Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, founder and director of the Future of StoryTelling. And I'd like to welcome you back to the FoST podcast. My guest today is superstar TV writer and producer, Wendy Calhoun. Wendy's long list of writing credits includes work on mega hit TV series, such as Empire, Nashville, Station 19, and Justified, for which she won a Peabody award. Her current show is Prodigal Son on Fox.

As a TV writer and producer, she is acutely aware of the impact that her stories can have on millions of viewers. By choosing to assign cultural specificity, Wendy adds an extra dimension to her characters and opens up the door for unexpected empathetic reactions from the audience. Through her writing, she hopes to move the needle on what is considered good entertainment, and introduce a more diverse and deeply human set of characters and plot lines to the small screen. I couldn't be more thrilled to welcome Wendy Calhoun to this week's episode of the Future of StoryTelling podcast.

Wendy Calhoun, it is such a delight to have you on the Future of StoryTelling podcast. Thank you for joining me today.

Wendy Calhoun:

Oh, it's my pleasure.

Charlie Melcher:

Wendy, you've been involved in writing for so many great shows on television and creating incredible characters. Tell me a little bit about your backstory. What's the origin story for Wendy Calhoun?

Wendy Calhoun:

Oh, my backstory. Well, I was born in Dallas, Texas lived there until I went to New York University, studied film and television. While I was in Dallas, I started writing plays when I was 16. That was really the beginning of this long journey that I've been on. Decided somewhere along that line that I wanted to be the head of a network. I don't know where that came from, but-

Charlie Melcher:

It's going to happen.

Wendy Calhoun:

Yes. That was the first dream. And so, I didn't know anyone in Hollywood. And I had heard though, that if you worked in development, you could maybe someday become the head of a network. So I cold called anyone working in development in Hollywood that was an NYU alumni. One of those people heard about a job opening at a place that at the time was called Triad Artists. They eventually merged with William Morris. I got a job there as an agent assistant. I got exposed to a lot of scripts. I had access, like crazy access. So it was amazing for somebody who didn't know anyone in Hollywood.

While normal people would take their two weeks vacation and go to Hawaii, I would take my two weeks vacation and put up a play. I couldn't turn it off. And sure enough, I got one call to go interview on a scripted show. I love to tell writers this story. I did everything you're not supposed to do. I came in, I think I just did not care. You're not supposed to pitch ideas when you go into those staffing meetings, you're supposed to not really try to tell them what you think their show should be. I did the opposite. I'm like, "You should do this and you should do that and you should do this." And sure enough, they hired me.

Charlie Melcher:

It worked.

Wendy Calhoun:

It worked.

Charlie Melcher:

What show was that?

Wendy Calhoun:

That was a show called Raines. And it stared Jeff Goldblum, and he was a cop who could imagine his victims. He would imagine them and have discussions with them. And that's how we would figure out who'd killed them. I wrote an episode that was set in the world of hip hop. This was long before Empire, and they pulled the plug on the show before we'd even aired. So the next show I did was Life. The next show I did was Justified. The second season of Justified, I came up with the idea for the character Mags that was played by Margo Martindale. And she won an Emmy for that. And then, I did Nashville and then Empire, Station 19. And then right now, I'm on Prodigal Son.

Charlie Melcher:

As they say, the rest is history. Well, I'm fascinated to hear that your first scripted episode was a cop one. I didn't realize that, but it sort of makes sense in a way, that you're so good at that.

Wendy Calhoun:

That was a really important choice that I made in my career. I was kind of a jack-of-all-trades. I was writing all different kinds of things, but I had yet to really hone in on something that I could become an expert at. That led to me starting to write specs and scripts about crime and law enforcement. And it's almost like the minute I made that switch, the minute I decided I would just focus in on that, things really started to take off, because I was very unique in being a black female writing law enforcement television. I tell writers all the time, if you're going to do television, make sure you've got at least one of the staples in the cabinet, right? And the staples are cops, lawyers, doctors. Get one of those because if you can do one of those well, you will always have a job.

Charlie Melcher:

Speaking about that being one of your expertise, how is that changing now? I mean, the world has just completely changed when it comes to our perception of law enforcement. How is that going to get reflected in your work?

Wendy Calhoun:

Wow, it's the challenge of my next piece, I'm sure of it. I'm excited in the sense that, Prodigal Son is a show... the cops that we feature on our show are of color. The lead is white, but the world he's in is more reflective of New York. It is multicolor. That was a draw for me, actually, to wanting to write on the show. Now, I can get into some subject matter that I've really, really wanted to get into. In the past, a lot of the culture around writing cop shows was so traditional, so based in patriarchy. So like not wanting to deal with the fact that the institution itself is built on white supremacy. So the timing of this is outstanding in terms of an opportunity to really dig in.

Charlie Melcher:

Right. I imagine you are often the only black woman in a writer's room, maybe the only woman in the room. And particularly on a cop show, what has that been like for you?

Wendy Calhoun:

It's been interesting. I like to use the example of Justified. I was the only black writer the first two seasons that I was on that show. I ended up writing an episode the second season that I'm still particularly proud of. We had guest stars in Larenz Tate and Chadwick Boseman, and really the episode was connected to Rachel Brooks's character. She was played by Erica Tazel and she's an African American Marshall, US Marshall on Raylan's team. This would have been now, I guess, about 10 years ago when this came out, 9, 10 years ago and the climax of the episode was, "don't shoot."

Charlie Melcher:

Boy, that goes against stereotype.

Wendy Calhoun:

Right? Exactly. I had push back. There were people who felt like that's not what the show is. And I'm like, well, that's what my episode is. And I'm proud of it. It was ahead of its time in that sense.

Charlie Melcher:

Yeah, no kidding. Your reach with these kinds of shows, popular television shows, you can really change cultural norms and perceptions. That's a great example, right? Like a cop show where the climax is, "don't pull the damn trigger." How do you think about this moving forward, or do you think about that when you write your shows? Are you thinking about the impact that you can have on that broader culture?

Wendy Calhoun:

When I'm first diving into it, I'm very aware of the themes of what I'm going to say and the fact that it's going to be amplified so much. Once I get past that layer, I have to go dig into the truth of the characters. So I think that that helps me. When I write, I call it chocolate cake. I write stuff that you watch because you need a chance to unwind. I think about people who are maybe in the hospital that are watching my shows. Honestly, I think about the woman who is raising her children, has worked all day, is folding the laundry, who doesn't know how she's going to pay her mortgage. I think about her when I write. And I'm like, I want to write something that gives her some joy, some relief—soapy, and sometimes sexy, and then sometimes action-y.

I just want her to have a good time. If you give me an hour, I'm going to give you a good time. The thing that's so cool about that, though, is that television is intimate. So all of a sudden now, I dig into the truth of my characters, because the more that I can humanize them, the more that I could make them seem less other, the more I think people find compassion for these characters and also for themselves. But I'm always just thinking about the one-to-one connection, because TV can do that in a beautiful way. It's a one-to-one that I'm always thinking about.

Charlie Melcher:

I love what you talk about in terms of finding the truth in the character. Often we're dealing with these tropes, these stereotypes, particularly in television, but in all forms of popular culture. And when you transcend that, it's by getting to something that's more complex and more authentic, more true. I'm wondering if you think that the opportunity now might be greater to bring in some more of that complexity given where things are in our culture, given people's response right now to police brutality and-

Wendy Calhoun:

Yeah, I absolutely think so. And so, I just find that to be very exciting because now I can actually start to have the conversation. What was happening to me, and this happened to me a lot in my career is I couldn't even get past the point where I could get them to listen. I couldn't even get to have the conversation. And now it's like, it's so in your face and it's global, that you can't deny it. You just can't deny it. And so that part is very, very, very helpful for me as a storyteller. And then TV. The thing I love about TV is that I love to subvert expectations. So like the piece I'm really digging in writing right now is all about I'm taking every one of those tropes, because I know you know them. You're going to show up to my show, your bags packed with tropes, and now I'm going to sit you down.

You're going to have a good time because first you're going to be like, oh yeah, she's reaffirming all my prejudices. Oh, yeah. That's exactly how I think that that person is. And then I'm having a blast because I just deconstruct it all, I just tear it all down. And you're going to see yourself reflected in that person. And you're going to have a hard time dealing with that prejudice the next time it shows up in your life because you will have gone through this journey. And then as a writer, that's what I'm having fun building right now. But I need the tropes. I need them, because like I can't deconstruct something that doesn't exist. And by the way, it's great for everyone because now we're going to get past the same old stories getting told again and again and again. It's time for some fresh stories. And a lot of that has to do with having black writers who have the agency to tell their story.

Charlie Melcher:

What do you think has been the major obstacle to that? Is it just institutionalized racism in the industry? Is it financial? Like what's your insight into why we've been so slow to get more people of color in control of their own narratives and telling these stories?

Wendy Calhoun:

There is definitely strong institutional racism in Hollywood. We know that to be true. That's not a new subject. Hollywood's always been this-

Charlie Melcher:

Insular.

Wendy Calhoun:

Insular, but very, very powerful in the sense that the images go everywhere. But very few people actually with that power, a small number of people running a little company town. The falling apart in many ways of Hollywood is it is this little provincial Hamlet. Really, my hometown, I'm just tearing it apart today.

But it's technology, technology changed so much. When I was at NYU, technology kept me from being able to tell stories because I couldn't afford the cameras and the equipment and stuff that you needed to tell it in a professional way. That's no longer there. Now, if I want to put something out in the world, literally I can do it on my phone. I carry worldwide distribution in my pocket, and that's a huge difference. That didn't exist. That didn't exist 25 years ago. That alone means that you're going to see more voices. But still, when you talk about the major distribution channels, they're being strangleholded by a group of people who are in power, that have been in power for a long time, who want to decide what stories get told.

Charlie Melcher:

Tell me about that campaign. You mentioned the "show us your writers' room."

Wendy Calhoun:

Oh, yeah. That's going on, actually, right now. Sometimes shame is a powerful weapon, especially in Hollywood, shame. Look at yourself. And we have to do that. Sometimes we have to call people out on things. That's a whole thing. "Show us your writers' room," so that people could see. We can see how many black writers are in the Orange is the New Black room. That came out. Oh, where are they?

Charlie Melcher:

Right. So there were none. Orange is the New Black, and there were none.

Wendy Calhoun:

Uh-uh (negative).

Charlie Melcher:

You're kidding me. That's insane.

Wendy Calhoun:

Yeah. So things like that started to really come out. It was so weird to me when I got my first staff writing job and I'm the only black person in the room, and that went on for like several years. Even at that time, people were sort of aware that they needed to have some diversity on screen. So there'd be one or two people of color in the cast. It's grown a lot more since then. But back then it was like one or two. And even then you could see all white, all male writing rooms. It was just odd.

Charlie Melcher:

My background is from the book publishing world. And when I was coming up, the starting salaries in book publishing were so low that you couldn't afford to do that as a career if you didn't have means. There used to be this kind of adage or joke that publishing was this place where wealthy people paid to have their daughters employed. It's changed some, but it's still, given that a lot of publishing centered in New York City, which is so expensive to live in, I think that that's somewhat true in Hollywood, too, right? A lot of the starting jobs, you have to like eat the hors d'oeuvres at the parties to be able to survive.

Wendy Calhoun:

And that's a huge problem for women and people of color who typically are not coming from families with means. They might be providers in their family. They just can't afford to take that job. And we see that happening again and again and again. And it's something that actually a lot of writers of color especially are taking up and talking about quite a bit. How can we start to build stipends for people who are going into those assistant jobs? Because the studios are not budging. They're really not being very helpful on this end, by the way, of raising that salary. We're coming together to talk about how we can close that gap because that's a huge issue for us. If you can't get the training and you can't seem to build your network, you're never going to make it.

Charlie Melcher:

We had Van Jones on the podcast recently, and that was a great joy and honor for me, because I consider him one of my personal heroes. And not on our podcast, but I heard him say recently just how frustrating and exhausting it can be for him to have to constantly help educate his even well meaning white friends on the experience of being black in America today. And how the responsibility has to be now, if you're going to live in this diverse country, you have to take on that responsibility of educating yourself.

Wendy Calhoun:

Yeah, I am not the maid and the nanny for your cultural exploration. You need to go take it for yourself, you know what I mean? And that's how it feels, like almost as if you owe somebody an explanation for your existence. You know what? Go figure it out. The supremacy issue is a human issue. And so, we have to start looking at it from that perspective. This is a human problem. It's a journey that each individual needs to take for themselves and you can't expect somebody else to hold their hand. It's one of those things. It's like, you can't learn it until you practice it and understand it and allow yourself to be a pioneer in it on your own. I don't know how else to put it. We're getting an education as well. People of color, we're definitely getting an education. Getting an education about how much our cousins actually don't know. And we kind of have to let them go. I'm like, "all right, you know what? I can't be your life jacket. Everybody's got to swim."

Charlie Melcher:

Wow. So many good topics here. So many important things that we're touching on. Just thinking right now about one of the conversations that we've been having at the Future of StoryTelling for the last couple of years, which was just figuring out how to support and elevate voices of people of color in the creative fields. At Future of StoryTeling, we focus a lot on some of the new forms, things like virtual reality and augmented reality and gaming and all of the different ways that people tell stories using new technologies these days. And those are also particularly wanting for people of color's voices to be heard and shared. The hope that some of these new, more immersive StoryTelling technologies and forms might potentially help create a bridging of understanding, create a little more empathy as you say, and help people to walk in somebody else's moccasins, to be able to experience the world a little bit from somebody else's view.

I ultimately very much believe that storytelling is one of the original tools to help us have empathy. Even just sitting around the fire, campfires is a way to help try to understand somebody else's experience. And it's one of the reasons why I so admire and appreciate your craft and the work you do to tell the kinds of stories that even though they might be geared towards that woman folding the laundry and just wanting to escape for that night, there's still all sorts of lessons and emotions that are being conveyed through them. So it's incredibly powerful tool or just great power that you wield as a storyteller in television.

Wendy Calhoun:

I'm happy to hear you say that. It makes me feel very purposeful in life. Although, I definitely try not to get into moralizing too much with my stories, but I do come with purpose and I do have a voice. For some people, maybe their first experience with things that they consider other is through virtual and through television. But I really hope that it inspires them to actually literally start to live their lives more open and start to really spend time in communities and with people who don't look like them.

Charlie Melcher:

Yeah, we definitely need storytellers to help us overcome the fear of others you say, but also just to help find that commonality, right? Just we need the stories that remind us of our shared humanity, as opposed to the stories that... Which by the way is the vast majority of everything we are is the same, but somehow the media, the politics, the times have all just overemphasized all of the difference. So it seems like that's all we can see.

Wendy Calhoun:

I just feel too, like this is all connected. The Me Too movement, all connected. The word that everyone keeps using is "reckoning." And it really is about taking a look at our own humanity and the abuses that we've been able to get by with and live with and not talk about, an impression that we've just sort of, for whatever reason, plowed through. And now we're at a point where we got to step back and really look at it in a way with our eyes open and our arms open and our hearts open. And what's so interesting, to talk about connected, would it have happened in the same way if we hadn't all been slowed down by this pandemic? I'm not sure. I just feel like all of these things are coming together in a particular time, in a particular way. And they are connected. I don't know whether I feel completely lucky to live through this time. That's not the right word, but I definitely feel alive.

Charlie Melcher:

Wendy, I think that your opportunity, I don't mean to put too much pressure on you. There's a need for a whole bunch of new kinds of stories to inspire us, stories about twisting those traditional tropes and helping us think completely different about law enforcement or helping us think completely different about kids in the inner city or like, we need to take those old stories that we know, that have so repeatedly been drilled into our heads, and create the new ones that give us the path to a future that is really joyful and respectful of each other. So godspeed, my friend.

Wendy Calhoun:

Thanks so much. This has been a real pleasure. And yeah, there's work to do for sure, but it's fun work. It's creative work for me, and it is an opportunity and I feel blessed to be able to be a part of it. I thank the universe that I'm here and can do this. Just keep showing up and keeping ladies folding their laundry happy.

Charlie Melcher:

Wendy, thank you. It's really such a joy to be with you. Sending you a big virtual hug.

Wendy Calhoun:

You too. You too. Take care.

Charlie Melcher:

I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. If you'd like to learn more about Wendy, please check out this episode's page on the FoST website by visiting fost.org or following the link in this episode's description.

Please note that we've recently made the decision to shift our podcast production schedule and will now be releasing episodes every other week, rather than weekly. So we'll look forward to seeing you again on Thursday, August 6th, with our next episode.

Thank you for being part of the Future of StoryTelling family. Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast, give us a review, and share it with others. I'd like to extend a big thank you to Wendy Calhoun and to our wonderful production partner, Charts & Leisure. I hope you'll join us in a couple of weeks for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe, be strong, and story on.