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The Screenwriting Life with Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna

231 | A Writers' Assistant Deep Dive (Part 1)

The Screenwriting Life with Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna

Meg LeFauve & Lorien McKenna

Tv & Film

4.81K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

JOIN TSL WORKSHOPS: https://tslworkshops.circle.so To help support relief efforts related to the fires in LA, consider donating to the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation: https://supportlafd.kindful.com/?campaign=1040812 Listen as former writers' assistants Maggie Gottlieb, Lauren Halberg, and Jonathan Hurwitz detail their experiences as writers' assistants. They answer the important questions like: how do you actually get a writers’ assistant job, how can you elegantly parlay that job into bigger opportunities, and... the Big Scary Question: can I pitch in the room?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, TSLers, it's producer Jeff here. And before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to acknowledge

0:04.6

the devastating fires that are raging throughout L.A. right now. To all of our TSLers in L.A., which I know

0:10.3

is a lot of you, including the rest of our team, Meg, Lori, and Ann Jonathan, please, please,

0:15.3

please stay safe. I lived in L.A. for a decade, and my heart is just so broken seeing what's happening to one of my favorite cities on the planet.

0:22.2

Just I hope everyone's taking care of themselves and taking it easy on themselves.

0:26.4

A quick episode note, Lurian mentions at the top of the show that this is a two-part episode.

0:31.3

During the edit, we decided that rather than combining both parts into a single recording, we're going to break them up.

0:36.9

So this is part one and part two comes tomorrow.

0:39.6

But in the meantime, we hope everyone stay safe.

0:43.1

Hey, everyone.

0:44.0

Welcome back to the screenwriting life.

0:45.5

I'm Lori and McKenna.

0:46.6

And Meg can't be here today.

0:48.3

But we're super excited to be discussing one of the most, if not the most important jobs in our industry, the writer's assistant.

0:54.9

We're going to be doing two segments on our show today. The first segment's a roundtable

0:58.5

discussing what it means to be a writer's assistant on a TV show in the room. This is what most

1:03.4

people think of when they think of a writer's assistant. And to discuss that, we'll be talking to

1:07.2

Lauren Hallberg, Jonathan Hurwitz, and Maggie Gottlieb. Our second segment will feature

1:12.2

another kind of assistant, a showrunner's assistant, and we'll be talking to Anthony Macella

1:16.7

later on in the show. So let's get ready for some bios for Lauren, Maggie, and Jonathan. And it's three

1:23.7

bios, and I know you guys just want to get to the part where we talk about being a writer's assistant,

1:27.2

but I think it's really important to listen to these because you can see how being a writer's assistant can actually help you get a job as a writer.

...

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