Hello beautiful people!
Let’s run the show.
In show business there are creatives and there are suits. If you create (write, act, direct, set lights, costume, cast, do makeup, anything creative) you are a creative. And if you look at the bottom line, crunch numbers, hire and fire, greenlight or pull the plug, sit in an office, and WEAR A SUIT, you’re a suit. You may take meetings with creatives throughout the day, but at the end of that day, you are in a position of power at the network, studio, or production company (and you probably do actually wear a suit).
If you’re a suit, you may come down to the set during the table read and fire a creative so it’s clear you are in charge. But keep in mind that “suits” in this definition represent these types of people at networks, studios, production companies, and agencies of a certain tier! If we’re dealing with a more indie-level project or a boutique agency, for example, the suits are less likely to be IN suits and they are more open to their interaction with creatives. See: Hulu and Amazon and Apple and Facebook and Twitch and other new-generation delivery services and the production companies that produce content for them to witness a whole different uniform and vibe for these positions of power.
A showrunner is someone who is definitely a suit but who often does very non-suit-like activities. He’ll write, he’ll lead a writers room, he’ll be a creative person… but he’ll be the one held responsible for everything that can (and will) go wrong on his show. He’ll hire and fire. He’ll spend a lot of time with suits. He’s kind of trying to live in both worlds and his job is a wee bit crazymaking when you really think about it.
By the time a showrunner gets a pilot greenlit, he has already been in the writers rooms for a dozen other shows, having worked his way up from writers assistant to staff writer to head writer to writer/producer to eventually showrunner for his own baby. (And when I make the showrunner male, here, it’s simply because we’re still in a world of very few female showrunners. But. This. Is. Changing. Daily.)
The showrunner will not usually deal with actors directly; the director will. Note that the directors on TV shows are guns-for-hire. Directors are basically guest-stars doing the showrunners’ bidding one episode at a time. The series regulars are senior to this guest director, and they get their way a lot more than any of the guest actors or those directors of course. While a first-time showrunner is going to have a lot of stress, it’s all stuff he’s experienced working under a dozen showrunners by the time he is one, and once he’s a successful one, he may rarely visit the sets of the shows he’s running. He’ll visit the writers rooms and he’ll do set drop-ins now and then, but he’s too busy conceptualizing the season, updating the show bible, handing down ideas to writers, refining budgets, and meeting with all those suits to keep his show(s) on the air and ultimately to keep all the creatives employed.
Check out this convo with showrunner Jonathan Shapiro from a few years back on an episode of Your Actor MBA. In one excerpt here, Shapiro talks about how a showrunner is responsible for everyone and how he’s the one who will take the blame for anything that goes wrong.
Everything you heard from Jonathan Shapiro, his fellow showrunner (and the guy who taught me how to play poker in the ’80s) Jeff Greenstein, and busy TV director Jeff Hunt is pure gold when it comes to auditioning for, working with, or ultimately becoming a showrunner someday. Everything is about risk assessment far more than talent or even politics at some point!
Are you seeing the value in building up work that communicates clearly your most castable brand so it’s incredibly easy for buyers to see you as low-risk for their projects?
Today’s work: Begin to study up on what showrunners do; start to learn their names. Consider whose style of leadership aligns with yours; discover who is out there actively bringing stories into the world that you were born to help tell. Update that show bible of yours with what you learn! This is something for you to work on for a lifetime, so just get started on this.
Think about how to identify “showrunners to watch” before the lists of those names come out in the trades each year. Who’s creating content that not only looks like stuff you’d love to be a part of but also appears to be the kind of thing that could lead to a healthy future as a showrunner? What could you create that makes you appear low-risk to others who are out there collecting their collaborators for the next tier?
Extra credit: Watch my favorite doc on the topic of showrunners, watch coverage of the very cool panel discussion some of these folks had at the Television Academy screening of that Showrunners movie, read any of my favorite books about these folks and their journeys (even the ones that are dated in terms of how showrunners once rose up through the ranks are a fascinating look into the history of how our television business became the animal it is today), check out Jeff Lieber’s tweet-by-tweet list of showrunner rules, learn what they mean when they say… (humor), enjoy John Wells’ showrunner resources (including this vocab list), and consider where Josh Friedman says we are at present vs. where Kaan Yigit tells Emmy magazine we’re headed with future showrunners (images below).
How do you feel about that?
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
