What was the biggest break in your TV career?
It seems as though many careers in TV are a series of smaller breaks, and mine is no different. But if I had to narrow it down, I’d say I’ve had two bigger “breaks” in my career. My first was in scripted television, and that was thanks to one of my best friends, who isn’t in the business, happening to know a 1–hour drama showrunner through a running group. (Random, I know. Seize your opportunities.) My friend gave the showrunner one of my spec scripts to read, and his wife saw it lying around the house and read it before her husband did; she told her husband that she really liked the script and that he should hire me. So the showrunner found money in the budget for a five-week internship in the story room for me. At the end of that internship, I asked if I could come back and do a directing internship on my own dime. The showrunner agreed, and I shadowed a noted TV director for three more weeks. A couple of years later, that director wound up as co-showrunner on a half-hour network comedy, where he convinced his showrunning partner to hire me as one of her writers for the season – and I finally got my first big break! (Relationships really matter in this biz.)
After I had six scripted series under my belt, the B.C. government changed the tax credits, and Canadian scripted production shrank dramatically in the province. And that’s when I received my second big break: a different scripted showrunner I’d worked for recommended me to a factual TV company that was hiring for a series. One brief coffee meeting later, the job was mine (relationships REALLY matter), and that gig has led to many other jobs in factual TV since then. (And those jobs have led to work in even more new areas: digital/web series, both scripted and factual!) Next up, hopefully: the break that gets me out of COVID unemployment!
What has been your greatest mistake in your career?
My first factual series was also my greatest mistake – because I took the job right when my wife and I had our first (and only) child. I drastically underestimated the demands of new parenthood – and couldn’t foresee that my wife and daughter would struggle with breastfeeding, forcing my wife to be connected to a mechanical breast pump for hours a day. So while I tried to work from home (long before COVID made it the norm), I also had to solo parent our infant for stretches of the day and night. I soon became overwhelmed by the double duty (and seriously sleep-deprived), and around the same time that I realized I couldn’t go on like this, the production company was reaching the same conclusion. We ended my contract several months short, and I really felt like I’d let them down. On the bright side, I wound up working for the same company years later, and the contract went beautifully. (Big takeaway: don’t burn your bridges. Careers are long.)
