4.6 • 688 Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2018
⏱️ 40 minutes
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0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at LifeHacker, where we help you improve your life one week at a time. |
0:17.3 | I'm Alice Bradley, deputy editor of LifeHacker. |
0:20.1 | And I'm Nick Douglas, staff writer for Lifehacker. |
0:22.6 | Melissa Kirsch is out this week, and she is sad to miss this episode, I'm sure, because we have a |
0:28.4 | treat for you. Today we're talking to Nell Scovel, comedy writer and author of just the funny parts, |
0:34.7 | and a few hard truths about sneaking into the Hollywood Boys Club. |
0:38.5 | Nell has written for The Simpsons, NCIS, Newhart, the late show with David Letterman, and many others. |
0:44.9 | She was also the creator of the hit show Sabrina the Teenage Witch. |
0:48.6 | We're going to discuss Nell's long history in television writing and how she managed to excel as a woman in a field that's so |
0:55.5 | male dominated. No, welcome to the upgrade. Thanks for having me. So, Nell, you started in a notoriously |
1:02.1 | girly field, sports writing. How did your background as a sports writer lend itself to comedy? |
1:06.9 | You know, I think it was very helpful because as a sports writer, you cover all these |
1:12.6 | different sports, right? So you have to get good at writing football, as well as tennis, as well as |
1:18.7 | women's soccer. And I think it gave my writing a flexibility. Very early on, I learned about |
1:26.8 | writing for audiences and queuing into what those audiences |
1:31.8 | were most interested in and changing the style and tone of my writing to suit that audience. |
1:39.2 | And do you think it had, there was also a similarity with the fact that it's another kind of |
1:43.2 | boys club. |
1:49.4 | It certainly made me comfortable in that atmosphere. I learned how to drink really lousy coffee, |
1:55.2 | which is definitely a necessary skill set if you're going to go into writing. You know, |
2:00.3 | and another way being in the sports room helped me was, I remember sitting, working on a story when Will McDonough, who was one of |
2:02.0 | the great sports writers of all time, got angry on the phone with Billy Sullivan, who owned the |
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