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Columns

My Mother the TV Writer
Tuesday, November 14, 2006

ON a sunny Sunday at the start of the fall television season, a half-dozen new mothers drove up to Kim Newton’s home in Laurel Canyon, pulled their infants and Sigerson Morrison diaper bags out of Lexuses and Priuses, and headed inside to a spacious den that looked out onto a pool. The 42-inch plasma set on which Ms. Newton’s 10-month-old son, Oscar, often watches the HBO series “Classical Baby” was off, but the babies seemed perfectly content crawling around and grabbing each others’ toys.

“Hey, Penny,” Melinda Hsu called out to her 1-year-old daughter. “Give Oscar his blocks back!” She looked at the other mothers apologetically and added, “I think she’s going through an aggressive stage.”

Ms. Newton quipped, “Maybe she’ll become a TV writer.”

This, after all, was a group of women who have written for some of the biggest shows in primetime. Ms. Newton has written for “The X-Files” and “NYPD Blue,” and is an executive producer on the NBC show “Las Vegas.” Ms. Hsu is a writer on the Fox series “Vanished.”

While the new fall television series “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” and “30 Rock” give viewers a fictional peek at the personal lives of those working in the piranha pool of weekly television, these writers have formed an offscreen group to talk about being new mothers in an industry notorious for its grueling hours and back-stabbing politics. But these women have found that despite its cutthroat image, their profession is a surprisingly good fit for a working mother. The hours are flexible, and sometimes children are even welcome at the studio.

It started with a simple premise: new mothers in this industry could use support. “Any time you try to explain the politics, or what it’s like to be in the writers’ room, nobody else understands,” said Wendy Mericle, who has a 1-year-old son, Sam. Ms. Mericle, who is writing for the CBS show “Ghost Whisperer,” started the group after talking with another mother at a party.

Ms. Mericle was unsure how successful she would be in getting women to come together. One woman decided to skip this gathering when she learned that there would be a reporter present and that she would be “outed” as a mother. “I think it’ll make it hard to get a job,” she said. Ray Richmond, a television critic and entertainment columnist at The Hollywood Reporter who has been covering the business since 1984, understands that apprehension, but says the environment has changed. “It’s no longer a novelty to have mothers — much less women — on staff,” he said. “When Rose Marie was on ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show,’ it was fantasy. Now you have women with kids running shows.” But, Mr. Richmond added, that doesn’t mean the culture has improved. “It still feels like an old boy’s club in many writers’ rooms,” he said.

That’s why, to the women at Ms. Newton’s house, being a mother in the industry still feels slightly revolutionary. “I was always told, ‘Don’t go into TV writing if you want to have a baby,’ ” said Ms. Hsu, who had Penny when she was a working at NBC on “Medium.” Another woman said that on her last show, the female supervising producer had to leave early one day to take care of her child, and the male head writer called after her, “Don’t hit your head on the glass ceiling on your way out.”

“It was supposed to be a joke,” she said, “but it was and it wasn’t.” She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear that mentioning the incident could damage her career.

But for the most part, the women at Ms. Newton’s house have been surprised by how well things are working out. They almost reluctantly conceded that their dirty little secret is less about postpartum depression (“Half the W.G.A. is on antidepressants,” Ms. Newton said of the Writers Guild of America membership) than the fact that their job is pretty compatible with motherhood.

When Ms. Hsu worked on “Medium,” she had a “bring-your-own-nanny” day care space in the next building that the show’s lead actress, Patricia Arquette, had designed for her own toddler. “It was fully stocked with every kind of educational toy you can imagine,” said Ms. Hsu, who returned to work when Penny was 5 weeks old and found that the setup allowed her to nurse. But because workplace culture varies, some women had to choose jobs carefully. Ms. Newton, 41, a single mother, froze her embryos when she was 36 and waited for the right show to get pregnant. She found it with “Las Vegas,” where she takes Oscar to the Sony lot every Tuesday. “It’s such a male show,” she said, “but the guys are great.” Photos of Oscar adorn a hallway bulletin board and his toys fill a large basket in her office.

Ms. Newton acknowledged, however, that her next show might have a much less mother-friendly vibe and she might have to sacrifice a more prestigious job for one with more manageable hours. “It’s tough because you’re choosing between an Emmy and your child, and obviously you pick your child,” she said. “But you still want to stay in the game.”

According to a report last year from the writers guild, the ratio of male to female writers has changed little over 20 years. Female writers’ share of overall employment from 1982 to 2004 increased two percentage points, and women accounted for 27 percent of all TV writers in 2004.

Where salary was concerned, the women at Ms. Newton’s house had no complaints. Guild salary minimums start at about $5,000 a week, and those in the most senior writing positions earn as much as $30,000 to $50,000 a week for a 22-week season, not including script fees.

Though the demands can be steep — in 1994, when Ms. Newton was a writer on “The X-Files,” the executive producer would drive by on Saturdays to see whose car was in the lot, she said — another unusual perk is getting to play out the ups and downs of motherhood on screen.

Lisa Zwerling, a senior writer on “ER,” wrote last season for a character who was pregnant. “One morning when I was eight months pregnant, I was yelled at by a barrista for ordering a nondecaf latte,” said Ms. Zwerling, whose son, Otis, is now 1½. She told the story in the writers’ room, and a version made it into the script. Similarly, Yahlin Chang, who has a son, Leo, 1, wrote an episode of the shelved CBS series “Waterfront,” where the main female character, a mother, decides not to seek the top job. “My male superiors were worried that the female executives would hate it,” Ms. Chang said. But that wasn’t the case. “They related to it because it’s a reality many moms face.”

By the time Leo started pulling on Penny’s hair, it seemed like nap time for everyone. Ms. Chang offered to have the next meeting at her home in Santa Monica and the group wants to invite new members, in part because some of the members work weekends and can’t attend each gathering but also because they are enjoying the camaraderie.

“Breaking into TV writing is so hard-fought that the atmosphere tends to foster competition and pettiness,” Ms. Chang said. “So anything that can be done to counteract the natural hostility is a good thing.”

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