Bricks By Brick: Interviews With The Storytellers Behind The Screen
By: Kelly Jo Brick
Navigating the entertainment industry is challenging, even more so when you’re first starting out. Showrunner Dara Resnik (The Horror of Dolores Roach, Home Before Dark) takes us through her journey to break in and grow her career as a television writer and shares her insights on how to best ready yourself to staff on a TV show.
WHEN DID YOU FIRST KNOW YOU WANTED TO BE A WRITER?
I was not the kid that grew up wanting to be a writer. Writing was something I was always good at and was sort of accidentally drawn to a lot. I liked writing short stories. I wrote for my high school paper. I wrote for my college paper. I wrote for Entertainment Weekly after college, but I never really set out to be a writer.
I did the writing thing in New York for a little while and I went to the Peter Stark Producing Program. I went to the producing program because I thought I was going to do the producing and business side of things and then ultimately realized it was so hard to find a good script out here that I started writing my own, along with my ex-husband and writing partner, ultimately.
But I feel like the story I tell about writing is it was the thing that kept tapping me on the shoulder and I kept being like leave me alone and ultimately that was what I was totally supposed to be doing. I just wasn’t listening.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST JOB IN ENTERTAINMENT?
I worked for The Jim Henson Company two summers in a row. I was first an intern and a production assistant for Bear in the Big Blue House and also for Big Henson as well. It was fabulous, informative and couldn’t believe I got to work at Kaufman Astoria Studios and visit Sesame Street.
HOW DID YOU TRANSITION INTO YOUR FIRST WRITING JOB?
It depends on what you mean by first. I mean the first TV gig that felt like the first real writing job was me and my ex-writing partner had written a bunch of stuff together and I was the producer, he was technically the writer on Sydney White which is the Amanda Bynes movie where she joins a fraternity with seven dorks. It’s Snow White in the 70s in college.
That was starting to get made at the same time that a mentor of ours, Mark Goffman, was running the room at Studio 60 with Aaron Sorkin and was like, “What are you guys doing today?” And we were like, “I don’t know. Our day jobs.” And he was like, “We need someone to take over mid-season as a staff writer.” So we interviewed with Aaron Sorkin and pretty soon after that, we were in our first writers’ room.
SPEAKING OF STAFFING, AS A SHOWRUNNER, WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR IN A WRITER AS YOU STAFF, ESPECIALLY AT THE LOWER LEVELS?
Number one is are you somebody that I like and want to spend time with. That’s the first thing I’m thinking about is are you literally somebody I want to be locked in a room with when things are hard? Then I call all of the people on their references and even some others to make sure that that is the case.
I’m also looking for someone who’s open to sharing, sharing a little bit about their lives, about themselves, about their perspectives. I think the thing that makes a writers’ room really beautiful is that feeling of creating a comfortable environment where everyone can share a little bit of their personal story and when you have something that is specific and universal to everyone in the room, that’s what makes great and beautiful television. So I’m looking for people who will help create that environment who are coming from different perspectives. I learned this from Joey Soloway, you cast a writer’s room the way you cast a show. You don’t need two MacGyvers, You don’t need two people who are great at talking to actors. You need people who bring different perspectives, different backgrounds and different skills.
I always tell my students, you don’t even have to be the best one in the room. That just has to be a skill that you have. I always say you can break it down into being a decent human that someone wants to spend time with, being great on the page, being great with story, being great great at pitching and then being great on set and with actors and if you have three of those, you’re great. If you have two, I’ve seen people be successful with just two of those. I’ve seen a lot of people be successful with three. If you have all five of them, eventually you’ll succeed.
ANY TIPS FOR PREPARING FOR A SHOWRUNNER MEETING?
Relax and be yourself. I don’t know that that’s true for everyone that you’d interview with, but for me, I want to know a version of who you’re going to be when things are hard. I think of interviews kind of as first dates. Everybody should be showing a little bit of vulnerability, but mostly on their best behavior.
Even if I ask a question about a show that is traditionally known as difficult, or anybody asks, you shouldn’t say anything about that. Oh, I heard that showrunner is tough. The best response to that is like, yeah, but I learned a lot. Because then I know, and whatever showrunner you’re interviewing with, knows that when someone asks that question, if it’s about me or somebody else in my own room, that you’re going to know not to gossip about that stuff.
Obviously be up on the material, do your homework, have read the things, if there are comps that are talked about, this show is like blank, have watched those comps. When I went in to interview for Castle, I rewatched all 100 plus episodes of Castle. I watched literally all of it again. I had seen most, if not all of it already, but I wanted it to be fresh in my mind. And the thing about interviewing on a six season show back then, or fifth season show, is it’s a lot of episodes to catch up on.
WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED DURING YOUR CAREER?
Keep writing. Don’t stop. Always be working on something else. Even when you’re on a show, be working on your next thing. Even when you have your own show, be working on whatever the next idea is. Let them punch you and get back up again. Just keep going.
You can always write your way into any job, really. If you don’t want to be writing drama and you want to show people you’re funny, then go show people that you’re funny. I’ve met a lot of writers who were pretty talented, but they got discouraged and stopped after a couple of scripts. I have dozens, possibly hundreds, of scripts that will never, and have never, seen the light of day and I don’t look at those as failures and I don’t look at them as bad. I look at them as learning experiences.
***Coming soon: More with Dara Resnik on indie film and getting out there and writing and producing your own projects.
Kelly Jo Brick is a TV crime, mystery and procedural writer. A Sundance Fellow and alum of the Women In Film’s Writer/Showrunner Mentoring Circle, Kelly Jo is also the Vice Chair of the WGA Genre Committee. She wrote the Telly Award-winning film, PAUSE, and the Frank Lloyd Wright documentary, The Jewel in the Woods. Follow her on Bluesky @kellyjobrick.bsky.social
