Faith on the small screen
Oklahoma native and television producer Nancy Miller recently spoke about connecting faith and TV at a luncheon for Catholic professionals.
Nancy Miller moved from her Oklahoma City home to Los Angeles with $300 in her purse and a dream of selling song lyrics.
Through a series of events that she attributes to her persistence and providence, she became a successful television producer and screenwriter of memorable TV programs like “Saving Grace” and “Any Day Now” and most recently as one of the consulting producers for the CMT show “Nashville.”
“I marvel at what God did for me, for this Oklahoma gal who didn’t have a clue about Hollywood,” Miller told a crowd gathered recently at the Petroleum Club.
She was the keynote speaker for the Assembly of Catholic Professionals luncheon on April 19. The Most Rev. Paul S. Coakley formed the organization to create a network of leaders who come together quarterly for faith and fellowship.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for all of us to meet one another and encourage one another,” he said.
Miller, a lifelong Catholic, spoke candidly about her path to success and the ways she has infused elements of Christianity into her TV programs.
She attended Christ the King School, which is affiliated with Christ the King parish, the church she attended growing up. She graduated from Bishop McGuinness High School.
Miller said writing poetry helped her as she dealt with the devastating blow of her father’s death. She said she thought she would be a song lyric writer when she arrived in Hollywood but turned eventually to television script writing.
After selling her first TV script and her first pilot, the determined Oklahoman began hanging out at crime scenes and the coroner’s office. She said she went to a homicide investigators’ convention and didn’t come away with information about investigating murders. However, she did learn much about law enforcement officers.
Miller said faith seemed to naturally make its way into her shows.
She said her show “Any Day Now (1998-2002),” about a friendship between a white girl named Mary Elizabeth and a black girl named Renee in 1960s Alabama, also featured quite a few elements of faith. For instance, in one episode, the two girls see a picture of a “colored” or black Jesus, and they argue after Mary Elizabeth, who is Catholic, tells Renee that there is no black Jesus.
Her faith and some of the knowledge she gleaned from crime scenes helped her create thought-provoking story lines into another TV show she executive produced, the notable “Saving Grace (2007-2010).” Set in Oklahoma City, the show featured actress Holly Hunter portraying Grace, a cynical lapsed Catholic with a scruffy guardian angel named Earl.
Miller said she purposely created the character of Grace’s brother as a caring priest, who served to show the positive attributes of faith to his jaded sister.
“I think God meets us where we are, and He certainly met Grace in that sad, angry place,” Miller said. “He never gave up on her, and He will never give up on anyone. He never gave up on me either. He allowed me to tell stories that I wanted to tell.
“I literally felt His hand guiding my hand as I wrote that pilot.”
Currently working on a project focusing on female World War II pilots, Miller said she is especially excited about becoming involved with an upcoming film about Blessed Stanley Rother, the Okarcheborn priest who became the first American recognized as a martyr by the Catholic Church and the first U.S. priest to be beatified — a film in which faith will obviously take center stage.
“I prayed that I would get to write that script,” Miller said of the Rother movie project.