First Draft Episode #196: Kirsten "Kiwi" Smith, Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer Transcript
Date: June 14, 2019
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Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith, Amy Andelson, and Emily Meyer are the team behind Trinkets, the Netflix TV series based on Kiwi’s young adult novel of the same name. Kiwi Smith is one half of the screenwriting team behind films like 10 Things I Hate About You, Legally Blonde, Ella Enchanted, and more, and the author of young adult novels The Geography of Girlhood, and Trinkets. Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer are the writing team behind films like Step Up 3D, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, and the young adult novel Layover, and they adapted Trinkets and are credited as co-creators of the TV show.
The original post for this episode can be found here.
Sarah Enni Hey friends, before we start the show today, I wanted to share some exciting news. First Draft with Sarah Enni is approaching its five year anniversary and its 200th episode. That's totally, totally nuts. I'm so excited about it. Reaching this milestone has me thinking about better ways to engage with listeners like you who have gotten the show where it is today.
That's why I'm excited to announce the upcoming First Draft Listener Club, a premium membership community where fans of the show will get audio extras like longer unabridged episodes of the First Draft Podcast, including the episode you're about to hear. Exclusive monthly newsletters where I will break down what I've learned about writing, and life, and podcasting from the last five years, and will become part of an interactive member community to connect with me, your host, Sarah Enni as well as with each other...like-minded weirdos. You can never get enough of that.
Creating a listener club will not only keep the lights on, it will ensure that First Draft can continue to grow and evolve. There are so many amazing new things and people and formats that I want to bring to the show and this will make that possible.
To learn more about the First Draft Listener Club, check out www.firstdraftpod.com or check out the show's Twitter or Instagram @FirstDraftPod. I will be sharing the link all over the web. Okay, now on with the show.
Sarah Enni Welcome to First Draft with me Sarah Enni. Today is a first for the podcast. I'm talking to three different people about a project they collaborated to create. Kirsten "Kiwi "Smith, Amy Andelson, and Emily Meyer are the team behind Trinkets , the Netflix TV series based on Kiwi's young adult novel of the same name. Every episode of Trinkets is now up at Netflix. It's so bingeable and so binge worthy, so please make sure to check it out after you're done listening to this episode. Kiwi Smith is one half of the screenwriting duo behind films like 10 Things I Hate About You, Legally Blonde, Ella Enchanted, and more. And she's the author of young adult novels, The Geography of Girlhood and Trinkets.
Sarah Enni Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer, who may be familiar to long term listeners of this show they've been on the podcast before, are the writing team behind films such as Step Up 3D, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, and the young adult novel Layover. This is such a fun and informative conversation. They really get into what it takes to adapt a book and to create a TV show. There was a ton that I learned from it. So I'm really excited to share. So please sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation.
Sarah Enni Okay. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for coming today.
Everyone Hello! Thanks for having us.
Sarah Enni So since we are four female voices on the same podcast, I would love for us to go around and introduce ourselves so we can tell the difference in our voices. Why don't we start with you, Kiwi?
Kiwi Smith Hello. I am Kirsten "Kiwi". You can call me Kiwi Smith. Hello, good morning..
Sarah Enni Do you mind giving just a little bio?
Kiwi Smith A bio of myself? I'm a screenwriter and I write a lot of female driven comedies. I've written a lot of comedies in the teenage space, such as 10 Things I hate about you, and She's The Man, The House Bunny and Legally Blonde. And I also write some YA novels, one of them is The Geography of Girlhood and the other is called Trinkets, which I would love to tell you more about today.
Sarah Enni Yes, we will definitely get into Trinkets for sure. Okay, Amy you're up.
Amy Andelson Hello, I am Amy Andelson one half of...
Emily Meyer The partnership with me Emily Meyer
Sarah Enni Oh, you got that down. You're coordinated.
Emily Meyer I was like, "How's she gonna do this on her own?
Amy Andelson Why I should be going first? I want to just be like, "What she said." So Emily and I have very similar bio because we have actually been best friends since eighth grade and because of that we have a serious case of arrested development and like to just live in that space forever.
Emily Meyer So we've been writing in the YA space for over 12 years now. In features we wrote some of the Step Up movies and then we have our own YA book Layover that came out last year and,
Kiwi Smith It's so good.
Emily Meyer And now we have a blurb from Kiwi. And now we are so happy about our latest endeavor, which was collaborating with Kiwi in creating Trinkets the TV show.
Amy Andelson Adapted from the novel of the same name.
Sarah Enni So listeners to First Draft might remember Amy and Emily from a previous episode where we talked a lot about Layover and to get bio's and more information on how you guys got to where you are now, everybody should go back and listen to that episode. It was a really, really fun one. So no disrespect, but we're gonna jump into Kiwi's bio and then just get right into Trinkets.
Amy And Emily Great! Do it!
Sarah Enni And when you guys mention fun stuff, we're gonna link to all of it in the show notes so that listeners can get in there and go down the Internet wormhole of the fun stuff that you guys have done. So, I typically start interviews with a little bit of background and bio. We already talked a little bit off mic about you living in a sailboat, but I would just love a little bit of going from... I think you were a kid that was interested in doing poetry and maybe even academia, and then ended up in films. So do you mind giving us a crash course on how you got to where you are now?
Kiwi Smith Sure. I guess I didn't really grow up with TV, so I was very focused on books and I'm an only child and so I was often alone and reading. My parents were both very good writers, even if they weren't writers professionally, so it must be a little genetic thing. But I got encouraged a lot through teachers in junior high and high school that I had some ability in this area. Miss Phillips, "I love you Sue Phillips!" And so I just was often writing poetry, as one does as a young high school writer. That was in the Pacific Northwest where I grew up in Washington State and Oregon. And then I moved to LA to go to Occidental College and my freshman year roommate gave some of my poems to one of her professors and he really sparked to it.
Kiwi Smith And so he brought me into his office and said, "You really need to be focusing on this." So I started presenting all my work to literary journals within school and also sending them out into the world. I kind of got really involved in poetry readings on campus and things like that. And going to school in Los Angeles, you hear a lot... I mean the proximity to Hollywood was intoxicating for me because when I was a teenager, I worked in a video store for four years. So I loved movies very deeply. So I started to get this idea that, "Oh, maybe I could try an internship. I could try to get into Hollywood and I could be a screenwriter by day and a poet by night" kind of thing.
Sarah Enni That's very romantic vision of life. I love that.
Emily Meyer A poetry super hero.
Kiwi Smith And then poetry has become harder and harder to do as I got so invested and engaged in making my way into a Hollywood screenwriting career.
Sarah Enni Yeah. I mean that's hard to balance.
Kiwi Smith I need to do more of it. I want to do more of it.
Sarah Enni I admire that you've kept it up but you had a book that came out, The Geography of Girlhood, that you said that was a book in verse I believe.
Kiwi Smith Yes.
Sarah Enni That's amazing.
Emily Meyer And Trinkets. All of Elodie's chapters in Trinkets are...
Kiwi Smith In verse, yeah. And the YA novel in verse was a really interesting thing that kind of lightly exploded in the mid-two thousands in the publishing industry. And it was an incredible opportunity for me to try to achieve a dream that I'd had of publishing a book of poetry, which is hard to do if you're not in an MFA community. So I got to turn a lot of my poems that I'd written in college, and after, and thread them into this narrative for the first novel Geography. And then I just found it such an easy and inspiring way to write, that when I took a crack at the second book, I knew that I wanted to have one of the narrators write her point of view in verse. And I also felt that maybe that would help differentiate on the page. Like you have one character in verse, and you have another character writing in third-person, and you have another character writing in a journal first-person style.
Kiwi Smith I'm sorry. Not third-person. Prose first person, poetry first-person and then journalistic kind of more down and dirty.
Sarah Enni Yeah, the [stumbles over a word]. What's that called? Where it's like a written letter form. I'm gonna think of that later and kick myself.
Kiwi Smith Epistolary novels.
Sarah Enni There you go! Yes, epistolary. It's so hard to differentiate voices so I feel any kind of methodology you can put to it. So let's talk about the decision to write Trinkets. You just gave your resume, which is a list of my favorite movies from the last 15 years or so. So you were having a lot of success in screenwriting. I love that you were still engaged and interested in books. I mean you ladies too were like always thinking about that on the side. What was the pull to engage with publishing? It's a whole different world.
Kiwi Smith I think I had met a young adult agent through my travels and I think he just approached me to say like, "Would you ever consider writing a YA book?" And then he started telling me about this girl he was dating named Jen. And I said, "Oh, I wrote a poem about the Jennys." About types of women who are named Jennifer or Jenny or Jen and he's like, "I'd like to read that." So I sent him that and he's like, "This is very good and do you have more poems?" And I was like, "Yes, I have bushels." So I sent him a number of poems and then he said, "I think we can turn this into a novel. We can turn it into a partial manuscript and then you could do 30 poems or so and then we could present that to the marketplace and sell it." And he did just that. So it led to then Little Brown bought it and then they very generously wanted me to write a second book, which I know y'all are going through writing your second book now.
Emily Meyer It's its own process.
Kiwi Smith It is, well it's a great forced deadline.
Emily Meyer So is Sarah.
Sarah Enni Second book syndrome is a trademarked issue.
Kiwi Smith Writing the novel in verse was really like, "Wow, this is so... I'm finally achieving this dream." And then the second book was like, "Oh, I have to write a book now for real. I can't just turn some, I don't have a basis for anything." But in fact, I really did because there'd been a story that I'd wanted to tell for years and years that I was thinking about it as a movie about three girls who meet. It was more like people who meet in Shoplifters Anonymous. That Breakfast Club feeling of like, "These people are all flawed, and they end up in this program, and then they end up having a secret friendship that is quite powerful." So I pitched that in a few other ideas to the publisher and she really cottoned to this idea of Trinkets.
Kiwi Smith And particularly the idea was to focus it on three teenage female characters since we're talking about YA. So then it was really on me. Then this idea that I'd been saying was one of my favorite ideas, that I always wanted to write, you know? And then I had to do it. And it took a long time. Longer than the first book did because I was juggling a lot of other screenwriting projects at the time. And it's a slim novel. So it took much longer to write, like five years for me to write it or something crazy. Something crazy where my manager at the time was like, "You have to just, you gotta just do this."
Sarah Enni Like go to the cabin in the woods.
Kiwi Smith Yeah. There were many cabins in many woods.
Sarah Enni Just a little bit about the book. You did a great job of describing it, so I feel like listeners can get what it's about. But what were you able to explore with just straight prose that you hadn't necessarily been able to do as screenwriting or poetry? How did it feel to experiment with that type of writing?
Kiwi Smith Well, I felt much more accountable to being a storyteller. You know? Writing a novel feels different energetically than writing a screenplay. And like Amy and Emily, I write in collaboration on my screenplays. In screenwriting, Karen and I have that feeling of always bouncing off of each other. In a novel there's just more ground to cover. There's more pages. There's more demand for description and painting the scenes in great detail, which we've kind of been trained as screenwriters to not do. So, less is not more in a novel.
Sarah Enni More is more in a novel.
Kiwi Smith And less is not more in poetry, it's always about succinctness. And so I think writing the Tabitha prose pages, her point of view is in prose, those were the scariest for me because I was really writing a novel in those sections.
Kiwi Smith The Elodie sections felt really comfortable. And the Moe sections did too cause those are more like portraits. But for Tabitha, she's got a lot of... you know? I don't know if that makes sense. So I thought that was probably why it took me so long.
Sarah Enni Was it fun?
Kiwi Smith Yeah, it was really fun. It was fun! When you're writing it's always fun. It's when you're not writing and thinking that you need to be writing...
Sarah Enni Is not fun.
Kiwi Smith Yeah. My friend always says like, "You know, nothing makes you feel as bad as when you're not writing. And nothing makes you feel as good as when you are. So just don't go to the thing that's making you feel bad, which is the procrastination. Go to the thing that you know is gonna make you feel like, Yeah! I got it done today!"
Sarah Enni Someone I was talking to was saying like, "At some point the procrastination needle is like... at some point not writing feels worse than writing." And that's when you're like, "Okay, I'll finally do those things."
Kiwi Smith It weirdly feels like addictive behavior. It feels like doing something you know is bad for you. Like that is procrastinating, not writing, it's addictive and it's gross.
Sarah Enni Do you guys relate to how she's describing turning to prose after having to be so succinct for so long?
Emily Meyer Yeah. I think at first when we were writing Layover, there was something so freeing about it. Just because we've all been in this world for so long where you're just trying to keep everything so tight on a page. But then that also has its drawbacks too because you're like, "Alright, this could go on forever."
Amy Andelson I think we're learning how to slow down and dig deeper. And that's the big challenge of our second book is how do you get away from the constant pull for pace and story and really just settle into it. It's been a continuous challenge for us.
Sarah Enni It's interesting. That's such a good point. Cause I feel like some of what I find to be such a relief about writing the pilot that I'm writing right now, is I'm like, "Oh my gosh, there's so many limits. It feels so nice." And there are limits in books, but you have to define them for yourself and define them really differently. And honestly you get so much freedom. Editors are like, "Take my note or don't." And I'm like, "Ahh!" That's really hard actually. So I can imagine coming from a very structured environment, it's kind of like, What? Where are we? How can we pull ourselves back?" Okay, I want to...
Kiwi Smith Do you think you'd write another novel? Amy and Emily? After this?
Emily Meyer Oh after this?
Amy Andelson If we ever make it to the other side.
Kiwi Smith I wonder though too, cause we both started in the same way where it's like, "Okay we sold this book that we're really proud of and now we have an obligation to write another book, which we're gonna make the best of and something great could come of it." Something great came of Trinkets. And it goes on and it has this whole other life. But then people often ask me, "Oh, are you gonna write another novel?"
Emily Meyer I want to think we will.
Amy Andelson I would want to do it without a ticking clock, which is that fantasy of what it means to be a writer where you're like, "I'm gonna go to that cabin in the woods and really do it." But if you've a gun to your head and you're like, "Ah, I gotta get this done, I gotta get this done." It's really hard to feel creative.
Kiwi Smith I think I'd actually like to write my third novel with a gun to my head. With an actual gun to my head. I haven't tried that trick on myself and I think that could work great.
Sarah Enni I think a lot of people, just in the book world, are doing a lot more of what you guys are talking about. Just not moving forward on anything, until they have a full draft and maybe even an edited draft because writing on deadline is so hard for novels. A novel is so hard to know... What's it gonna take out of you? How long are you really gonna be doing this?
Kiwi Smith I welcomed both deadlines. I mean, the partial manuscript that I sold, I welcomed the fact that I was gonna be held accountable to finish this and have deadlines to do so. But yeah, also, I think maybe partial manuscripts, fiction partial manuscripts, are less common now than they were in the two-thousands when you could actually sell something that's only 30 pages.
Sarah Enni I mean, for someone like you, you could always do that. When you have a background in film and TV, I think that they are like, "Oh, this person has a platform and knows what they're doing." But if you're just a writer, just writing novels full time, they're a little bit more like, "But show us that you can finish this." At least for a first novel. And increasingly, I think for novels going forward, they're kind of like, "We want to know that you're gonna be able to write the end at some point." Which is probably better for everybody.
Kiwi Smith I mean, one thing I really enjoyed about it was I could be more autobiographical and write about places where I grew up. And Trinkets was written in a town... Lake Oswego, Oregon. It was set there were. And I lived there for four years as a pretty young girl, but I'd always wanted to set a story there, and I always thought about it and kind of romanticized it in my mind. And so it's been really a cool thing to be able to then, you know, the show is set there and then we were actually able to shoot it there.
Sarah Enni Really? Oh, that's so cool.
Kiwi Smith Which is pretty cool.
Sarah Enni That's fun. The Pacific Northwest has a very distinct visual aesthetic. I mean, I loved that 10 Things was in Tacoma cause that's where my family all is.
Kiwi Smith Oh wow!
Sarah Enni Yeah, yeah, yeah. They didn't go to Stadium High School, but they went to the rival high school. So I would like go go to that football stadium and be like, "Here's where it is!" So I love evoking place in writing and prose, you get to kind of indulge in some of that, which is really fun. That atmosphere.
Kiwi Smith That was a big fight to get the movie shot there. It was set, 10 Things just as an aside, the script was set in Portland, but then they found this great high school, Stadium High in Tacoma, and it seemed like that was enough. At least it was a carry over. It was a Pacific Northwest place and there was this beautiful school and it justified the expense of shooting there. But I think it was so worth it. And the same with Trinkets. I mean we just continued to press and press and stay committed to this notion of like, "Can't we... we have to be able to shoot it in Portland? Please, please, please let us shoot it in Portland."
Emily Meyer You can sometimes have fake Toronto for like... And we were like, "No we just want it to be in Portland.
Kiwi Smith We wanted it to be in Portland and also because we... And then, oh my gosh, do you remember the day that we found out that we got to shoot it in Portland?
Amy Andelson We squealed. It was embarrassing.
Emily Meyer It was a full jump up and down.
Amy Andelson But I think it adds so much to the show and sort of externalizes a lot of their internal angst and moodiness and so many of the feelings that are so...
Emily Meyer Yeah, especially cause we have one of the main characters moving from New Mexico, and so when she is coming from this place where there's so much sun and it's dry. And then it's damp and gray and wet all the time. And it just kind of is exactly how she's feeling inside.
Sarah Enni And there's something to like... it brings an authenticity, right? Which is the thing with teen stories that is so important to honor.
Amy Andelson The authenticity, the texture.
Emily Meyer We shot actually all on location too, which was really...
Kiwi Smith No sets whatsoever.
Emily Meyer Which was really nice to just feel like everything was just... real life. I think that adds a lot.
Amy Andelson It's a nice antidote to the glossy Riverdale's, which are great and we love them and we watch all those shows too. But I think there's an authenticity, as you say, that I think we hope rings true on an emotional level as well for the show. That is reminiscent of a lot of the things that we grew up loving like My So-Called Life and some of the greats.
Sarah Enni Well let's talk about how we got to the Netflix show. So you have your book come out. So exciting. And you actually mentioned that you conceived of it maybe in the past as a film idea. So how does adapting it come about and how does adapting it to a TV series come about?
Kiwi Smith Well, it comes about in a way that I talked about collaboration before. And one thing that was really important was finding someone to adapt it and collaborate with. Someone that I really connected with. Because after going through writing it as a book, I felt like I didn't know if I wanted to go and adapt my own book. I wanted input and voices and I probably didn't want to be back alone in the house in the wherever it is?
Everyone A cabin in the woods
Kiwi Smith So I thought, "I would love to have a collaborator." And then I had set it up briefly at MTV and then the option lapsed on that. And then I met this executive at Awesomeness and she was a really big fan of the book. And so I told her that I would love to partner with some writers and then we had just a very short conversation about it. And then serendipitously I met these wonderful women through our mutual friend Alex Israel, who was doing a film project that I was helping him produce. And you guys came to a screening or how did we all? We all came together to kind of just like maybe write some voices...
Emily Meyer Yeah, we all ended up in your living room.
Kiwi Smith Yeah, yeah. We ended up in my living and we were gonna write some voiceover to help bring the story together a little bit as we were in our final editing. And Alex is like, "Oh, you're gonna love these writers. They wrote Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List. And I was like, "Wait. I know these writers. Didn't they write What a Boy Wants script with Selena Gomez? I read that script, I loved that script." And so he'd been telling me about you guys for a long time like, "My friends, my friends!" And I was like, "When am I gonna meet these friends?" And then I did and then they came over and...
Emily Meyer We fell in love
Kiwi Smith We did! We fell in love instantly.
Amy Andelson It was a girl crush moment.
Kiwi Smith It was fabulous. And then we started working together on that just really casually, but also kind of intensely, I felt like. We were just collaborating immediately and it was great. And so then when your name came up at Awesomeness they were like, "Oh we love them too!" And so it was this perfect fit. And then Amy and Emily came in to talk to the execs and I and you just had the perfect things to say about the book, what you connected with personally. Great ideas for the structure. I was like, "I feel it. I feel it as a show now. I'm not alone in the woods anymore!"
Sarah Enni I have a question about that. You get the book Trinkets and you read it. How do you two together as a team then say like... and this is just coming from, I don't know how the process works and I'm not sure that everyone listening to this does either. So how do you break down like, "This is how we see it. This is how we want to like portray it." Did you always see it as a show? Lead me through that process.
Emily Meyer Yeah, it was presented to us as a TV show. But also what is so exciting about the world we live in now is that ideas that maybe five years ago were maybe more like a feature idea, now it's, "How do we see this in 10 episodes?" And, "How do we this as a series? And I think for us, what's so exciting about something like this when you're developing a friendship among these three girls, it's like you wouldn't want it to end at the end of a movie anyway. So we get to think of it as, "How are we creating this world and this drama for these three girls? But how also how can it live on forever?"
Kiwi Smith Yeah, and I found it also really kind of a neat thing that it's about a trio, and then we became this trio and we really did. We really worked so hard together on all the phases of the process. I think once you turned in your second outline for it, it felt like at that, or maybe it was after the first draft of the script, there were a few steps, but it felt like we just got to dive in and really work on it together. It was really great. So they wrote a couple of outlines and then they wrote a draft of the first episode and we got to work on that together. And then it turned out so well that initially Awesomeness was thinking like, "Oh, this will just be a micro budget, teeny tiny little show...
Amy Andelson On their platform.
Kiwi Smith Yeah, they put it on their platform with... we make the whole thing for a hundred grand or something like that. I don't know. But they loved it so much, and we were right at this turning point where they were excited to sell things to Netflix, to Hulu, to big streamers. And so they said, "We really want to take some bigger swings with this show. We see a lot of potential. We're very proud of it." And so then we set out to develop the real full series arc, which Amy and Emily had already had a lot of great touchstones in there. But this was a whole other thing that we all learned to do together. Which was pitching something to people when they've already read the pilot episode and now they would like to hear how the rest of the show will play out. And the work of creating that document was a lot of very intense work. It felt like it took almost as long as writing the pilot.
Emily Meyer No, it was extensive.
Amy Andelson But it's funny because a lot of the things that we all came up with for the sake of that pitch, and selling the show, actually ended up as part of the first season. Which I don't know how often that really does happen once you get the full team in place in a writer's room.
Kiwi Smith Oh right, cause some really experienced TV writers will say like, "Just don't worry about it. Just go in, act like you know what you're talking about. Wing it and then it's all gonna change anyway." But in our case it didn't really change. Like we stuck to our guiding lights. I mean I guess we should have because we worked on it for so long we had the book to come from. So we knew that there were things that were good ideas that shouldn't be thrown away.
Sarah Enni Yeah. Which is great. It's always great when your hard work sticks around.
Emily Meyer And then it was just one of those crazy things. Cause then once Netflix bought the pilot and the show, then we were hitting the ground running
Amy Andelson Straight to series order.
Emily Meyer So then you just are writing. We set up our writer's room and then we had...
Everyone She's like slow down, slow down!
Sarah Enni I'd love to hear about what it was like to talk... and just from the outside, I love that you're doing this with Netflix because they feel like they are really getting the teen stories right now, they're putting out such fun YA stuff. So what was it like talking to them about collaborating with them, and having them come on board? And then how did you move forward with actually constructing the room and the show?
Kiwi Smith We had about three meetings with Netflix. And the first meeting was, we walk them through some visuals that the execs had presented. I think we'd thrown in some things ourselves. We had what was called a "leave behind" meeting. It was designed to be a 15-minute meeting. So we would show visuals, we would talk very lightly about the characters, the concept of the characters, and some little hints of what was to come. And then leave them the pilot script and say goodbye. So we did that and I remember that meeting was on the ground floor of Netflix. Then we had a second meeting, which I think was on a slightly higher floor of Netflix and I think that they'd already read the script or something. And then we were invited back to have a third meeting and that was really up high. That was like the 10th floor maybe and it was in a big conference room.
Sarah Enni Once you get to that rooftop, "We've made it!"
Kiwi Smith And then we gave our full pitch. These ladies delivered a fantastic full pitch of the characters, and of the arcs in the series, and the relationships and the triangles and the dynamics with the parents. And that was a document that we worked pretty aggressively on. There were many notes calls with the studio on it. There was lots of back and forth with us. There were practice pitches. There were quite a few things. So we walked out of that meeting and our executive, I remember saying, "This is one of those moments where I'm just happy I'm in this horrible, horrible business. [Everyone laughs]. It's one of those bright spots, you know? I feel good!" I was like, "It's a horrible business? Really?"
Sarah Enni So you felt like they were picking up what you're putting down?
Emily Meyer They seemed super supportive. But it's always hard to tell because we've all been in meetings where you think it's really going great and then you get a call from your agent and they're like, "It's a pass." But it really did feel very special and we felt really connected to our execs at Netflix. Who have now since just been nothing but supportive.
Amy Andelson They really understood what we were trying to do and they never tried to make it something that it wasn't, which is really rare, I feel like.
Emily Meyer Yeah, if you sell something. They're like, "Great, great, we want this, but just like add vampires." You know? Or, "Just change the whole thing." And that was really never the case at all with this. They always really protected it.
Amy Andelson And gave us a lot of autonomy, I think. Especially, Emily and I don't have a lot of experience in TV. Kiwi has an incredible resume.
Kiwi Smith I have like a nano second in TV.
Amy Andelson This is kind of new for all of us and to some extent, and I think that they really did trust us to deliver the vision we all had.
Kiwi Smith And going back to that meeting, which was the great big meeting, I remember Cole said, who was one of our Netflix execs, had come in and he's like, "So I've read the book and I've re-read the pilot and I just love this and I can't wait to hear everything that you're about to tell me." We knew that once we made it up to that ninth floor, or whatever, it felt like we were in a very warm room as they say. There were quite a few questions, maybe six or seven questions after, but you guys did a great job answering those questions and there was just liveliness and lot of hugging. And our executive who probably is more experienced at reading a room because as a writer you're just so busy talking. And you don't know. I still ask my friends who are writers, "How'd it go?" The way that our agents and managers ask us. In a way the writer is the last person in the world to know the answer.
Sarah Enni Right, well you are all outward energy, right? You're all happy and uplifted. So then when you leave you're just like, "What happened?".
Kiwi Smith Yeah, that was a great moment. And then it took awhile for our deal to go through. So then we became slightly more depressed and sad as each day passed until finally...
Amy Andelson We got the call.
Kiwi Smith Yes.
Amy Andelson But I think that is a funny difference between being a novelist and being a screenwriter is that really as a novelist, your work speaks for itself. You can send your pages to New York from wherever and you can come back with yes or no or notes or whatever. But so much of this job, to our constant surprise, and disappointment...
Emily Meyer Dismay.
Amy Andelson Because we're so introverted and like to be home in our sweats is really about being in the room and selling and pitching. And it's a totally different part of the job and it's a huge part of the job.
Emily Meyer And a counterintuitive skillset for writer.
Sarah Enni Completely. Oh yeah. And like explaining a poem, right? It's not the easiest thing to do. So once you get the green light, I love that you guys had this instant kinship and connection to the story. Then you get the opportunity to open it up to even more voices and more people to bring it to light. How many people were you talking about? And how did you put a room together that you felt really comfortable with?
Emily Meyer So we had a pretty small writer's room. There were us and then about four other writers. So it was just really important for us to find people who really care about telling high school stories, which isn't everyone. It's something we're obviously endlessly passionate about, so finding people who just wanted to really be in that space.
Sarah Enni And I can imagine... well this is me speaking I guess, but it's sort of about telling a truthful high school story. It's like don't think about telling a story to a teenager. Think about being that teenager and coming from that place, which really is different.
Amy Andelson And also it was really important to us, and continues to be really important to us, to find diverse voices to be in that room. Emily and I have one shared high-of-mind brain set of experiences. And in trying to tell an authentic teen story, sharing the writers space with people who are able to really write to experiences that are different from our own, and reflect some of the things that the characters are going through in their unique experiences, was really important. And that's one of the great things about television, and expanding that collaboration as a writer, is you get to tell more truths than just your own.
Kiwi Smith I will also say, this is going back to your comment about the pitching process and how that's such a big part of the job, is how it was really exciting for me to watch you guys grow through that process. You always have been fantastic pitchers. But by the time you we were on like our episode 10 Netflix call or a final marketing meeting at Netflix, you are so in your power and so strong because you just had built all this, all this experience in a very short amount of time. And I feel like now you can walk into any room knowing like, "Alright, I've pitched 10 episodes of television, five different times. I've had to lead production meetings. I've had to go into huge rooms of 50 people and talk about what the story means." And so you're very impressive women. Look at what you've done.
Emily Meyer Well, we've had the support of each other, which has really been amazing. And you're kind of thrown into the deep end with a project like this, which is amazing, but also so scary. But now you can then look and be like, "Oh my God, yeah!" You get a notes call in the morning and they say, "Oh no, you have to totally restructure this episode." And you just have to do it really quickly.
Amy Andelson The pace of TV is so different than, you know, writing features or writing books for sure. And it's a great muscle if nothing else. It's a great exercise in working that muscle. I mean everyone says it, but it's so true. It's really...
Emily Meyer It's unrelenting.
Sarah Enni I'd love to actually hear about that. About as writers, almost everyone listening to this podcast is a writer and so we love to talk about process and how it changes. But that was like all of a sudden, a lot of demand on your creative brains day in and day out. What was the transition to that like? And also, I'm not sure exactly Kiwi, how much were you involved? How much were you jumping in and out? How was the collaborative element while this was being written and produced?
Kiwi Smith I was there for the first month. Our timeline was such that we were hiring our staff writers a lot during that month. So we were kind of breaking little pockets of story and then hiring writers. So I felt like we did a lot of meetings together, and then we had that foundation of that document that we made of the season arc. And that, while it was by no means highly flushed out, we had a paragraph or a few lines about where each episode would be. We still had that as a foundation and we still came up with a lot of things in that month that stuck in terms of the structure somewhat.
Emily Meyer What's really amazing is I feel like we always had the same vision for the show. Kiwi was really involved in as we got drafts, and scripts, and outlines. And, and we were never...
Kiwi Smith "Oh I'd love to get a draft. I'd love to give my thoughts and feedback" The way I'd give my thoughts and feedback with Amy and Emily is I just put it in revision mode and type alts and strike outs and pitches and put it in there.
Amy Andelson She's so good and so quick but so honest.
Kiwi Smith I did that to our show runner the first time and she was not as open.
Sarah Enni Got it. Loved that they were bringing in new voices, right?
Kiwi Smith And I was like, "Oh. We work in our own way."
Amy Andelson But because we always had the same vision for the show it made it easy to have a shorthand. You know, going through the process with everyone else cause we were always able to be very united.
Sarah Enni That means a lot too when you're working in literally any environment to know that the people you're with, especially the people that have power in that moment, have your back. If something goes awry that you can know that someone has your back and you'll get through it together. That makes all the difference in the world.
Kiwi Smith And it was also really lovely. Sometimes I would come back into the room for, I co-wrote two episodes, and so I would come back into the room to talk about those as much as I could. And there was one time when Emily had a copy of Trinkets, the book, and she's like, "Well in this scene we were thinking that she says," and then she proceeds to read one of Elodie's poems.
Amy Andelson Probably from memory.
Kiwi Smith And so then like, "Here we want to put that in this episode and in the finale." And I was just like, "Oh you guys remember the book better than I do and you're still carrying around the dog-eared copy of the book." And it just really meant so much to me to have you continue to honor it and make it a fabric of the show.
Sarah Enni Yeah, that's incredible. I was gonna say, it must be like... you created this thing and now it's like a kid. It's growing and becoming this whole other world. It's like a top, you set it and off it goes.
Kiwi Smith She's evolving beautifully. I'm very proud of her.
Sarah Enni So then you get the chance to write it, break out the whole season, film on location. That's so cool.
Kiwi Smith And we cast it too. That was a really big part of our process.
Sarah Enni I'd love to hear about that.
Kiwi Smith We cast a very wide swath. John McAlary, our casting director, said he saw like 6,000.
Emily Meyer It was insane. We watched a lot of auditions.
Kiwi Smith The actors for all the key roles.
Sarah Enni Three high schools walking through one by one.
Emily Meyer But we really feel so lucky to have the cast that we have and they just were really magical and they've become friends, such close friends, in real life and that chemistry is just it's own special thing.
Kiwi Smith It's a really nice balance of experienced and our newest actor, Quintessa Swindell plays Tabitha, and they are just a stunning, stunning performer. And then we have, Brianna Hildebrand is our most experienced actor and she was in Deadpool Two and she's so good. And Kiana Madeira plays Moe and she's like our comedy firecracker. She's fantastic. And we have a great group of guys too playing Brady and Noah and...
Emily Meyer And Luka.
Amy Andelson New comer Luka.
Kiwi Smith Yeah, we have two new characters that we made that are not from the novel, Luka and Sabine. So they will be introduced to you in the show.
Amy Andelson Tune in.
Sarah Enni Also, I know you guys have written for movies and I think you've been on set writing while things are happening, but this experience of knowing who was gonna say these words, how did that factor in? Or how did you think about that?
Emily Meyer Well, a lot was written even before we had cast the show, but then it really did help once we had our cast and we were seeing them in action. And then you could say think like, "Oh well maybe...
Amy Andelson "Play to the strengths.".
Emily Meyer Yeah, "Let's play to people's strengths." And they do just bring so much to the role that is unexpected. And so then that's its own discovery too for us. It progresses.
Kiwi Smith I mean I found I was always looking at their Instagrams and just wanting to get to know, because I wasn't in Portland for the filming as much as Emily was. I mean I was there for like a moment, but I saw this video of Brianna singing on her Instagram and so that seemed like a really fun thing for her to maybe get to do on the show.
Sarah Enni I love that. And speaking of authenticity, right? And that question is just coming from a place of being wildly jealous. I would love to have somebody just fully flush out a voice and then be able to be like, "Oh!" When you're revising it you're like, "Oh, I can hear their cadence." It is so hard to keep all the voices separate. So when you have avatars for it, that'd be awesome. I do actually want to press you on the part of what was it like to transition to being in a room for hours every single day? Writing all the time.
Amy Andelson So hard.
Sarah Enni How did you come up to speed there? How did you transition?
Emily Meyer It's definitely a very different rhythm. You're just sitting around a table all day.
Amy Andelson Staring at these people.
Emily Meyer Wondering what's for lunch.
Amy Andelson You end up eating a lot of snacks cause it's like your only chance to get up.
Emily Meyer Yeah, it's definitely... we're used to collaborating, obviously, together most days, but it is just a different thing where it's five days a week, very set hours. And also for us, we were also managing a lot of production stuff that was going on. Whether it was hiring directors, or costumes, or just a lot of other stuff going on.
Kiwi Smith A lot of meetings you were having.
Emily Meyer Yeah. So it was a lot of back and forth and switching gears.
Kiwi Smith And you're used to working out of homes.
Amy Andelson Right. And we'd take a lot of walks. There's different things. Everyone has their little tricks to get in their creative zone. We tend to waste a lot of time and then have like big spurts of productivity, but you feel compelled to have a different sort of...
Emily Meyer Rhythm. But it is also then just so interesting to be in a room with other people where in some ways it keeps you honest you know? You're forced to be a little bit more accountable and just getting to hear other people's totally different ideas, or ways into a story, that wouldn't have occurred to us at all.
Kiwi Smith It's so magic. Like, "Oh my gosh, you just solved our huge problem.".
Emily Meyer Exactly, exactly. "What would we have done without you?".
Amy Andelson And really getting to eventually you get to cast your Dream Team, you know? "What are our weaknesses? And let's populate the room with people who are really good at that." You really get to kind of create this super voice, which is so fun. And it's been like such a tremendous education. It's just been crazy to see the whole process and have this really privileged view of it that I think a lot of writers don't get to sit on set and see... a lot of screenwriters. You can have an amazing career and you don't get to be on set and see them make it. You don't get to be in the editing room and a part of all the steps that really make something. And we feel really fortunate to have this education.
Kiwi Smith And you don't have a say in the music and the music supervisor. And that was something that we really wanted to thread into the show is music, and the character's love of music, and that creating a tone for the soundtrack and a feeling for the show. And we were just really extra proud of all the music that's in the show too. And those songs were, it was quite... we had opinions and occasionally we would have a couple different opinions, but for the most part it was like we were listening to every single clip for every single background moment. And I think what did Maggie, our music supervisor, said there's how many songs?
Emily Meyer I think it was like a hundred songs or something.
Kiwi Smith There's more, more than a hundred.
Amy Andelson And then we got really lucky when you talk about casting, and what actors come in and add. With Kat, she's the actor who plays Sabine, is a performer. And so some of her songs are featured in the show.
Sarah Enni Oh, that's so cool!
Emily Meyer Isn't that amazing!
Sarah Enni That's awesome. Cause yeah, you guys were executive producers on it. That's a whole other level. That's a lot. That means that's your stamp on it. All the way through.
Kiwi Smith Yes. In TV executive producer means that's your stamp. And if you're an executive producer on a feature, it means you've done like a couple of things.
Kiwi Smith For House Bunny exec producer means, well I guess we packaged it, we made it with Anna. But then you don't have to really have responsibility. But executive producer in TV means like, "You're on the hook."
Sarah Enni I feel like, so Amy and Emily were having this sort of year of experience, where your brain gets stretchmarks type of year. But what was it like for you to oversee all this process after being in film?
Kiwi Smith Oh my God, I probably was supposed to release gracefully, which was what my contract provided.
Amy Andelson And we're so glad she didn't.
Kiwi Smith But I could not let go.
Emily Meyer But it wouldn't be possible. When you have someone as passionate as Kiwi, things don't happen. And that's something we've learned too. It's amazing. When Kiwi has goals or things and she has these visions and Amy and I could be like, that's insane. And then Kiwi, like can make things happen in a way that's really amazing to be around.
Amy Andelson But it's true. Her relentless passion really has protected the vision in ways that, especially for someone who has the resume you have, you would think, "Oh, at certain point you're jaded or you'd let that decision go." But no piece of it is too small to let go because it all matters so much to you. And I think that that's why the show is so special and why everything you do is great because you put 110% into everything and that's been something that Emily and I have definitely admired about her and learned so much from her.
Kiwi Smith Thank you, that's so sweet.
Emily Meyer No we're all crying.
Kiwi Smith I'm very moved by that. Thank you. Thank you for saying that cause I'm glad it wasn't like a terrible annoyance. I mean maybe sometimes, I can remember the times, but I apologized after.
Sarah Enni I think it must have been heartening for you guys to know like you're translating, someone's... You guys know what it's like to write a book and have a book be out in the world, and translating someone else's book, knowing that you have their blessing, or their impact, or they still care all along the way. That's a big deal. And you don't always get that.
Kiwi Smith You nailed it. Well, and all the things that you brought from your life, from your experience. All your witty comedy, all your heartfelt instincts, all your stories. It created this perfect blend of our show that we made together.
Sarah Enni A Voltron of love. So let's talk about post post-production. It's about to come out. What is the potential for Trinkets to go on? What else are you working on? Just give me a snapshot.
Kiwi Smith We're both writing feature scripts that we really need to buckle down on. That's why I was up quite last night.
Sarah Enni Kiwi are you co-writing again?
Kiwi Smith I am co-writing with Karen, my long time partner. We are writing a comedy called Party Girls, about a group of 70-plus-year-old ladies who rediscover the party in Tulum.
Sarah Enni Love it, that's amazing. What was it like to have overseen this process and then to kind of go back into co-writing with your longtime writing partner?
Kiwi Smith Well I was co-writing with her while we were going through the process of Trinkets.
Emily Meyer Kiwi doesn't sleep much.
Kiwi Smith Which was, yeah. I was also writing a pilot with my boyfriend at the time too. So there was a lot of... and I think I was writing a graphic novel maybe? Or something.
Emily Meyer I think you were.
Kiwi Smith But this is why partners are great because then they can help you and then they can get really, really pissed off at you when you were working on Trinkets.
Sarah Enni I'm just curious if there was anything you learned along the way in this process that you think you might bring now going forward?
Kiwi Smith Mainly what I've learned is that if I write an email at three in the morning, I will not send it. I will try to stop myself from sending it and then I will send it in the morning.
Emily Meyer We really appreciate that.
Kiwi Smith I'm not saying that I will always have that. I want to get that right. There's gonna be a couple of stumbles, but that's one of the things that I'm gonna work on.
Sarah Enni That's very practical advice as well. I like that. How about you guys?
Amy Andelson What did we learn? Well, I think that hopefully we've gotten to be faster writers.
Sarah Enni You kind of went to bootcamp.
Emily Meyer Yeah, it feels like it. Yeah, being faster, being in some ways a little less precious with certain things too. I think that was another benefit of the pace is if something... you've just got to throw it out and move on. Whereas sometimes I think when you're working alone, you can have something that maybe, you know, deep down is broken, but just let it sit there for longer. And this... we've just had to move on faster.
Kiwi Smith You guys are very good at holding the whole narrative in your heads, which I was really impressed by. Even though you've mentioned letting go is one of your lessons, remember that very late date when we were working on episode seven there was a big conversation, a lot of information was coming out, and you guys had the idea to like... we were almost about to shoot that or very shortly to shoot that episode. You said, "You know what, let's take that piece of information that we have, cut it in half and save the back half of it for later in the next few episodes." And I just thought, "Okay good." It's never too late to have a critical key idea. Never become so fatigued that you can't hold the story in your head and just remember like, "Okay, we've got to look at this big picture and make sure that we're always staying on point."
Sarah Enni Right. Especially with 10 episodes or whatever you're dealing with. Getting way down in the weeds on something, but then holding the whole thing.
Emily Meyer How anyone does 22 hour-long episodes sort of seems crazy because we had 10 30-minute episodes, which seemed like a lot of material to cover and doing more seems daunting.
Kiwi Smith Should we be so lucky to be able to continue the show. We'll be able to be grateful for 10 half-hour episodes and know how to attack it and manage it in a much better way. Cause I have so many friends who are on these 22 episode, hour-long shows and they're just like, "If only someone could give me a 10 episode, half-hour..." Like, "My life would be breezy and dreamy." And coming from features, we were like, "This is so intense!" But I think now we know like, "Okay, we're in a pretty nice position." So we're ready.
Amy Andelson And it's really nice to think about getting to continue living with the characters. And what do we want them to face next? And we've never written a sequel to anything...I mean not where it's continuous characters. So if we get a second season, getting to... first we started with the book and then season one. You just are like, "Now what?" We wouldn't even like... Where does this go? This is so fun!"
Kiwi Smith I'm so excited to brainstorm more with you!
Sarah Enni And also, Amy and Emily, you guys have written a book before, and you're like in the process of writing a second book, and then you have this experience of breaking down a book to it's bones and kind of rebuilding it in this other way. I'm just curious if you're taking any lessons from that to prose writing?
Kiwi Smith Oh yeah. Are you thinking when you're writing this second novel, "Oh this could be a show. This could be a movie. So it's gonna inform our decisions slightly." Or, are you keeping it separate?
Emily Meyer I think we're trying to keep it pretty separate just because I think letting it live on its own and it can be its best self in book form. And then if it were to turn into something else that would be great. But I think...
Kiwi Smith Then they'll call me and be like, "Could you adapt our book, cause we're too close to it.".
Emily Meyer That would be the real dream.
Amy Andelson Then we know we've made it.
Emily Meyer But yeah, cause I think in some ways what we're always trying to do with our book writing is to turn off the screenwriter brain. And try to use it almost as like a release from all of that.
Sarah Enni Does it impact other ideas that you guys have batted around as far as it maybe not being a feature and maybe being a TV show?
Amy And Emily Definitely, definitely.
Amy Andelson I think that the TV landscape is so exciting right now and being able to think about story in that...
Emily Meyer And just like the same way where for Layover, our book, that was originally a feature idea. And then we realized it would live better as a novel. So I think it's just trying to find the best place for the story to live.
Sarah Enni Right, right. And the same question for you Kiwi. Now you know that you could make a 10 episode arc of something maybe instead of a screenplay. Does that feel tempting at all?
Kiwi Smith Yeah, as long as I can do with Amy and Emily.
Sarah Enni As a fan, I would also appreciate that. That sounds great.
Kiwi Smith It does. I really like the half hour, what the tone that we've created, because it feels like it has moments where it's a witty dram-edy you know? High stakes things happen, but it's so digestible cause you can watch the show in five hours as opposed to watching it in 10 hours. And that to me, because there's so many things out there, it makes me really just as a viewer, it's my preference to sit and watch The End of the F***ing World or another half hour...like Russian Doll. So I hope people are drawn to it because of that cause they can just gobble it up real quick one night.
Sarah Enni I love that. So we're at about an hour, I usually wrap up with advice, but before we go there, is there anything else about Trinkets that you want to make sure we talk about or anything else that's on your mind?
Kiwi Smith Hopefully it will steal your heart.
Sarah Enni Yeah, we didn't really talk about that, the Kleptomania aspect of that. So it's very interesting.
Kiwi Smith Have you ever shop lifted?
Sarah Enni I think in ninth grade I was runnin' with a kind of rebellious crew that were like super into that. But you guys, I was like high and dark energy. I was like, "What?!" I don't think I stole anything myself. And I kind of was like, "Skipping gym is the most I can do." Were you guys going from personal experience?
Amy And Emily We're pretty square.
Emily Meyer I think for us it speaks to any type of rebellion. And any type of rebellion and also like any form of addiction and what you're trying to do when you feel like you don't have control.
Amy Andelson And mostly I think why we connected to the book so immediately is, for us the shoplifting is a hook and it's there and it's definitely a part of the show, but at least for me, I think the show is really about friendship and connecting at a time of life of so much shared vulnerability. And that you can meet someone at that time in your life, when you're sort of walking the bridge between who you are and who you're gonna become, and the people you meet can really become your life rafts. And that's what these girls, these characters, are for each other.
Kiwi Smith It's so funny when you say that cause I feel like it's echoing exactly what we've been talking about, about making the show. You can meet people at a certain moment in your life, and then become each others' life rafts. And go on this big adventure.
Sarah Enni Well I think that's why we're all pulled to stories about this age. Those lessons never stop being true. They just replicate throughout the rest of your life in many ways. But the first time you're going through it is like, "Whoa!".
Emily Meyer Everything's so heightened when it's happening for the first time. And for storytellers that's amazing.
Sarah Enni And it's also very sweet that these girls... it's like their outward lives are so different and their inner lives are so similar. I'm Kind of obsessed with the like...
Kiwi Smith Yeah, the facade. They're like superheroes in a way. They present one way and then they've got something else going on.
Sarah Enni I would definitely argue that teen girls are like superheroes in a lot of ways, including being the Bruce Waynes to their own Batmans. That's so fun. So we do wrap up with advice. You guys have given amazing advice this whole way, but I'd love to hear, just as people who may be embarking on a new form of storytelling, what advice you would give to people that are about to jump into that or attempt that?
Emily Meyer Even if you're going to be writing alone, obviously we are all people who have partners, but I think finding any type of collaborator or support is just so essential. Whether it's someone who you can help set deadlines with, or read each other's material and be able to give... part of what makes it work with us and Kiwi is that we can really have this shorthanded, giving each other notes and cutting to the chase and you need that with someone. You have to be able to step outside of your own work. And so I think just creating some sort of collaborative nature to the work, I think is really important.
Kiwi Smith Finding a person that you trust and respect. And mentorship flows both ways, I've learned so much from you. You've protected me so much as we've gone along cause I'm passionate and wild and sometimes they'll be like, "What?" And I'll be like, "Was it too much?" And Emily'll be like, "Well here's what I think you can say here." The answer is, "Fuck you!" [Inaudible] So maybe the mentor, yeah... it's a circle of being able to count on each other and look to each other for advice.
Sarah Enni And that example you just gave I think is so important. I talk to my friends about this all the time about friendships based on benefit of the doubt. Which is all to say like if I hurt someone's feelings, I want them to know like, "Well she didn't mean to." So how do we move forward in understanding like, "You said this thing and I know you would never hurt me on purpose." So that's where we're starting from with all conversations. Instead of people being like, "Is she secretly scheming to undermine my whatever." That's never the case. And when you can find people who are willing to mutually give the benefit of the doubt. That's just so productive.
Amy Andelson Yeah, I think it's about trust in a lot of ways. And I think it's like trusting each other, trusting the process and kind of...
Kiwi Smith Trusting your own instincts too.
Amy Andelson Yeah, it's this thing with the right balance. I feel like it's such a tricky balance of knowing where to be passionate and knowing where to collaborate and TV writing is like... there were times when we had to convene and be like, "No, this is our vision. This is our passion. We have to fight for this. We can't let this go or we'll lose the whole." And then also there were times when we all had to step back and kind of open it up to the voices of the room. And finding that balance of where is the line in such a collaborative medium. And that's really different from...
Kiwi Smith And reminding each other, cause within the making of the show, there's just so many little decisions and little micro battles that are being fought with differences of opinion. So being able to lean on each other and say, "Let this one go." I mean, I don't know if I said that to you as much as you said that to me. But so that we can keep moving forward. Like, "Don't let these tiny losses or wins derail you from what we're here for, which is to make Trinkets a wonderful show and to continue telling the stories of these girls."
Sarah Enni Yeah. Okay. And final question just cause I have you Kiwi I'd love to hear, as someone who's written teen stories from 10 Things to Trinkets, that's covered a lot of time and a lot of progress and changes in how we tell stories in general. But what's the difference in telling a teen story now as opposed to when you first broke on the scene with 10 Things I Hate About You?
Emily Meyer That's a good question!
Kiwi Smith That's a very good question. Well, I have remained quite emotionally stunted, so that is where we get the common thread. It does feel like this weird circle where the first project I made as a feature was in the Northwest and now it's coming back. And we also have one of the actresses from 10 Things plays the head of Shoplifters Anonymous in Trinkets. So in terms of how things have changed well, we've obviously had our minds expanded in a deep way about representation and telling stories that are not just these cookie cutter Caucasian stories. So I'm really excited to keep learning more about that and getting out of my own whitebread, growing up experience and get really educated. So, that's just exciting. And to see that kind of representation in our cast. And even more if we get to go forward with different voices coming into the mix so that we can continue to enrich and expand all of those stories.
Sarah Enni Yeah, you guys, thank you so much for your time.
Everyone Thank you Sarah!
Sarah Enni I really appreciate you coming over and hopefully we'll talk again soon.
Sarah Enni Thank you so much to Kiwi, Amy and Emily. Follow Kiwi on Twitter and Instagram @kiwilovesyou. Follow Amy and Emily on Twitter @byAmyandEmily and on Instagram @by_Amy_and_Emily. So the same thing but with underscores. Follow me on both (Twitter and Instagram) @Sarahenni and the show @firstdraftpod (Twitter and Instagram).
There are links to everything the ladies and I talked about in this episode in the show notes, which are available @firstdraftpod.com.
If you enjoyed the show today, please subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening, and consider leaving a rating or review on iTunes. Those are really incredible, they help the show a ton and do something to an algorithm that I don't understand but is good. And don't forget to visit firstdraftpod.com to sign up for more information about the First Draft Listener Club.
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Hayley Hershman produced this episode. The theme music is by Dan Bailey, and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Matthew Selsnick and transcriptionist-at-large, Julie Anderson, and as ever thanks to you, authentic as hell teens, for listening.
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