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Second Life

Meredith Scardino: Girls5eva Creator and Showrunner

Second Life

Second Life

Clique Media, Female Founder, Entrepreneurship, Career Change, Career Pivot, Fashion & Beauty, Hillary Kerr, Personal Journals, Who What Wear, Clique, Career, Arts, Business, Careers, Second Life, Career Advice, Self-made, Entrepreneur, Mydomaine, Society & Culture

4.73K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2024

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Meredith Scardino is the creator and showrunner of the Netflix TV series Girls5eva. Born and raised outside of Philadelphia, from a young age, Meredith was encouraged by her parents to pursue all types of art, and tried everything from cartooning classes (and watching Saturday Night Live) to painting classes in high school. She earned a bachelors degree in fine arts from Cornell before moving to New York City to pursue a masters in painting from the Parsons School of Design. There, her world opened up, as she took improv classes and writing electives at Parsons alongside her painting classwork. Scardino then landed a job creating animated comedy shorts, which combined her love for painting with her growing talent for comedy writing. Soon, she decided she wanted to pursue comedy writing full-time and quickly landed a writing gig at VH1’s Best Week Ever. Stints at the Late Show With David Letterman and The Colbert Report followed before she jumped into narrative TV by working on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. In 2021, she created her own show, Girls5eva, about a one-hit-wonder girl group that gets a chance at redemption decades after their initial fame. This year, she’s nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi everyone I'm Hillary Kerr the co-founder and chief content officer of

0:09.7

who what where and this is Second Life, a podcast spotlighting women who have truly

0:16.2

inspiring careers. We're talking about their work journeys, what they've learned

0:20.6

from the process of setting aside their doubts or fears,

0:23.9

and what happens when they embark on their second life.

0:26.9

Today on the show, I'm speaking with the Emmy-nominated showrunner

0:31.2

of the with a big imagination and a love of comedy.

0:43.2

She took cartooning and drawing classes and watched SNL religiously.

0:47.8

She got her bachelor's degree in Fine Arts at Cornell and after graduation moved to New York to get an MFA in painting at the Parsons School of Design.

0:57.7

In New York, her world opened up and she began a career in animation. Soon she realized that what she loved about storytelling was actually the writing aspect.

1:07.0

So she moved away from the art side and set her sights on comedy writing.

1:12.0

She landed jobs at VH1's best week ever, the late show with

1:16.1

David Letterman, and the Colbert Report, where she worked for six years. In 2014 she

1:21.6

made the jump to work in narrative television with Tina Fay and Robert

1:25.4

Carlock on the Netflix series The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. By the end of the

1:30.0

show's four seasons and an interactive special, Meredith started to think about what kind of show

1:35.6

she would want to make. She realized that she wanted to illustrate what it was like to be a woman in her 40s,

1:41.5

combined that with her comedy chops and her love of early 2000s pop groups

1:47.2

and Girls Five Eva was born.

1:50.2

Over the last four years, she's shepherded the show through ups and downs as the show fought for renewal,

1:55.9

eventually switching to Netflix for its third season. Throughout, Meredith has maintained the show's

2:01.2

blistering joke pace and beloved, odd, yet so relatable

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