Diversity
Speakers: Any Day Now writers
Primetime Summit 2

Transcript of Proceedings
June 17, 2000

MERYL MARSHALL: This is the team of writers and producers of Any Day Now, which is probably the most significant experience going on in Hollywood. Not only is the conversation of diversity taking place on Any Day Now because Hollywood is talking about it, but because it is the subject matter of the program. In a moment we will see some clips so you get a set up of it.

The title of today's conversation is Diversity, a Work In Progress. It's really obvious to all of us that it is a work in progress and something we have not even begun to achieve in Hollywood. Our industry can serve as the best example for our nation in terms of creating an effective way of finally creating a diverse work force. It is not our problem alone, but we have an unusual opportunity because the stories we tell demonstrate our ability to face the complexity of this change.

Any Day Now is a particularly good example because diversity includes everything from physical disability to transgender to sexual orientation. It includes, of course, every ethnic identification or racial identification. The one that has the most historical difficulty attached to it is our nation's history of slavery and the interrelationship between the African-American community that resides here and the European, or White-based dominant culture that has always existed here. Although issues of gender are also part of this conversation, luckily they're also part of Any Day Now. Today, we will see if we can bring some clarity, some openness and some insight into how a diverse group of people actually faces this extraordinary history that we bring forward today. Without our ability to engage in this dialogue, we cannot move forward.

I really believe, having spent time with all of these writers and producers, that they are leading the charge. Their ability to reveal what goes on in their writers' room on this subject may give us all insight, courage, and some ability to identify with the fear or the shame or the pride that comes with self-disclosure and self-examination on this very, very tough topic. There is also a great deal of humor. Because when a group is honest with one another, and really risks open communication, the best of the human experience comes forward.

Just to give you a little bit of background, Gary is the executive producer who, in his history, was responsible for Melrose Place, along with a lot of other things at Spelling. He has an extensive background. Nancy Miller, as well, has an extraordinary background as a writer. Let me just give you some headlines about the other members of our panel. Kathleen McGee-Anderson was one of the original writers on this series. She is no longer, but she was there when the series was started and can help shed light on those interesting conversations in the beginning. She was also a supervising producer on 413 Hope Street, a consulting producer on Touched by an Angel, worked on Smokey, Ladera Heights, and The Education Of Matt Waters.

Mark Israel is a writer/producer who worked on The Rookie Years, The Rookie, Pacific Bay, Captain Victory, and a lot of children's programming as well. He has also worked on a couple of recent movies, one for HBO and one for CBS. He has others in development in a variety of places.

Dee Harris-Lawrence is a relatively recent addition. She did free-lance work for Pacific Blue and recently served as co-producer on the syndicated show Higher Ground. She's a co-producer on Any Day Now. And, she is one of the new writers this season.

Lois Johnson is also new. She started out working on MTV Video Music Awards, and was a staff writer on MTV Summer Beach House Extravaganza, The Motel California. She finally broke into traditional drama with Homicide: Life On The Streets and then became the story editor on Any Day Now.

Bob Lowry came out of the advertising field, known for Cutting Edge Corporate Communications. And then worked on Profiler. He is now a co-executive producer on Any Day Now.

Dayna Lynn North, a staff writer on Any Day Now, has worked all over and most recently worked on Profiler. She has been working on Any Day Now for some period of time.

Valerie Woods began as an actress. She wrote a book of monologues called Something for Everyone. She also wrote on Under One Roof, Touched by an Angel, and Promised Land. And she is a supervising producer here on Any Day Now.

I think that's everyone. Before we get into the meat of the conversation, let's see a few clips. We'll do this both because some of you may not have seen the show and also because I think it will give us not only topic of conversation to understand Any Day Now, but also further topic of the larger conversation of how to discuss this issue the race and diversity. Gary, do you want to introduce a clip package?

GARY RANDALL: What we've put together is a compilation of approximately four clips of an episode that Nancy and Bob wrote that we did last season called 'It's Not About The Butter.' This takes our lead characters, Mary Elizabeth and Renee, on a journey of discovery about racism in America, and how far we still have yet to travel.

MERYL MARSHALL: Needless to say, if that's what's going in front of the camera, you can imagine what's going on behind the camera. Nancy, give us a little bit of background on how you came to be writing or creating this show.

NANCY MILLER: I just always wanted to. I feel like there are so many stories. Part of our show is also set in the past. We see these same two characters as little girls growing up in Birmingham, Alabama in the sixties. So I always wanted to do a show that included the Civil Rights movement and a show about friendship between two women. And some of our shows are not about race at all, which is a statement in itself that a White woman and a Black woman can be friends. So it was really a combination of those two things, wanting to tell stories both about that time and about women's issues.

MERYL MARSHALL: And had you ever worked with a diverse writing team before?

NANCY MILLER: No. I've learned so much from doing this show. This is our third season. And I've had two other shows on the air and all the writers were white. In my career, with every show I've been on I have been the only woman in the room with all white men. It'll never be like that again. I've learned that when you have a writers' room, you want people that have the most diverse and different backgrounds so that they can bring all of these different life experiences to the table.

NANCY MILLER: We have so much fun and we get into incredible fights. When we were doing that butter episode the room got really hot. But we're all doing it for one purpose--to make a good TV show to tell these stories about these two different women and their lives. So I'll never again have a writers' room of just white people ever because it's boring, to say the least.

MERYL MARSHALL: Kathleen, you were one of the first writers hired. So this was a first time experience for Nancy hiring a person of color to work on a writing team on a show that she created. Can you share with us the experience of being brought on and what were the elements of this discussion of diversity or race and how were they handled in that initial interview?

KATHLEEN McGEE-ANDERSON: Well, let me just give you a little background about that. The first staff job I ever had in Hollywood was writing for Amen, which was written quite a while ago starring Sherman Helmsley. Pretty similar to Nancy's experience but also unique, I was the only woman in the writer room. And, I was also the only black person in the writer room on a show about black people. My experience was that I was a token. I was there only because they felt they should have the token black voice. And I wasn't listened to. After so many experiences working as a token for many years in Hollywood in those kinds of situations, it became very typical. So, when I met Nancy and Gary, I could tell immediately, in the first interview, that they were interested in what I had to say about race. I went in not thinking that this--I thought that it was going to be pretty much the same. White producers paying lip service to having black people on the staff. But there was something about the initial conversation that let me know they were really listening to what I wanted to say. What that was, it's hard to say because black people almost have radar after so many years of conditioning about who's really listening to us. You can pick it up right away. With Nancy and Gary, there was something more. And so, that was the initial conversation. They asked me about my life. They asked me about my experiences. They were interested in what I had to say. They listened. That was the unique experience with that.

MERYL MARSHALL: Gary, when you participated in this process of going out to look for writers of color to participate in the creation of this show, what did you find in the industry and how did the conversation go?

GARY RANDALL: Well, I found an extraordinary number of very talented writers who had not had an opportunity to be heard, which was shocking. We have an extraordinary cadre of writers here who, if you paraphrase their careers, most of them have worked on black shows as opposed to diverse shows. If you sat down and read their material, it's extraordinary. I mean, Kathleen's an award-winning playwright. Valerie's written some extraordinary TV movies. Lois and Dee, whose speck and episodic material came to us this season--it was extraordinary. Dayna was spec-ing material in an attempt to get started and knocked our socks off with a spec Practice. And I think the thing that was a revelation was how many really talented black writers there are out there who haven't had an opportunity to work.

MERYL MARSHALL: Now, going into the writers' room, in that first conversation and I want to stick with the beginnings because I think beginnings are quite challenging, how did you open up the dialogue about what you wanted from writers on this subject?

NANCY MILLER: The first thing I always say to writers is what do you want to say, what do you have to say? And that usually opens up a big discussion because everyone has something to say. I don't remember a lot about the beginning.

MERYL MARSHALL: Valerie? Valerie was listening a lot then I think.

VALERIE WOOD: I think the thing that struck me most in the room was that when a sensitive topic came up or we were talking about race and you had an opinion, you're in the habit of holding back your opinion because you don't want to offend your executive producer or you know that you don't have the freedom to do that. But Nancy flat out said, "well, what do you think? And this is what I think". And I said, "well I don't agree". And she said, "well, convince me". She challenged me. I've never had any executive producer say challenge me. And she meant it, so, that's how it set the tone for the whole room. It was speak your mind or be quiet. And she wanted people who would talk.

KATHLEEN McGEE-ANDERSON: There were maybe six or seven in the beginning. And with a topic as sensitive as the things that we challenged, the racial topics, there are so many things that you want to say that you're afraid to say because you're afraid of the acceptance. You're afraid that people will judge you. You're afraid you might offend someone. You're afraid of saying the wrong thing especially since there's a mix in that room. And even though you may feel that you know one of the writers and you're getting to know Nancy well, you don't know, for a fact, how Bob will feel. There are six people in there. You have to weigh what their reactions are going to be.

So, the process of becoming comfortable takes time because everybody has to feel safe enough to come out a little and identify who they are. And that took a while but you go around the room and you think god, they're cool. Okay, that's safe. You can start to figure out where everybody stands. And the interesting thing about Any Day Now was that because of Nancy and Gary, they had picked a mix of people whose hearts were in the same place.

That was the key--everyone was really there with a level of acceptance and a level of what Nancy said, wanting to do something that was difficult. People were really good and their hearts were open there, So you felt safe. But it was because of the people they put in the room. They could have put a mix of people in there and you never would have felt comfortable saying anything that was honest.

MERYL MARSHALL: Now let's try and find an anecdote, if we can, in those early days, that time that someone might have jumped for that button, if any of you can pull one of those forward.

NANCY MILLER: Well the first one that comes to my mind is this. It wasn't even about race--we were talking about doing a story about pedophiles. And how you would feel if they moved in next door to you. They've done their time, they've paid, but now they move in next door to you. And I said "I don't want him living there. I don't care. I don't want him living there". And Valerie said "they've done their time so you should move". And I said, "no, you move!" So we got into this big screaming thing, saying, no, you move. And I remember that.

VALERIE WOOD: Yeah. That's typical. And it's like Kathleen was saying, you feel safe in the room to really feel strongly. Even this season, Lois and Dee have come into the room fresh this year with a group that's been together for a while. And, when they have an opinion, they stick to it. They jump right in. Oh, extortion, another story that wasn't about race. But it was an issue about what a character might do.

LOIS JOHNSON: Mark didn't know the definition of extortion. [LAUGH]

FEMALE: Speak up, speak up. You have to speak up.

MARK: You learn real fast in this room when not to speak up. [LAUGH]

VALERIE WOOD: Some gender issues...

NANCY MILLER: Well, the white males have been bashed beyond belief.

MERYL MARSHALL: Yeah, and that's an important conversation. When I got together with this group of writers over lunch, we started to talk and I was looking for places in which the awkwardness really still existed, to find out if it did. And one of the questions that came up was this idea of white privilege. Was there a conversation about that and what happened to that conversation? Bob, do you want to share a little bit about your reaction when that first issue came up? Is there White privilege and how do you feel about it?

BOB LOWRY: No. [LAUGH]

MERYL MARSHALL: Please.

GARY RANDALL: Well, Mark will tackle that.

BOB LOWRY: You start.

MARK ISRAEL: Well, I think sometimes you find yourself deciding whether or not it's a color issue, a male issue, a female issue or whether it's a personal experience that has nothing to do with either of them. And that's the battle I fight internally because my role is very specific, the way I interpret it in the room, which is to give the white male perspective, or the white parental male perspective at times because I have four children. But when I have a disagreement with someone in the room, I want to make sure that I'm not disagreeing because of a personal animosity. In other words, I just may not like that person that day, whether or not it's a black/white issue, whether or not I have my own insecurities that haven't been worked out in therapy.

The whole point is that you need to identify where the issue is for you as a person and this is part of what goes on in that room because sometimes the conversations will start on color. And before long you realize this is a gender issue. But we have the freedom to confront each one of the writers head to head, I mean, basically we're free to say to each other, you're an asshole, and the executive producers are the first to say it. [LAUGH] Yeah, but of course you know they're looking for you to defend your position. But the whole issue of white privilege--I was a white privileged kid. I grew up in Orange County. My parents were wealthy. And we have issues too. Now, I'm not looking for pity. [LAUGH]

FEMALE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what?

MARK ISRAEL: This is why I bring it up.

FEMALE: You had a boat when you grew up.

MARK ISRAEL: This is why I bring it up, because every individual has issues. And what really gets the room going is when you bring up your issues, and they say, oh, but that's bullshit. That's just a bunch of crap. And you're going, no, there's a large portion of America for whom these are very important issues. And what we find is that each one of us has different issues that others can't understand. We have the freedom to make that point. So, I don't want any sympathy because the room doesn't give a damn. [LAUGH]

BOB LOWRY: There was one conversation that happened last week that I enjoyed because I sat back and watched--which is why I enjoyed it. [LAUGH] So, we are working on an episode about one of our characters who is a teenager and she gets pregnant and the father is black. She's asked to leave school because she is not representative of an educational environment. The issue was not that the father was black or that the mother was white but of why the father wasn't asked to leave school. He's free to walk around all he wants, to which Lois, a woman, said, and I loved this, but she's responsible for her body. She knew when she got pregnant that it might happen, to which Nancy said, it's a bunch of crap, you know. [LAUGH] And so here we had two women going at each other over this issue of black privilege of a male, a privileged male. Stuff like that happens all the time. It's really a lot of fun. [LAUGH]

MERYL MARSHALL: Dayna, you've been with the room for a bit. Can you help us with a circumstance in which you found yourself being hurt or you were struggling with bringing an idea or a feeling forward in the room?

DAYNA NORTH: Yes, I think I do recall one of those situations. [LAUGH] Several months into our first season, when I was the writer's assistant on the show--which is important in terms of being scared just in general. But fortunately I was in a room where I was allowed to speak which is a wonderful thing for a writer's assistant. And so we were dealing with some issues on racism and what might define racism and telling racist jokes and that sort of thing. It had been a day of heated discussions, that had been building and building and building in different perspectives and there was a lot of arguing. And I don't remember how we got specifically to this question. But essentially Nancy, my boss, looked at me in the eye and said, "well, if I tell a racist joke, does that mean I'm a racist? I mean, I've told racist jokes in my past, does that mean I'm a racist?" And I looked at her and was petrified to answer. It's a scary position to be in when your boss is asking you to call them a racist if that's what you feel. And so I said something like, "I think you do a racist thing when you do that." And I knew that I could speak that answer. I knew that she wanted an honest answer first of all. But it was still a really, really frightening situation to be in. But the fact that we were even in that situation speaks volumes. The fact that it was something that she wanted to hear the truth about, that it was something we were all in the middle of confronting, is a major thing. It was a very scary moment but I ultimately knew from being in that room and being around them and with all the writers that I was in a safe place, petrified though I may have been. [LAUGH]

MERYL MARSHALL: Now one of the things that happened to this group, and happens on a semi-regular basis, is a trip to Alabama, which then requires, I would imagine, an interesting dynamic to occur among everyone. Will someone step forward and tell me what the first trip to Alabama brought out?

GARY RANDALL: Well, the first thing that it brought out was Nancy's love for a restaurant down there that we were all trying to figure out why. [LAUGH] Actually...

NANCY MILLER: That you all ended up liking.

GARY RANDALL: We all ended up liking. We went to Birmingham on a pilgrimage of sorts, partially because none of the writers had been to Birmingham. Nancy and I had occasion to go down there when we were preparing the pilot. And Nancy spent a lot of her youth down there.

Anyhow, we went down to Birmingham to meet with the Civil Rights leaders and some of the women of the movement and to go to the 16th Street Baptist Church and really get a sense of the community and the world in which the show takes place. And we had a very strange experience. By the end of our time down there, I think primarily because of the fact that we were all astounded by what we learned and had spent so much time together away from the office and away from Hollywood and away from the writing room etc., we ended up having an epiphany with each other. It culminated in a dinner where Nancy and I hatched the idea of going around the table at the end of our trip. We had some of our actors with us and a number of other people from the show... kind of like you do at Thanksgiving. We asked everybody to stand up and talk about what this trip has meant to us. And we learned extraordinary volumes about each other and ended up bonding in a way that I don't think many other writing staffs in this town have had the opportunity to do.

NANCY MILLER: What was incredible is that this started out as a research trip for the writers--and there are about seven of us. And it ended up being about 30 people from the show. The actors wanted to come, their families wanted to come. So it was about talking about the subjects that we talk about, getting past your fear, because it's all about fear. It's about fear and about saying well, they're different from me and I don't know how to talk about it and the past and what do we do. And so through hashing all of that out, you just grow so close. And then we took this trip together and this dinner. Everyone was sobbing, weeping about it, and it became what the show meant to him or her. And, we're very lucky. We have a great time.

MERYL MARSHALL: Lois, when we were talking about Birmingham, we were talking about the idea of confronting the South. You had some strong feelings about how what your own biases or fears or feelings would be about that?

LOIS JOHNSON: Well, I just joined the show this season and I had never been to the South. I'm originally from New York. And I was very excited that we were going to go to Birmingham. But then this year we decided that we were going to go to New Orleans and just eat the whole time. Which was great. But I thought I really needed to go to Birmingham because I'd never been there and I felt like if I was going to write a show that took place there I should at least have an idea what it looked like. So, I went on my own. And, it's funny because when I first heard we were going to Birmingham, I was like, "whoo, great!" because that's a place I would never go by myself. And then when I found out we weren't going and that I still wanted to go, I had a lot of preconceived notions about what that city would be like. And the standard reaction from other people who I would tell that I was going there, was like, well, don't go out at night by yourself. And be very careful. And so I went there with a feeling of dread thinking this could end up being a very bad experience. But once I got there and saw the city and the tremendous changes that have happened there, it was amazing because I realized I came with preconceived notions that were totally untrue within the City of Birmingham, which is where I stayed. I had a really great experience and it helped me to have a better understanding of what our characters were going through and living through. But it was a good thing for me to go because I would have had the completely wrong idea had I not.

MERYL MARSHALL: But I think what was also encased in that was an idea of what a white southerner is about and a preconceived notion of a white southern sound and a White southern experience which was then part of what people experienced on the trip as well as black experience. Yes, Valerie?

VALERIE WOOD: It was interesting on our trip to Birmingham and back to the restaurant. Gary was right, Nancy loved this place. It was a fond memory from her childhood just outside of Birmingham. However, as soon as I walked through the door, I felt uncomfortable in the restaurant. I looked around and there were a lot of old, pardon me, southern white people [LAUGH], sitting there. And they were looking at me and they were looking at our group, like, who are they? And I knew I was being watched when I was walking through the restaurant. And the smell in the restaurant. Maybe these are all some of my own personal things. I was having a great time in Birmingham and I was, like Lois, a lot of my preconceived notions of what to expect were being thrown away. But when I walked in that restaurant, they all came back. And I felt an unease there. And I don't want to go back, Nancy. [LAUGH]

MERYL MARSHALL: Within the group, did you find a way to speak to it?

VALERIE WOOD: Well, I think I've talked with a couple of people about it. We didn't really address it, because over all, that wasn't my entire experience in Birmingham. It was just in that one place, which leads me to know that yes, we have grown and the times have changed and Birmingham has changed. But there are still pockets--it's still there. So it's not completely gone but you can see the change.

MERYL MARSHALL: Dee, when you met this challenge of walking into the writers' room for this series, what was the first scary moment that happened to you, if there was one?

DEE HARRIS-LAWRENCE: Actually, there was no fear. I think from the very beginning of interviewing for the job from the group, the first time Nancy wasn't there. But it was everyone else who is here now and they're intuitive with people so it felt very nice and safe. I started out on New York Undercover and I've been very lucky in the shows that I've been on because each of the staffs has been very safe and you can say what you want. Now, the second time I went in I met Nancy and I immediately knew where the Annie Potts character comes from. [LAUGHTER] But she has the biggest heart and just a voraciousness to learn about culture and the differences and it is very true what Kathleen was saying, they listen. And that's a very big thing. Your voice means something. And she may not agree with you, and she will challenge you to make your point, but at least you're able to make your point.

MERYL MARSHALL: Let's see if we can find a story in which the challenge or the argument got rather heated. Although I hear it happens with great frequency, but one in which Mark's advocacy on one point of view and maybe either Nancy or one of the others of you was quite contrary and how that struggle went on.

MARK ISRAEL: The heated conversations that I remember are usually gender based. So, I don't know how much you're interested in hearing about that.

FEMALE: We're not.

MALE: Open heart, open mind.

MERYL MARSHALL: For the purposes of this conversation it's about how to handle those heated moments, so I think that will be helpful.

MARK ISRAEL: Well, how to handle them is to realize why you're there and to realize why you're having an argument. It's not because of a personal opinion, it's that you have a story you need to focus on and you're trying to give people another way of looking at the issue. There's safety in that, because in the midst of a conversation, let's say, about strip clubs, which may seem silly, outside of the room. But, we have a character that was going to go to a strip club. Collier, Mary Elizabeth's husband was going to go to a strip club. And in the room, at the time, we had a religious viewpoint, we had a male viewpoint, and we had a more feminist viewpoint. Again, stereotypes, obviously, but that categorizes these three positions. And there was great diversity in the fact that some of them thought you were going to go to hell if you went to a strip club. And there were others who thought that men who go are pigs and are basically the scum of the earth. And my position was that men are men and women are women and I can't expect you to understand how I feel about everything, you can't expect me to understand how you feel, but your position on strip clubs is a female position. And, so, it gets very heated. And there are certain issues where there will never be a point at which you agree. And that has to be okay in a room because it's not personal.

GARY RANDALL: If it weren't okay, you wouldn't be back for the third year. [LAUGHTER]

MARK ISRAEL: So, the challenge is not letting the issues get personal. And I think outside of a writers' room, life is very personal and we don't have a lot of practice in getting into discourse that is not personal. Outside of a college classroom where things are theoretical and philosophical, when do you get into heated discussions about politics and not take it personal? Very seldom. So, if you're in a writer's room that allows that, then you can come up with the kind of subject matter and topics that we do.

DAYNA NORTH: True to form, I disagree with Mark. [LAUGHTER] No, actually, I think that it's interesting because I think that we talk about these issues and, again, I'm a new writer to the room, but I do feel that it gets personal. But what makes it different is that it's okay.

Last week, we were having a discussion about our character, the character who gets pregnant and then is kicked out of school and there was some discussion as to why the boyfriend didn't have to suffer, or didn't suffer any repercussions from the fact that he had impregnated this girl. My position was, as Bob said, that she is responsible for her own body, and there was a moment where Nancy kind of sat up from behind her desk and lunged at me. And from just the look in her eyes I realized she was really pissed. [LAUGHTER] It was very personal. But there's something liberating in the idea that somebody recognizes your point of view and it's like a challenge of character. This is an opportunity for you to say yes, that's what I believe, damn it, Nancy. [LAUGHTER] Sorry, if you don't agree with me. It does get personal, but I think part of what makes this writer's room work is that everyone has a lot of confidence and respect for other people. We realize that you can have a difference of opinion and you can be 180 degrees on the opposite side of an issue, but that doesn't mean that you're going to respect people any less, it just means that it's an opportunity for you to really be yourself. And, it is rare when you feel like you can just be yourself.

MERYL MARSHALL: One of the things that, Kathleen, you started us on was when you talked about being listened to and finding yourself as a token, but that's still pretty big. I'm looking for some of the smaller moments that happened. Gary, you were about to say...

GARY RANDALL: Maybe I can start us. I think that one of the things that privileged white guys do is they tend to believe that all black people have a common experience, which is ludicrous. And it's something that you find out when you surround yourself with a group of black people, black women in particular, all of which have unique experiences. And what was fascinating, as we got started, was hearing them argue with one another about the black experience. Each of them brings very unique perspectives and experiences from their own lives to the party. We've also gotten into some fascinating dialogues about the black experience, on the color line of light skinned black to dark skinned black which is another fascinating anomaly that I don't think many white people are aware of. So I think that a big part of it, for Nancy and me, has been this incredible learning curve.

Hollywood, in general, tends to generalize and stereotype each group. You know, just because you hire two Latin writers doesn't mean you're going to get the same point of view from both of them.

VALERIE WOOD: Yeah, one thing, and I think it's fairly common, is when a white writer or producer will look at you as the black writer and ask, well is it true that black people blah, blah, blah. Or, it's like, now we are going to do an episode on the N word. And my feeling about it is totally different from Dayna's or from Lois' or Dee's. Bob once looked at me and asked me the question. And in our room it's different than in other rooms because we ask each other the questions and it's, like, well what's your opinion. And what's your opinion. And going down the room. But a lot of times, it's looking to the black writer in the room as the encyclopedia on black people and the black experience. And I can only tell you my experience.

LOIS JOHNSON: I had an experience on another show I worked on that had a predominantly white writing staff and all but two major characters were white. And I knew that in my script, I was going to populate the secondary and guest star characters with lack actors. I didn't ask, I just was intending to do that. And so when I wrote my script, in character descriptions of the characters that were white, I would indicate it as such. For example, the judge is a White grandfatherly older man. But I didn't indicate that the black characters were black. And so when I got my script back, one of the comments was you don't need to put that description in there because that's superfluous. I'm like, well, I've noticed that in your scripts, you always describe a character as black, that's part of the description, but if they're white, that's never part of the description. I'm a black person, so in my scripts, because I assume that everyone is black, I describe the characters as white, so it's kind of important that's in there, otherwise I'm going to assume it's a black character. And they're like, Lois, come on, you know, you're being silly. But it was just a part of that whole experience that was trying, in a room where the discussion isn't necessarily about race, but what you make your characters, and it becomes a big issue.

Particularly if you're working on a cop show where you find that, if you're going to do an episode, I remember we had done an episode about prostitution and a runaway who became a call girl. And it ended up that the character would be white. Even though the other prostitutes would be minorities. And I'm like, well, she's just the one white girl in this whole slew of minority prostitutes. How does that work? So it's interesting because it's like, what are people going to feel comfortable with on the screen? Of course, our main character can't get involved with a black woman who's a prostitute, it's got to be a white prostitute. It just brought up a lot of issues for me, like, why we cast certain things one way or the other and what ultimately does it mean?

VALERIE WOOD: This is a small thing about the network. We just had one little note and it's something that we discuss in the room, it's another anecdote, it's about naming characters. And we had a black character named Suzy. And the networks say, well can you give her a black name? And we've had a conversation in the room about what somebody should be called, like, one of our characters who's gonna be pretty prominent is a young black man and his name is Adjani. Well, why name him that? But, you know, Mark knew a Black person named Adjani and he was writing the script so that's why he named him that. But we often had this conversation. It's, like, look at the room, there's Valerie, Dayna, Lois, Kathleen, why is she Cheniqua?

NANCY MILLER: And this is something that I still don't understand because I'm, like, what's wrong with it? Tell me what's wrong with it?

DAYNA NORTH: Again, it's about the stereotype.

NANCY MILLER: So what? But it's true. It's real. There are a lot of black names that are like that.

DAYNA NORTH: But there are a lot that aren't.

NANCY MILLER: And we name a lot that aren't. And we name some that are.

VALERIE WOOD: But we were getting into a place where we were naming all the characters like that every time there was a black character, and that's why we had the conversation.

DAYNA NORTH: We were going toward it.

VALERIE WOOD: We were going toward it in the first season, we stopped it. No it was always going there, but that was just a small thing.

MERYL MARSHALL: But it's an interesting note to receive from a network.

DAYNA NORTH: Yeah.

MERYL MARSHALL: I mean, when you're looking through a script and you're looking for notes to give, it's an interesting note to choose to give.

BOB LOWRY: Then you have derogatory, Leroy, Lemont. Then you get in that whole other area.

VALERIE WOOD: Tyrone.

MERYL MARSHALL: Yes, over here.

AUDIENCE: I want to commend you for breaking down a lot of the sacred cows within the writing room. But as much as this show is trying to change culture and perception in the Hollywood environment, around the writing room, and we've heard about how people want to have a comfort zone and things of that nature. You guys have what I call a best practice. How do we get the rest of the industry to learn and understand and make this the standard rather than the exception?

MERYL MARSHALL: The question is: how do we get the industry to change and make this kind of a writing room, best practice, applied across the board. And I think by that you mean the difference between a hierarchical structure and a teamwork structure. Because what I note as I listen to it is that people are really free to work together and are expected to work together, as opposed to feeling a fear of punishments.

BOB LOWRY: It's very simple for them to want to follow our path, just nominate us for an Emmy.

NANCY MILLER: First of all, I think the egos in this town have to be dealt with. I think it's a personal thing. I don't want to listen to what you have to say because this is my show. And it's egos, it's fear. It's like, if I listen to you, I'm not God, you know? And from here on, it will be different for me. My rooms have always been open. But as far as the diversity, I don't think people are malicious. Oh, I'm only gonna hire white men. But the world is run by white men. And so you hire whom you're comfortable with and whom you want to hang with. So they hire like that. But what they don't know, because they haven't done it yet, is how much more interesting, and how much more fun it is to have diversity in there. It's just a matter of getting people to try it once and then they'll continue it.

MERYL MARSHALL: Now Dee, you've had some other experiences that are similar to this.

DEE HARRIS-LAWRENCE: Right. The last show I was on I was in a room with four white males. And I was the only African-American female. And there was one other white female. She was the assistant. And she was brought in to free-lance. There are preconceived notions and I've gotten this in the workplace too, as far as African-American females--I think there are lower expectations. Even though they're probably not thinking that you don't know anything or you don't know how to write, but they don't know what to expect from you because they haven't been around you as much. And about after two weeks of being on the show, one writer came up to me and said I really admire how you handle yourself with the rest of us. I'm like, okay, what does that mean? And it wasn't like he was saying anything bad, or he thought he was saying anything bad, it was because Hollywood has such a closed way, as far as rooms are concerned. Most of them consist of white males. They were genuinely surprised and really embraced it. And we all are like best friends now and still talk to each other and call each other. But it was really an awakening for them. As far as their expectations and what I put out there and how vocal I was, and how I handled them.

MERYL MARSHALL: Dee, let me ask a different question. Because this was a best practice, having to do with a shared team experience, had you had that experience before or not? Not on the racial issue per se, but just in feeling that you were in a writer's room in which you could be open with your ideas or not?

DEE HARRIS-LAWRENCE: Oh yeah, like I said I've been very lucky since I've started in this industry. I started out in New York Undercover. And that was very mixed. There were two white males, one Latino female, two African-American females, and one African-American male. From the very beginning, we were told to say anything we wanted to say. I was on that for two years. And then this past show, which was about at-risk teens, we were able to say what we wanted to say. So my experience has been very lucky. That's why, when I came on Any Day Now, I had no fear of what I had to say. They were looking for someone to say something, or have something to say.

MERYL MARSHALL: Yes. I sense a couple of things. First of all there's hope when you see this number of writers that have gone through this room over the last several years who are going to go on to create their own shows and will use the experience that they've had here. I also sense from this conversation that when you really have various points of view in the room, it requires a teamwork approach as opposed to hierarchical approach. A hierarchical structure requires, in some ways, somebody to hire everybody who's who will agree to that system and be willing to follow that singular voice. As we develop product that is meant to be reflective of competing ideas or different perspectives, we may create more collaborative rooms. There was another question over here.

AUDIENCE: Has the show been circulated abroad? And if so, what is the reaction to it?

GARY RANDALL: The show is distributed at the moment in approximately 35 countries. Most of the foreign buyers do not look at shows about African-Americans as being viable. We're not a cop show, we're not a medical show. We don't fit into that nice, neat, little franchise. So you have to hunt for us. But we are out there.

AUDIENCE: What about Africa?

GARY RANDALL: It is in South Africa. And it's doing very well in South Africa. As a matter of fact, Lorraine has been invited to South Africa as an attendee of one of their festivals. We're trying to get it into the rest of Africa, in Kenya and various other countries. Anywhere there's a large Black population, it's done extraordinarily well. And it's been sold very aggressively.

MERYL MARSHALL: Yes, last question.

AUDIENCE: It goes to the issue of intent. Nancy had said before that in Hollywood, a lot of times, it's not intentional that these things happen Although the experience you've had has developed organically, is anyone intending to make sure that the awareness level is raised before you start a writing staff like this.

NANCY MILLER: From this day on. We now we make it a point on our crews. I realize is it's not enough to just sit back and say, oh, we're all equal, and I don't have anything against Black people, and really think that's okay. You really have to physically take steps. So we're doing that. And from now on, I know that I will.

MERYL MARSHALL: That's a good note to end on. We all came forward to do this event today. You will find the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, The Producers Guild, the Caucus of Writers, Producers and Directors and PCI looking for opportunities to have this conversation. And we hope that each of you who hear this conversation takes the conversation further and asks for it to happen again., and supports the events when they occur For those of us who have enjoyed the pleasure and the reward of really reaching into our hearts and the hearts of others, to have a very real dialogue and experience about how we hurt and can help each other, there are no rewards from any kind of other experience in Hollywood that can come remotely close to the satisfaction of this kind of experience. I thank you all for your time. I thank the panel for its time with me and with you.

SONNY FOX: Thank you Meryl, thank all of you for sharing your insights with us. I think it was a very effective and affecting session.