Q&A: Screenwriter Carly Wray on the Fundamentals of TV
From 'Mad Men' to 'Westworld' and 'The Leftovers' to 'Watchmen', the scribe shares what she's learned from writing so much 'prestige TV' (whatever that means anymore)
Earlier this year, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer (Arrival) joined me for one of my artist-on-artist conversations. It was a sprawling discussion, as interested in going deep into craft as the existential reality of being a film/TV writer in the 21st century. Afterward, I asked Eric if he had any suggestions about other screenwriters who might be able to similarly dig into the art form with me. That’s how I found myself emailing Carly Wray, a writer whose name I was very familiar with from the credits of several TV series I loved, but whom I had never actually met. Eric did not steer me wrong. Carly is an exciting — and even probing — conversationalist who fully embraced the spirit of this series. I think you’re going to learn a lot from my chat with her.
Carly kicked off her television career by landing a plum gig as a writers’ assistant on not just a critically acclaimed series - but one of the greatest TV series of all time. I’m talking about “Mad Men”. No slouch, she quickly found herself promoted and her first episode, “In Care Of”, aired in 2013. She went on to write two episodes of Season 7 including the penultimate episode of the whole series (which she co-wrote with creator Matthew Weiner). And in the years that followed, she’s joined the writers’ rooms of several other brilliant series. “The Leftovers”, “Mindhunter”, “Westworld”, “Watchmen”, “DMZ”…notice a pattern here?
So, let’s find out together what Carly has learned from this amazing run of what we call “prestige television”. I put that term in quotation marks because, as you’ll read in our conversation, Carly and I can’t quite work out what that means anymore. For aspiring and emerging screenwriters, I want you to focus — really focus — on Carly’s discussions about the fundamentals of TV writing that she learned in part from some of the most revolutionary TV creators of the 21st century. For all screenwriters, I also think there’s a lot to take from our discussion of the realities of making television in Hollywood today and navigating the often toxic culture that comes with doing so.
COLE HADDON: Let’s start with a fun question, Carly, or at least I think it is. Tell me about a film or television series you love that no one else agrees with you about. But I don’t want just a name. I want to know what you see that others don’t and maybe even why you think that is.
CARLY WRAY: I don’t think I have a thing I love that everyone else hates — but I have been known to fixate on things that no one else gives a shit about. [Laughter] So, I’m going to answer this: “What do people in your life wish you’d stop fucking talking about?”
CH: Sounds good to me.
CW: Right now the answer is “Kojak”. To the extent that anybody remembers this show in 2024, they just remember it had a bald cop and lollipops. But I think we should talk more about the brilliance of Telly Savalas in general and we should restore this show in particular to conversations about the evolution of the complex police drama.
Sure, “Kojak” had lollipops and plenty of outdated, boner episodes in its five-year run. It also had a fully embodied lead character and a before-its-time-for-network-TV POV on cops and criminals as two sides of a coin. There’s sharp, funny dialogue. There are seeds of “The Wire”. There’s…truly, God help you if this comes up while we’re drinking.
CH: [Laughter] Fair enough! But I do want to hear more about this now. You’re a relative babe in this world compared to anyone who was old enough to enjoy “Kojak” during its original five-season run. How did you discover the series and how old were you when you did?
CW: Oh, I watched my first episode of “Kojak” last February! I’m genuinely laughing at how dumb this fixation sounds now, but it’s true, this is what I spent 2023 watching. I have no nostalgic connection to it, just the zeal of the recently converted. My husband and I pulled up an episode almost as a joke after a conversation about the great films of Seventies New York. We were expecting pure cheese…then, we couldn’t stop watching. If there’s any deeper insight to my creative life or process here - it’s probably my pathological inability to watch brand new TV and movies.
I almost always wait to watch buzzy new things until the cultural conversation has moved on a bit, otherwise I feel like I can’t shut off the critical part of my brain. I can’t relax and enjoy something if I feel like I’m supposed to be formulating my position in the “discourse” around it. I don’t usually wait forty-plus years, but “Kojak” is emblematic of the kind of old thing I’ll watch while I wait for the hot new shit to cool off a month or two.
This aversion gets extra strong when I’m well inside of a script or in a crunch on a project. When I get to the deepest, stickiest, final stages of a piece of writing, I can’t consume any kind of fiction, especially newer things — it’s all baseball and concert videos until I push the finished draft out the door. I’m actually always curious what other writers’ orientation is to consuming media when working. Where do you fall? I have some friends who can only counterprogram their own projects — watching the opposite of whatever they’re writing — and others who watch every single thing that could vaguely be considered a comp to make sure they aren’t treading familiar territory.
CH: Hm, good question. Well, I think I do all my comp-watching before I start writing. I sort of swim around in that stew while my own ideas are developing, as much for inspiration as to start zeroing in on what I might be borrowing too heavily from whatever genre or sub-genre I’m playing around with. But do I stop reading fiction or watching films and TV while I’m writing? Maybe comp watching at that point, but otherwise I couldn’t do that if my life depended on it – and I think it probably does. At least my mental health.
CW: I also tend to do all of my “research” viewing before I actually start writing. And I consume fiction through 99.8% of my waking hours…it’s just the final crunch days on a draft when I get a sudden, intense need to shut off any additional inputs. I require a sort of “blinders mode” at that point, I think.
CH: We all have our processes, which is why I love this conversation series so much. I want to get into your craft, and I promise you we will, but I’m just as interested in your views on art. This self-awareness you described a moment ago — that you have trouble watching new films or TV because you get distracted formulating your own position in the discourse around it — is kind of revelatory for me. Mostly because I think you’ve helped me identify why I generally try to avoid watching new TV, in particular. That discourse makes demands of you, as an artist, I think. It’s like Batman putting on a mask in Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, and Alfred tells him of course there was going to be a reaction to that. The discourse, once it starts, demands a reaction…and I don’t know what value there is in reactionary opinions. I’m just going to change what I think later anyway, and then write some epic essay about how everyone was wrong to begin with. Because that’s what I do. It’s a problem.
CW: We’re not alone in this! I know so many writers who put off watching things we’re “supposed” to be watching — the hot new prestige awards-y thing — because it can feel like homework. It almost feels disrespectful to the work itself to watch it in that mode. There’s no worse prompt for me going into something than “Oh, you have to watch X, I can’t wait to hear what you think.”
CH: Absolutely. And I agree with the observation that it does feel disrespectful to the work to watch something out of anything that smacks of obligation.
Okay, so let’s talking your screenwriting career and craft, as promised. You’ve written episodes for three of my favorite TV series of the 21st century, not to mention episodes of other series I’ve loved. I am jealous, to say the least, but also a little awed. Okay, a lot awed. A lot. How much did the wizard charge when you asked to work on some of the most remarkable TV dramas being made?
CW: You don’t specify the three series so I can only assume you’re including “The Bastard Executioner”, once reviewed as “an incoherent ‘Game of Thrones’ knock-off full of senseless carnage, wooden performances, a dash of nudity, and a few scenes so poorly executed they play like farce.” I would say the wizard boned me on that one, but I loved the writers in that room too much to regret it.
Seriously, though: it’s an understatement to say chancing into “Mad Men” as my first job helped set a “prestige” trajectory for my career. In a moment, I’ll give myself some credit for busting my ass to succeed on that show and make use of the opportunities it afforded - but I’ll never fail to recognize that having it on my resume got me into meetings I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten, even with the same samples, skills, or agents.
CH: I’m going to come back to “The Bastard Executioner” because I have to after that comment. First, I need some context to better understand how you ended up on “Mad Men” including the aforementioned “busting your ass”. When you decided screenwriting was going to be your path, what kind of TV series did you dream of writing? But also, I suppose, was TV even the goal as opposed to film?
CW: My goal was always TV. I always loved the idea that TV writing was a job you could go to every day and write with other people. There’s a chance this came from watching “The Dick Van Dyke Show” on Nick at Nite as a kid. I liked thinking of characters who become part of your actual week-to-week life. I loved that pilots didn’t have to tell the whole story. As a teenager, I wanted to grow up and write “The X-Files”. Or, “The West Wing”. I’m not sure that’s changed much. I was always a film geek, but writing movies didn’t occur to me until several years into my TV career - but it’s been a pleasure developing that professional lane as well.
CH: What’s fascinating is that you grew up, you really came of age, when TV was rapidly evolving into a medium people genuinely aspired to work in rather than just cut their teeth doing on their way to making films. This isn’t technically fascinating, but it is for me, regarding this interview series, because you’re one of the first artists I’ve chatted with I could say this about. While it’s difficult to be objective about your creative identity when it’s the only identity you’ve ever had, I wonder if you’ve ever reflected on how this might have set you apart in writers’ rooms earlier in your career.
CW: I may have misled above saying I wanted to grow up and write “The West Wing”, which debuted when I was eighteen. I was twelve, I think, for “The X-Files”, so that still stands. But when I was an actual child in the Eighties and Nineties, TV definitely wasn’t yet considered an artistic medium on par with film. When I got my first job, my POV on the medium and my ambitions inside of it weren’t noticeably different from writers I knew who grew up in the Sixties or Seventies. I was turned on by “The X-Files” - they were turned on by “The Twilight Zone”. Different shades of the same color.
I think I started trying to break in right on the cusp of the status changeover, though. I went to the Peter Stark Producing Program in 2003. Out of twenty-five students, I was the only one who expressly wanted to work in TV, and I was slagged about it by a few of the professors. I think it must have been the literal last moment that it was common to think of TV as the lower-ambition path.
In any given writers’ room I’ve been in where I’m neither the oldest nor the youngest, the main generational divide is what material people used to get their first staff job - “writers who started out writing specs of existing episodes” versus “writers who have only ever written original pilots”. I started trying to break in during the first era. I actually broke in during the second era. I relate to all. I am the great uniter!
Truly, though, I think this would be an interesting question to ask a younger writer now — someone who grew up watching “The Sopranos” and “Mad Men” versus “Alf”. God, I loved “Alf”…but I wonder how it would have rewired my brain or my ambitions if I’d watched “Mad Men” as a kid.
CH: So, I appreciate the distinction, but the answer has still been interesting. I came to TV later than you, and via film, so it’s great to hear this transitional period described by someone who was trying and then breaking into the business during it.
CW: All of that said, it does make me wonder when, exactly, this conversation started to change versus when we can consider it having changed for good. When was the moment when TV fully ascended? Curious to hear where you draw the line.
CH: I’m a little bit older than you. I more or less hit eighteen when “The X-Files” and “ER” premiered. For me, 1993 and 1994 were the pivotal years. You could feel it, along with shows like “NYPD Blue” and even “Friends”, that something had changed. I was as excited by TV as film for the first time in my life. But cable hadn’t quite taken over, on the credibility front, and I think that’s the significant difference. Credibility. When I eventually arrived in Hollywood in 2005, everyone I knew was still shitting on TV. By 2010, it’s all anyone could talk about. Long story short, I don’t know if there is a line. Evolution is muddy and messy, I guess?
CW: “NYPD Blue” does stand out in my mind as the first time I remember the adults in my life talking about TV differently. I think it may have been the first TV show I remember specifically not being “allowed” to watch. I’ve never watched it end to end and this conversation is making me realize I should make that my next old-TV project while I wait for the discourse to die down on “Baby Reindeer”.
What brought you to TV after breaking in via movies?
CH: So, I broke into TV after success in features. My agents set a meeting, and it somehow pivoted to TV by the end of it. I immediately loathed the one producer, but the other was a legend I wanted to work with. That take resulted in a pilot script that somehow kept getting attention. I’m the asshole whose first series just got greenlit, so I never had to staff. But even if I had, the idea of “breaking in” on a series that was already being hailed as one of the greatest ever produced seems especially harrowing. What was that like for you, landing in the “Mad Men” writers’ room as a writer’s assistant?