Women Showrunners Who Are Breaking the Glass Ceiling

What does it take for a woman to run her own TV show? Showrunners — the industry term for TV show creators who are the top executive producers — are still primarily men, but some women are breaking through this glass ceiling. A showrunner has the main creative vision for the show, is usually the chief writer, and makes most of the crucial decisions involving the cast and crew. An opportunity to be a showrunner usually comes after years of working as a lower-level TV producer and/or writer. But in 2020, women from a variety of backgrounds, many using nontraditional career paths, have become first-time TV showrunners for their U.S. scripted TV series that premiered this year and are not limited series.

Awkwafina of Comedy Central's Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens (a show where she plays a fictional version of herself) is best known as an actress who’s starred in movies such as Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell, and Ocean’s 8.

Michaela Coel of HBO’s #MeToo drama series I May Destroy You (her first TV series on a U.S. network) is a showrunner who also stars in her own projects. She got her first big TV break as the showrunner of the British TV comedy series Chewing Gum (which aired on the United Kingdom’s E4 network from 2015 to 2017), which was based on her play Chewing Gum Dreams.

Katori Hall of Starz’s drama series P-Valley also wrote a critically acclaimed play that she adapted into a TV series. P-Valley is based on her play Pussy Valley, which is about a group of African American women who are exotic dancers in Mississippi.

Crystal Moselle of HBO’s drama series Betty has a background as a director of movies and commercials. Betty is based on Moselle’s 2018 dramatic film Skate Kitchen, about young female skateboarders in New York City. P-Valley and Betty have each been renewed for second seasons.

Gillian Flynn of Amazon Prime Video’s sci-fi drama series Utopia is a former entertainment journalist who became a successful author with the novels Gone Girl and Sharp Objects. She wrote the screenplay for 20th Century Fox’s Gone Girl movie, and she was an executive producer who wrote or co-wrote some episodes of HBO’s Sharp Objects miniseries. Amazon Prime Video’s Utopia is the American version of the British series Utopia that aired on Channel 4 from 2013 to 2014.

Rachel Shukert of Netflix’s drama series The Baby-Sitters Club (a reboot of the 1990s TV series and movie that were based on Ann M. Martin’s popular young-adult novel) worked her way up the TV ladder, as a writer for Netflix’s dramedy series GLOW and a writer for The CW’s superhero drama series Supergirl.

Kathleen Jordan of Netflix’s dramedy series Teenage Bounty Hunters also has a background as a TV writer and producer, with credits that include Lifetime’s dramedy series American Princess and the YouTube short-form miniseries Threesome.

Kelsey Stephanides of Syfy’s short-form animated series Magical Girl Friendship Squad, which is her first series for a TV network, makes her debut as a TV writer and TV producer with the show. She previously worked as a production assistant at animation studio Titmouse and as a facilities coordinator for ITV.

Becca Topel of Disney Junior's animated series Mira, Royal Detective has worked in television as a writer of Lifetime movies, such as Sugar Babies, Psycho In-Law, and Wicked Mom’s Club.

What do all of these women have in common? They are challenging the status quo that you have to fit a certain mold to become a TV showrunner. There’s a longstanding career template that you have to be part of an “old boys’ network,” usually with a mentor, in order to get the opportunities that lead to a showrunner position. And while many TV showrunners might still be following that template, there seems to be more room in today’s TV industry for people to take different paths — and that might be the result of more women becoming creators in television.

The 23rd annual Boxed In: Women on Screen and Behind the Scenes report — authored by San Diego State University film/TV professor Dr. Martha Lauzen, who is the executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film — examined the roles of women in U.S. programs that were televised during the 2019-2020 TV season. The report found that the number of female creators reached its highest percentage so far: 28%, an increase from 25% in the 2018-2019 TV season and 22% in the 2014-2015 TV season. Furthermore, the report concluded that when a TV program has at least one female creator, the program is more likely to have more women working behind the scenes and more female protagonists on screen. On programs with at least one woman creator, “women accounted for 69% of writers versus 20% on programs with no women creators,” according to the report.

Betty showrunner Moselle and P-Valley showrunner Hall both say that they are using their positions of power on their shows to uplift other women. Betty and P-Valley have female-majority casts, while the crews for both shows are close to gender parity. Moselle directs the episodes of Betty, and all of the show’s writers are women. Hall writes or co-writes almost all of P-Valley’s episodes, which are all directed by women. Hall explains why she decided that P-Valley would be a rare TV series that has an all-female team of directors: “This show is very much about the female gaze.”

Moselle reveals how she got the series on HBO: “My agent at UTA [United Talent Agency] had brought Amy Gravitt [HBO executive vice president of HBO programming] to see [Skate Kitchen], and she fell in love with it. They [HBO] approached us about doing the show.”

Moselle adds, “There was maybe one second where we thought, ‘Should we be pitching this to other people?’ But when you have somebody who’s so in love with the show and the idea of what the show could be, it made sense for us to partner with HBO.”

Hall had the opposite experience in getting her first TV series. She says, “I took it upon myself to call my reps at the time, and I let them know that I wanted to pitch [the show] around L.A. … A lot of places didn’t even want to hear the pitch.” After getting many rejections, Hall finally got a “yes” from Starz, which she says was the first and only offer for the show. “Sometimes, you just need one ‘yes,’” she comments.

Hall says she knows that because P-Valley is about women of color who are strippers, the show’s subject matter was a hard sell to TV networks. “It centers on the lives of women who tend to be exploited,” Hall comments. “It felt like a cultural landmine that [TV networks] did not want to walk across. Luckily, Starz had very open ears and a very open heart. And they understood that I was interested in doing a humanization project instead of an exploitation project … TV was the best platform in order to achieve that goal.”

Moselle and Hall each say that they’re grateful that their respective networks have given them complete creative control as showrunners, because they know not all showrunners have that kind of freedom. (HBO and Starz are premium cable networks that don’t depend on advertisers for revenue.) Moselle believes that this kind of creative control can happen “when you have strong ideas that they [the networks] want really badly.”

For the first season of Betty, Moselle was paired with co-showrunner Lesley Arfin (former showrunner of Netflix’s comedy series Love), so that Moselle could work with a more experienced TV executive producer. According to Moselle, the agreement was that Arfin would amicably leave by the end of Betty’s first season, in order for Moselle to take the reins as sole showrunner for Betty’s second season. “Now that I’ve gotten a handle on it, it made sense to do it myself,” Moselle adds.

By contrast, Hall says there was never a question that she would be the only showrunner for P-Valley: “It felt like a natural transformation for me to go from playwright to showrunner,” she comments.

A major learning experience for these first-time showrunners is how to adapt to unforeseen circumstances that significantly impact the way that the industry can work. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread shutdowns and delays. Betty and P-Valley are both shows about activities that involve group gatherings. Moselle says that the pandemic will be a major focus of Betty’ssecond season, as the skateboarders adjust to quarantine life and social distancing. Hall says that the second season of P-Valley will also have a pandemic-related storyline.

According to Hall and Moselle, learning to work with other writers is one of the biggest transitions for first-time showrunners who have been accustomed to being the only writers of their projects. But even with fantastic ideas and great locations, these showrunners both say that what can make or break a show is who’s in the cast and crew. And that’s why a showrunner’s hiring decisions are crucial in how the team will work.

And as showrunners, Hall and Moselle know that there are plenty of ways to find talented women who can work behind the scenes. The most common way they fill off-camera jobs is through referrals from people they know, but Moselle says she also posts job openings on social media, and she does extensive searches of entertainment databases. She mentions Free the Bid (a database for female directors and editors) as one of the best online resources.

Hall has an unconventional way of finding potential employees: “I do not look at a person’s résumé before I interview them. How you perform in the interview and what you say to me are more important than what you’ve done in your past.”

Hall explains, “It comes from my own lived experience. The fact that I am a young Black woman, oftentimes I wasn’t given a chance … Why can’t we as women get our first time?”

And taking a chance on new talent is how the industry can thrive and not get stuck in a rut, according to Hall: “Why would you give a project worth millions of dollars to a first-timer? Well, they gave it to me, so why can’t I give a chance to someone else? I don’t come from a place of ‘Let me see your credits.’ I come from a place of ‘Let me see your potential.’ What have you experienced as a human being? What can you add to the creative process that no one else can add but you?’”

Moselle agrees: “There are so many women who are qualified that haven’t been given the chance yet.” She says if people look in the right places, they would experience what she experienced when she needed to hire people for her show’s team: “I found so many qualified women who could be showrunners.”