Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and this is episode 738 of Script Notes. It's a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, we welcome the creator of Nemesis and the power franchise to talk about writing, showwriting, staffing, production, and navigating the shifting tides of television. Welcome to Script Notes, Courtney Kemp. I'm so excited to be here. So excited. As I said, as we were starting up this call, I wanted you on the show for a while, but then I heard you this last week on the business talking about your new show. And it's like, well, I have to have her on. I have to talk more about those things. Because the business is a great podcast. I recommend it highly, but it's short and it's general interest, but I really want to dig into the writing and the show running. We recently had Haley Boston on the show. She did her great horror show, which was also number one on Netflix. And we talked about her rise, her sort of like suddenly becoming a showrunner.

That she was like, you know, kind of went from nothing. And she suddenly has a show.

And she was a first time showrunner. And you're not. You know what you're doing,

which is so great. You rose up through the ranks.

Yes.

So I want to talk to you about how you know what you're doing, but also what you learned rising up through the ranks because I'm just so curious about the steps along the way and the

things you take from previous experiences that you can apply, that you sort of only get because

you're on shows that were in production.

That is such a great question.

I mean, the first thing I would say is I'm so grateful for my journey because it's interesting

to me watch that whole period where they were like young screenwriters and they'd be like, yeah, you can run a show. No, they can't. That was me, by the way. They gave me a show. I had no idea what I was doing. By bad. Sorry. But it's true. it's like the job is so different

you know the kind of what ifs

that we deal with as television writers

are very different from the what-ifs of a feature writer. And I always say, like, the job is not what story do I want to tell? It's what story can I tell for this amount of money and shoot it in this amount of time? And it's just a different equation. You know, my story has a lot of ups and downs,

but I think the most important part of my story is that when I came out here, my first job was on

the Bernie Mac show. I got out here in June and I was staffed in August on the Bernie Mac show.

So that was huge. And then I got fired. I got fired to the end of the season because I'm not funny.

And I really had to pivot.

And the pivot was really interesting because at the time, there were a bunch of sitcoms of color, like the George Lopez's and things like that.

And my agent, who is still one of my agents today, Nancy Etz, said to me, do you want to go in that direction or do you want to write drama? And I was like,

I have a much prefer to write drama. My favorite show was law and order. I was never supposed to be a

comedy writer. I just was supposed to be a person who puts jokes in violent dramas. Like,

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