{"id":24295,"date":"2026-06-16T10:19:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/16\/6-showrunners-on-how-to-keep-production-in-l-a-their-advice-to-young-writers-and-more-los-angeles-times\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T10:19:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:19:06","slug":"6-showrunners-on-how-to-keep-production-in-l-a-their-advice-to-young-writers-and-more-los-angeles-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/16\/6-showrunners-on-how-to-keep-production-in-l-a-their-advice-to-young-writers-and-more-los-angeles-times\/","title":{"rendered":"6 showrunners on how to keep production in L.A., their advice to young writers and more – Los Angeles Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most television lovers have one: an episode that left an indelible imprint long after the credits rolled. But which made the cut for the six creative minds on The Envelope\u2019s 2026 Emmy Writers Roundtable?
For Megan Gallagher (\u201cAll Her Fault\u201d<\/a>), it\u2019s the series finale of \u201cThe Americans.\u201d Jonathan Glatzer (\u201cThe Audacity\u201d<\/a>) selected the pilot of \u201cBreaking Bad\u201d: \u201cWhen those pants fly up in the air in the beginning, I was just like, \u2018What in the hell?\u2019 And I was completely sucked in.\u201d
Others went further back. Andrew Guest (\u201cWonder Man\u201d<\/a>) named \u201cSeinfeld\u2019s\u201d \u201cThe Marine Biologist.\u201d Bruce Miller (\u201cThe Testaments\u201d<\/a>) praised the pilot of \u201cMy So-Called Life.\u201d And Sonja Warfield (\u201cThe Gilded Age\u201d<\/a>) is still thinking about an episode from the third season of \u201cthirtysomething,\u201d which featured the corporate-buyout storyline involving Michael Steadman (Ken Olin) and the spy posing as an office painter to listen in on his plan: \u201cThe painter was a Black woman,\u201d Warfield said. \u201cWhat struck me about that was that she was invisible to him. And in the end, she\u2019s wearing a suit, and he can see that she had all of the information.\u201d
Michael Patrick King (\u201cThe Comeback\u201d<\/a>) dug even deeper into the vault with \u201cLucy Does a TV Commercial\u201d from \u201cI Love Lucy.\u201d The memory of a tipsy Lucy trying to sell a health tonic known as Vitameatavegamin left such a lasting impression that, while working on \u201cMurphy Brown,\u201d King got his hands on a copy of the script page with Lucy\u2019s slurred spiel: \u201cLucy didn\u2019t improvise anything,\u201d King said. \u201cThe writing on the side is \u2018bats eyes, winks, slips\u2019 \u2014 it\u2019s all on the side in stage directions.\u201d
Of course, these writers are getting viewers talking with their own work too. Here, they discuss their series, the threat artificial intelligence poses to the entertainment industry, why producing TV shows in L.A. matters and much more. Read on for excerpts from our conversation.
Between the six of you, you\u2019re touching on some powerful and risky themes in the series that you\u2019re working on, whether it\u2019s sexism, classism, delusional power, grief. Bruce, with something like \u201cThe Testaments,\u201d what made you nervous about the themes you were exploring with teenage characters?<\/b>
Miller:<\/b> What really<\/i> happens is so much harsher and worse and just unimaginably terrible that you can\u2019t show it on television. … You can\u2019t candy-coat it, but on the other hand, what do you show so that the audience gets the idea without not being able to watch the television show?
There were some scenes of molestation in the first couple of episodes, and the actors worked on it quite a long time. But in editing, we ended up cutting most of it out. The hard part on the show is that if you\u2019re going to deal with these issues, you have to deal with them. You have to do it in a way that you\u2019re not going to \u2014 because I\u2019m very squidgy too \u2014 look away and just turn off the television, because that\u2019s how we got in these problems in the first place.
Michael, you\u2019ve worked on shows like \u201cMurphy Brown,\u201d \u201cWill & Grace,\u201d \u201cSex and the City\u201d and \u201cThe Comeback.\u201d Was there <\/b>ever<\/b> something you were nervous about pitching or seeing how you would tackle a subject matter?<\/b>
King: <\/b>It\u2019s always the thing is, how are you going to find your wall, where you stop and think, \u201cThat\u2019s too far\u201d? \u201cThe Comeback\u201d this season, the scary thought was, \u201cWe\u2019re going to tackle [artificial intelligence], which is great because it\u2019s rich and it\u2019s fear-based and it\u2019s comic.\u201d But [in] the middle of the writing room, somebody said to [star] Lisa [Kudrow] and I, \u201cSo what\u2019s the moral of the story for writers?\u201d And it stopped me for two days. I was like, \u201cAm I supposed to divine an idea that gets everybody happy at the end?\u201d And so we talked about it, and finally we realized we\u2019re just reporting from the front lines.
How are you feeling about this moment and the debate about AI? What are your fears about this<\/b>,<\/b> and what was it like working through some of that in the show?<\/b>
King: <\/b>Lisa is a very smart, almost scientific mind, and we didn\u2019t want to go out there pretending something was going to happen, so we got a lot of information. And what we learned was it\u2019s very far advanced, past what we even think. The joke is ChatGPT, but it\u2019s further. But I always think: We thought reality TV was the end of narrative television when we did the first season of \u201cThe Comeback.\u201d Then we went on to have what they\u2019re calling the second golden age of television, and reality TV just became this weird, tacky wing on the house. I\u2019m guessing maybe that could happen again where there\u2019s a weird, tacky AI wing that is just that kind of content, but people will still maybe be looking for well-made, handmade things.
Miller:<\/b> If it solves climate change, it can have my job.
Guest: <\/b>If AI could do our jobs as writers, it would be doing it. Believe me, there\u2019s plenty of people who are trying to get AI to do our jobs and it\u2019s not working. People look to storytelling for something very specific. And AI is collective information. You don\u2019t go to a story for a collective point of view on the world, you want your<\/i> point of view. And the thing that\u2019s magical about storytelling is the more specific you make your point of view, the more I connect with it. And that\u2019s something that collective information can\u2019t do.
Gallagher:<\/b> I heard somebody say something that made me feel a little bit better, which is that no matter how much AI learns, AI doesn\u2019t have any experience.
Warfield:<\/b> It\u2019s never had lived experience.
Gallagher: <\/b>Exactly. That\u2019s never going to happen. And if you don\u2019t have any lived experience, and I\u2019m not saying it won\u2019t be a threat to our jobs in some level, in some ways, but … If you haven\u2019t lived through something, how on earth can you tell that?
Warfield:<\/b> But also, I just have to say, AI is not always right. In fact, it\u2019s very, very wrong. And working on a historical drama, we\u2019ve had people Google things, and in fact they Googled something about Frederick Douglass being at this very important American event. And AI said he was there. Guess what? He wasn\u2019t. In fact, he was literally in Europe. And it\u2019s provable that he was in Europe. So on our show, which is a historical drama, we have a real historian who checks the database, who checks newspapers from the 1800s, and we have PhD candidates who also do that. So AI is not always correct.
King: <\/b>I have one interesting story that we learned from the researchers, which is that AI only gives you stuff that you\u2019re going to react to favorably.
Guest: <\/b>It wants you to like it. And to keep using it.
King:<\/b> It\u2019s only the humans that will kill a baby for a story. It\u2019s only the humans that will say, \u201cThis is so painful, you won\u2019t like it.\u201d The AI at this point will only give you affirmations of your own power or things you like.
Glatzer:<\/b> My own kid is 17 years old, he hates AI and finds it deeply uncool, and I think that is great. AI should find its place in the world and help what it can help. And stay out of what we do because what we do is the business of humanity, of chronicling it, of commenting upon it. And that\u2019s not where it ought to be.
Intuitively, audiences, like my son, are just feeling that. Like, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to hear about my life or hold up a mirror to my world by a machine that slices and dices and juliennes all of our experiences into some slop.\u201d There\u2019s a real \u2014 always will be \u2014 genuine desire for authenticity, and that is the opposite of what AI provides. It would be great if it can solve climate change, that would be really, really f\u2014 great. Unfortunately, it\u2019s going to make it a lot worse first. … But in terms of the long game, I don\u2019t see it as being a primary storyteller of the human experience. That\u2019s our job.
Jonathan, you watched \u201cSilicon Valley,\u201d which was much more of a comedy-forward satire on this world. And you didn\u2019t necessarily want that tone for \u201cThe Audacity\u201d because we\u2019re at a different point with tech. Tell me about what you wanted this show to be and what you wanted it to have us thinking about.<\/b>
Glatzer:<\/b> There is an inherent question in our show in terms of, \u201cDo we want these people who are dictating to us how we communicate with each other and how we engage as human beings, how we shop … political beliefs and our religion and everything, all the way to sex and masturbation?\u201d And by the way, they\u2019re watching it all. All of the things that we do interact with, it\u2019s all being recorded. And that\u2019s part of why data centers are so big, is that they will not erase anything. None of that is great for banter between two characters. … These are just these things that, when you\u2019re researching and telling stories about tech, can really weigh on you. And you don\u2019t want to be frivolous about it, you don\u2019t want to be glib about it. So I guess the way forward was to try to remind us of our own humanity, all 7 billion tech users, remind us that we need to hang onto that because otherwise we\u2019re going to lose it. We\u2019re losing it already, the way that we communicate with each other. And of course, the irony is that these people who are notoriously bad at communicating themselves are the ones who are dictating how we in fact communicate to each other.
Sonja, many have said that the Gilded Age is back, with the robber barons of this era being the tech billionaires. In your show, George Russell engages in business practices that are unethical or potentially illegal.<\/b>
Warfield:<\/b> That\u2019s not any different than what\u2019s happening right now.
Yet he\u2019s not necessarily portrayed as a villain; he\u2019s very much a family man. What has fascinated you about exploring a man like George Russell?<\/b>
Warfield:<\/b> We were very careful in Season 2 when there was a standoff with the union. We drew from history. Because there were robber barons who did engage the militia and have them shoot the workers. [Creator] Julian [Fellowes] said he did not want to do that. And so I said, \u201cWell, let\u2019s humanize these people.\u201d Because that\u2019s the difference. And what George originally tried to do was bring their \u201cunion leader\u201d to his house in New York on 61st Street and impress him. And so I said, \u201cLet\u2019s have George go to the worker\u2019s house, the steelworker\u2019s house, and humanize him and see his family and his children and see how he lives.\u201d In that moment in Season 2, when George is supposed to give the order to shoot, he sees the son of the worker and decides he\u2019s not going to. So I think bringing humanity to him \u2014 which I don\u2019t know exists in some of the oligarchs\/billionaires today; they don\u2019t necessarily see the humanity in their workers \u2014 [to] see that humanity is what helps me write for George.
Glatzer: <\/b>That\u2019s a lot of what we\u2019re dealing with too, is just humanizing the people who are villainized otherwise and reminding them of their own humanity. Also, their fallibility is something that, at least in the Silicon Valley realm, they have lost touch with \u2014 the idea that they could make mistakes.
Warfield:<\/b> Because they live in this bubble where everyone is telling them how fantastic and amazing they are, and they\u2019re all just together and they\u2019re insulated.
Megan, even with the title \u201cAll Her Fault<\/b>,<\/b>\u201d you\u2019re challenging viewers to think about our own gender bias and how we view things. What were the conversations like in the room about the gender expectations and the way you wanted to subvert them?<\/b>
Gallagher: <\/b>God, the gender themes in \u201cAll Her Fault\u201d are massively important. And we had a small, intimate writers\u2019 room where pretty much everyone was parents. And so after a few days of getting to know each other, it very quickly devolved into, \u201cG\u2014 it, my husband does that all the time,\u201d or whatever, that kind of thing. We also had a lot of men in the room who were really good sports and were great. Pretty much every woman I know between the ages of about 35 to 55 who has kids and is married, every single one of them that I know has dropped their kid off at school and sobbed in the parking lot before going to work. And the sentence I always hear when we catch up is, \u201cI literally don\u2019t understand how this is supposed to get done.\u201d And it\u2019s just this idea that women who are now firmly in the workplace, and more or less expected to be and want to be \u2014 I was raised wanting to be into the work world, I wasn\u2019t raised wanting to be a mother only \u2014 but we\u2019re still the default parent. Generally speaking, we\u2019re still the ones that know the names of the teachers and names of the doctors, and [responsible] if someone needs to go to the dentist and the soccer uniform has to be clean for Saturday\u2019s game. … Every single woman I knew, pretty much, was in this position. It hasn\u2019t been a front-and-center theme that really has been tackled [on a TV series]. And of course, the kidnapping as a genre motor was a great excuse to break all that wide open.
Michael, in addition to \u201cThe Comeback,\u201d you made \u201cAnd Just Like That…,\u201d which was revisiting the \u201cSex and the City\u201d characters at a different stage in life. It was interesting to see the conversations happening about these characters because <\/b>viewers<\/b> felt like they had a better sense of where the characters would be at this stage than maybe you did or what you gave us. What was that like for you?<\/b>
King: <\/b>The result was in a direct contrast to my interest; my interest is evolution. That\u2019s the only thing I\u2019m interested in. I want to see where they are, what is happening. And what happened was, it was really well made, but it wasn\u2019t their<\/i> Carrie. … The great news is that you created characters that people love, so much so that they want to see them again. And then if they behave [differently], they would say, \u201cThat\u2019s not my Miranda.\u201d And I was like, \u201cBut it\u2019s my<\/i> Miranda because I wrote her, but I understand it\u2019s not what you<\/i> want to see.\u201d It\u2019s an interesting trick, because in order for us to do anything, you don\u2019t want to repeat or freeze-dry anything; why bother if you\u2019re not going to shake it up? But then you have to be pretty aware that you could be shaken up too by the reaction, which is not exactly what you expected. Even though you stand behind it, you go, \u201cWow, that\u2019s a surprise. I thought that they would be interested in 57-year-old women who still hadn\u2019t figured everything out. And instead they wanted them to be 35 and still allowed to be lost.\u201d
Andrew, how about fan expectations from the Marvel universe \u2014 what were you nervous about?<\/b>
Guest: <\/b>Working for Marvel comes with a lot of baggage. And you can\u2019t really win no matter what you do. One of the nice things was this character, Simon Williams, was lesser known. So I didn\u2019t feel like there was a ton of feelings about it. But certainly when it came to the tone of the show, being concerned that the fans were going to be like, \u201cWhat is this show? Why are they doing monologues about Shakespeare for 10 minutes in this episode?\u201d And the truth was the fans were thrilled. They want Marvel to try other things. They\u2019re so excited. And I feel like it shared some DNA with what makes a Marvel show a Marvel show. And allowed us to really just do our own thing, which was really nice.
An issue that\u2019s generating a lot of discussion in the industry is production in L<\/b>.<\/b>A. How important is it to you? What are we losing by not having it as a training ground in the same way <\/b>as <\/b>maybe when you came up?<\/b>
Miller:<\/b> I\u2019ve been on shows that have shot in Los Angeles and I\u2019ve been on shows that have shot outside of Los Angeles. I just think you overshoot a place [as a location]. Growing up, every single show, no matter where it was set, was in Southern California. And the quality of the light and the quality of the hills and all that stuff, it\u2019s just shot out. I don\u2019t think it has anything to do with the crews. I think when you work on set, they\u2019re astonishing. I think as a location, though, it\u2019s pretty shot out. As a place to go on stage, there\u2019s no place better. You can\u2019t get Bastard Amber [lighting] gel at 4 in the morning in Toronto.
Is there something a mayoral or gubernatorial candidate should say about this moment that would make you vote for them?<\/b>
King:<\/b> Hollywood works when you let it. I shot \u201cThe Comeback\u201d on [the] Warner Brothers [lot]. It was a show about Hollywood in Hollywood. And if you could see the crew coming to work a mile from their house, it was just the happiest crew in the world. … It\u2019s a big industry. And entertainment is almost America\u2019s gross national product. So you better start guarding it better.
Guest: <\/b>Having just shot in Los Angeles on two different projects, I can tell you that the crews are unmatched. And getting to see them be thrilled to continue to do the jobs they do is just fabulous. And \u201cWonder Man\u201d is about this town. It\u2019s about people who come here with dreams of doing this job. And for every crew member, every department head, it was personal. It was their story. And they imbued all that into making that show. We got to set a whole episode in Pacoima. When was the last time a Marvel show did that? The other thing about this city is there\u2019s also so many people who may not be working in entertainment who are affected by the loss of work in entertainment. And to me, it\u2019s really sad to see. Because the writing advice I used to give 15 years ago was move to L.A. first and then figure it out. And I don\u2019t say that anymore.
What do you say?<\/b>
Guest:<\/b> God. I don\u2019t know.
King: <\/b>Move to Pacoima.
Miller:<\/b> When I entered the business was so long ago, it\u2019s meaningless, my advice. How to get into the business? I took a Conestoga wagon out here.
Michael, what advice do you give?<\/b>
King: <\/b>That there\u2019s no one who\u2019s going to have your journey, so try to just believe your own unfounded drive and see where it gets you. Because if you look around, everybody\u2019s journeys are completely different. I think it\u2019s tough that there\u2019s no pipeline right now. … There\u2019s no 23 shows on that need 16 writers.
Guest:<\/b> That go 10 months out of the year.
King:<\/b> That go for 25 episodes where you always are in the room with \u2014 \u201cOh, there\u2019s 12 people.\u201d Three will survive. It\u2019s like \u201cThe Hunger Games.\u201d
Warfie<\/b>l<\/b>d: <\/b>I just gave someone advice, which was, \u201cJust be open to wherever it\u2019s going to take you.\u201d I know a young woman who is an aspiring writer and she\u2019s graduating this month. And she plans on moving to L.A. And I said, \u201cBut be open if there\u2019s a job in New York or they\u2019re building studios in New Jersey.\u201d Because again, 15, 20 years ago, I would have said, \u201cCome to L.A., make relationships,\u201d all of that. But there\u2019s so many different ways that this younger generation can be connected where we couldn\u2019t. We had to be here<\/i>. Anything\u2019s possible, and you just have to be courageous and see where it takes you.
Glatzer:<\/b> I think courageous is probably it. Because [it\u2019s] also a little insane to come here … a little delusional. Figure out what your voice is, and that\u2019s the thing that you got to ride. There will always be a thirst for originality and something that hasn\u2019t been done before. And to stay true to yourself along the way. You don\u2019t lose your soul doing that.
Gallagher:<\/b> If you\u2019re talking about giving advice, you\u2019re usually talking to somebody who\u2019s in their mid-20s or early 20s who\u2019s getting started. I just remember being that age and thinking that Hollywood was this thing that was about who you knew. And 25 years out from that … everyone I know who has sustained a career in this industry wasn\u2019t connected to anybody and didn\u2019t get into some magical party. They just put their head down and worked really hard. Now, the industry is so rough these days, and working really hard is not a guarantee of anything. But of everybody that I know who has managed to sustain a career, it really is just about hard work. And I find that a comfort because it makes me feel like I\u2019m more in control of my situation.
Miller: <\/b>But the most fun part of it, I think, is work. You sit down with a writer, you say, \u201cI know it\u2019s hard, but every single person you work with, someone said to them at some point in their life, \u2018You\u2019re not going to make any money out of this, you should do something else.\u2019\u201d You\u2019ve got a whole business full of people, someone said to them, \u201cI know you\u2019re really good, but you\u2019re never ever going to make a living doing that.\u201d And they said, \u201cEh, I\u2019ll do it anyway.\u201d I mean, that\u2019s an incredible community of people. You may be nervous about getting into it, but it is the community of people who were nervous to get into it. I love that about our business. It\u2019s just a bunch of people who just decided not to listen to their parents.
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Yvonne Villarreal is a senior television writer for the Calendar section and co-host of \u201cThe Envelope\u201d podcast.
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Christina House is a staff photojournalist with the Los Angeles Times. She joined the visual journalism team in 2017 after 10 years as a freelance photographer. House won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize<\/a> for Feature Photography and the 2022 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award<\/a> for Domestic Photography for \u201cHollywood\u2019s Finest,\u201d an intimate look into the life of a pregnant 22-year-old woman living on the street. She was part of the team that was a finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize<\/a> in Breaking News Photography, and she received the 2021 Cliff Edom New America Award for her work on \u201cGame Changers: A Celebration of Women in Sports\u201d from the 2021 National Press Photographers Assn.\u2019s Best of Photojournalism awards.
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Most television lovers have one: an episode that left an indelible imprint long after the credits rolled. But which made the cut for the six creative minds on The Envelope\u2019s 2026 Emmy Writers Roundtable? For Megan Gallagher (\u201cAll Her Fault\u201d), it\u2019s the series finale of \u201cThe Americans.\u201d Jonathan Glatzer (\u201cThe Audacity\u201d) selected the pilot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}