6 Questions with Lauren Iungerich

Join the On My Block creator for a Q&A on Monday!

Awkward.

I first met Lauren Iungerich because I had a meeting at MTV in 2012, and they told me that they wanted to make more shows like their breakout hit, Awkward. (They were lying). So, I started watching Awkward., and I was won over by how funny and how charming it was, and how fearless it was in going surprisingly deep on the emotions of the teen characters. I’m pretty sure I stalked her on Facebook and then created a panel around her called “Why Aren’t More People Talking About These Awesome Shows?” (the panel also included David Hudgins from Friday Night Lights—another show I was obsessed with at the time—and Writers Panel favorites Josh Friedman and Jeff Greenstein).

TV was already changing in 2012, and, while you wouldn’t necessarily expect it, shows like Awkward. and Friday Night Lights were at that vanguard of that change. Scripted streaming hadn’t begun in earnest (House of Cards would premiere a year later), so network TV still ruled, and the top shows were either procedurals like NCIS, Castle, Person of Interest, and Blue Bloods, or half-hour sit-coms like The Big Bang Theory (then in season 6), Two and a Half Men (season 10), and Modern Family (season 4). Of the top twenty shows, only The Good Wife was what felt like a contemporary show, a procedural and a soap with a good sense of humor, all at once.

But in this flux moment, shows like Friday Night Lights and Awkward. were succeeding both commercially and creatively by showing that TV shows didn’t have to be just one thing. That first time Lauren did the podcast, we talked a lot about how she—and her room—did a lot of both laughing and crying.

“I cry all the time. I cry publicly in my room at all times. I cry in my office. I cry and bring writers in to talk about it. I cry when I talk about crying sometimes,” Lauren said.

But why all the crying? It’s because she was, after a few years working as a professional writer, finally writing honestly. “I started writing about myself,” she told me. In the past, she’d been “really afraid to write about the things that were really humiliating” but “I started to writing about it and through the course of that, I found a sense memory where I could go back to those places and times and really feel it. And so sometimes I'll be pitching something in the room and I'll start crying as if I am the character and I get teared up.”

And it worked. Mining her own experiences and emotions—and yes, crying while pitching and writing—took Lauren’s writing to a new level. And what worked in Awkward. worked even better in On My Block, which ran for four seasons on Netflix and spawned the one-season spin-off Freeridge. On my block was as funny, warm, and honest a show as you’d hope to find on TV. Luckily, TV had caught up to Lauren Iungerich.

Lauren is our Q&A guest on Monday, August 21, at 6pm PT! You don’t want to miss this opportunity to get advice from one of the best we have! Link is below the interview for paid subscribers.

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6 Questions with Lauren Iungerich

1. What you working on right now (for yourself, if indeed you’re writing at all during the stike)?

Specs  Currently writing a spec adult 1/2 hour dramedy, a spec feature, and a YA hour.

2. What challenges are you facing specific to your current writing project?

Writing outside of the genre/world I’ve been successful in and feeling like I have something to prove.

3. What advice about the business of TV/film writing can you give to someone starting out now?

Take time to learn the business. Writing is a craft. It takes time — don’t be in a rush to get somewhere without being set up to win when you arrive.

4. What advice about the craft of writing can you give to someone starting out?

Write what you wanna see — not what you think will sell or that others want. Be your fan first. That is te best way to succeed, in my experience.

5. What do you respond to most in a piece of writing?

An original voice. It’s specific and hard to find. But when you can hear the voice of the writer in the writing… it’s what sets apart the good from the great.

6. What are you watching/reading/listening to lately that’s getting you excited or inspired?

I just finished The Bear season 2 and really dug it — the storytelling, the tone. (But still baffled how it’s categorized as a comedy). Loved Triangle of Sadness. And while I watched this nine months ago, I can’t shake the brilliant LA production of The Inheritance that I saw at the Geffen.

I assume it’s like Succession.

Link for Monday’s Q&A below! Upgrade and join us!