Showrunners reveal their secrets to success
What is it about television that keeps us coming back for more? While ways of viewing our favorite shows have changed, so have the shows. The people most responsible for that are what the industry calls the “showrunners.”
Those are the people who start as writers, are crowned executive producers, and actually reign over the show like benevolent dictators.
Tim Kring, who helmed several series including “Heroes,” “Dig,” “Crossing Jordan,” and a reincarnation of “Heroes” coming this fall, “Heroes Reborn,” says he wasn’t prepared for the job.
“It’s an odd business . . . you pace around in your office, you might be in your underwear writing a script. It’s the most solitary existence to create something. You can go days at a time where the only people you talk to are the guy you buy a hamburger from at lunch while you’re creating something. So they take that guy, that writer, and anoint him with a — in the case of ‘Heroes,’ it had a $100 million budget for a season.
“You take that guy and you give him this massive budget and 250 people to work with . . . without so much as a pamphlet on how to do the job. Nobody sends you an email with a few tips: ‘Hey, here is what you do,’ ” he said.
Marti Noxon, a veteran of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “UnREAL,” “Private Practice” and the new fall drama “Code Black,” says that the hard lesson for her to swallow was that she would never be voted “Miss Congeniality.“
“Nobody interesting is universally liked,” she says, quoting one of her own shows. “And I, maybe more so as a woman, really wanted to be liked by everybody. And I wanted everybody to be happy. And I had to learn that that goes out the window when you’re a good showrunner. You have to disappoint people,” she said.
Sean Jablonski, orchestrator of dramas like “Nip/Tuck,” “Satisfaction” and “Suits,” agrees with Noxon.
“I do suffer from the same, wanting to please everybody, which on a show is just impossible to do,” he says.
“You have to consider the show the most important thing, and you always have to be driven by that one solitary thing.”
But another priority for Jablonski is family. “Honestly the amount of time you have to spend away and be selfish with your time and with your energies by managing so many things and stories that your head space is being taken up, and also as someone who’s married with kids, keeping that in perspective and finding that balance” is critical, he says.
“I’ve certainly been on plenty of shows where it’s about how many hours can we work to stay in here and keep away from the lights outside? And I think it’s such an important thing for me that I really want to feel like I’m getting back (home) and also being a dad and a husband and wearing that hat as well.” After 21 years in television, Natalie Chaidez is showrunning “12 Monkeys,” which has been renewed for next year.
“I had also worked with the best showrunners in the business, Tim Kring, John Wells — just the best of the best,” she said. “What made this show possible was I had two amazing partners, Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett, that I was able to delegate stuff to. I will say making decisions (was hard), I just became completely debilitated by the lunch menu . . . Sometimes you get to lunch, and you’re just like, ‘God, I just don’t know what to do.’ ”