SHIWANI SRIVASTAVA

“Wedding Season”

Srivastava came to her career in a roundabout fashion after working as a freelance journalist, copy editor and copywriter. “I looked at NYU Film School at the time, I didn’t see people like me. And it just seemed like too big of a leap.” Years later she took a course in San Francisco, taught by “One Fine Day” co-screenwriter Terrel Seltzer. “I remember in the early 2000s seeing Mindy Kaling in ‘The Office.’ I remember ‘Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.’ I mean it’s funny, people think of it as just a stoner comedy, but to me it was so much more. It really made me think, ‘hey I can write the movie I want to see and I think that was really what triggered me starting to take those classes.” “Wedding Season” plucks from real-life incidents. “It shows the pressure of growing up in a community like that and sometimes the way that everybody is in each other’s business,” says Shrivastava,

who now lives in Seattle. “I realized I missed having some of that.” The film revolves around a couple that pretends to date each. It ranked among the top 10 Netflix films when it bowed Aug. 4. With no industry connections, Shrivastava entered her script in several contests. She came second in Screencraft comedy competition and later placed in the top 10% of the Nicholls Fellowship. Screencraft connected her with producer Swetha Shetty, Netflix and director Tom Dey. Now she is working with a friend on an animated movie for Reel FX with Kunal Nayyar attached, among others.

Reps: Agent: Valarie Phillips / A3 Artists Agency; Manager: Nicholas Bogner / Affirmative Entertainment; Legal: Mark S. Temple Influences: Nora Ephron, Amy Sherman-palladino, Mindy Kaling — Shalini Dore