who understands it uh better than I do. But the things that keep me up at night are, and I say this as somebody who is working on a show that reimagines an old show, like just a lack of investment in original ideas. We're just wringing out every last piece of intellectual property out there. Um I have not really seen that doing shows, reboots of shows or whatever, or anything else yields any better results than working on an original idea. Um, so I hope we can get back to that. I I you know that's why we all did this to be creative, to to bring some stuff. And I'm lucky, I feel lucky in the fact that Bel Air is almost it's so different than the original, it's a complete reimagining. So it's not a retread at all. Uh so I feel really lucky there, but you know, going forward, I'd I'm I'm rooting for original ideas to come back around.

SPEAKER_03 45:29

What keeps me up at night is I feel like television or whatever we want to call this now has really taken one of the most um detrimental aspects of the feature business, which is just like how does it open? What is opening week? What's that first number? What did the pilot do? And you're not seeing shows given any time to sort of grow and evolve and find their audience. I know we have probably just way too much content, but I think both the audience and a lot of the executives are a little too quick to go, I saw the pilot, it didn't get me, I'm done. And you know, I remind everybody the pilot should never be the best episode of the series. You know, I mean it's your entry point, it should be good. I want it to do its job, but if looking back, the pilot was the best, we've got a major problem. And you've got to let shows build from there and find their voice. And I'm not seeing a lot of tolerance for that, either in the boardroom or in the living room when people are watching these shows.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Yeah. Now, um it always saddles me when we get to the end of a podcast where it's a particularly good episode, but um we are drawing to a close and we need to leave twice as much time as usual for the last question because there's twice as many guests as usual. So um the last question we ask every guest um is uh if you could uh give a single piece of advice to somebody entering the industry, what would it be? And I think this time, because TJ doesn't look like he wants to answer first, I'll ask TJ to answer first.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

I mean, it's so hard. It's so hard because this industry is almost nothing like the way it was when we broke in. When we broke in, broadcast was still a thing. Or, you know, uh Netflix did not have any originals when we broke in. When we broke in, uh, you know, Netflix was still sending DVDs, and I know that for a fact because my first son was born and we were still getting DVDs, sitting up all night, you know, holding this baby. Um House of Cards and Orange is the new black was a couple years into our career, and it is completely different. The thing I would tell someone breaking into the industry is I have no idea what to tell you, except just keep writing. It's the most trite, boring thing I could ever say. But um business-wise, I I don't know how somebody breaks in now. I don't know that we would have broken in now. I feel like I feel like it's a miracle we broke in then, and um and that's when everything was a little more structured and real. I I was in the military a long time ago. I tell something I do tell almost everyone is I can't give you a map because a map I give you was based on where I started and you're starting from a different place. Um and also the terrain changes so quickly, the map is useless. But what all you have is your compass. And if you follow that compass, and that you know it points in the direction of your passion and your goal, you just gotta keep walking toward that no matter what you hit, and kind of figure out your way around any obstacles that come up and keep moving because there's no predicting it. You the person you meet, the class you take, the sample you write that bounces into somebody's hands is um, you know, it could be the lucky break that goes your way that gets you in. But the key to everything I just said about there is not sitting on your ass. You have to you have to be writing a lot, you have to be generating a lot of new stuff, you have to get out there and be meeting people. I dare say, I dare admit, you might have to be on social media doing your best Rasheed Newsom impressant impression and uh you know, making a name for yourself. Um and hopefully somebody notices. I mean, the way and and the other thing I'll say is enter every contest and fellowship thing you can, because at least that's something you can do where there's maybe some sort of uh, you know, shortcut to breaking in.

SPEAKER_03 49:50

I'm I'm I feel a little bad about the answer I'm about to give because it speaks to probably my feeling about what the entire future of our industry is. I would say you need a second endeavor. The idea that you will just be a television writer may not be enough to provide you with the income and the suspension stability you want to have a life with. You know, did you think you'd buy a house someday? How about a spouse? You weren't hoping to have kids, were you, and send them to school. So I would, if I were a comedy writer, boy, you know, be a stand-up comic and write TV. Um, drama writer, do a podcast, write a YA book, have some other base of creative outlet and income because it is getting very rocky in television with shorter orders and and the and just just less stability. And I think you do need to make a name for yourself that complements your TV work, but maybe helps you stand apart.

unknown 51:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 51:01

Slightly depressing, but probably very accurate answer.

SPEAKER_03 51:06

I mean, how do it on brand? It's on brand for the podcast, right? I'm the most terrible, the most cheerful doomsday stayer you've ever seen, which is like, oh, well, don't don't bake on making this your entire living.

SPEAKER_00 51:19

Yeah. I mean, look, it's well, Noah Epson, very successful TV writer, has got a podcast on the side, so he's already taking your advice. Um, but look, uh, thank you very much to the writing duo of uh Rashid and TJ. Um it's great to have you both on the podcast. Fantastic answers. Really, really great to have a pair on, and thank you for enduring my my questions. I'm glad you are still a writing partnership at the end of the podcast. So thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_02 51:48

Me too. Me too. Thanks so much for having us on, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04 51:56

Well, that's a wrap on this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. As always, this episode was brought to you by Scriptation, the screen writing and annotation software that at the very least has made my life easier and will make your life easier as well. Uh, we'd like to thank our wives who put up with us recording these episodes in our offices and basements and closets and bathrooms and anywhere we can get a little space to record an interview. And of course, we want to thank James Launch who provided us with a great intro and outro music.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

If you want to find us on social media, you can find Noah at NEVSLIN on Twitter, tweeting a variety of writer-based nonsense and uh some terrible puns and occasionally begging for sponsorship. Uh, if you want more refined tweets, mostly about football and whiskey, you can find me at Dan Rutstein. If you're interested in buying a copy of Scriptation, if you go to www.scriptation.com backslash stiffer, S-I-T-H-A, you'll receive a special discount. Thank you very much for listening. As always, we appreciate you. Uh please give us any feedback, mostly positive stuff about me, and we will see you next week.

SPEAKER_04 53:14

And if you do say a negative thing about Dan, there is a chance I might buy you a free copy of Scriptation. Boxing.