A conversation with television writer and journalist, Sean Collins-Smith.
Big smile, Big presence, and (as he himself proclaims) big hair, Sean Collins-Smith is a television writer who got his start as a journalist on the Richmond, Virginia overnight shift.
Riding in the dark, bumpy news van, Sean covered some of the most difficult (and sometimes deadly!) stories, feeding his love of storytelling for years through journalism. However, Sean eventually made the jump to fictional scripted storytelling and he hasn’t looked back.
Today, Sean is also somewhat of a legend at the Austin Film Festival, where we met to chat about all things television writing, networking, and switching up careers.
In 2018, Sean won the Austin Film Festival with his script, LIFER’S ANONYMOUS, and he later placed at AFF as a Finalist twice more. Sean now lives in Los Angeles, and he has staffed on Mike Schuur’s reboot of FIELD OF DREAMS, as well as CHICAGO P.D.
From the few days I saw him around the festival, Sean seemed to make an impact on all the panelists, conference-goers, and writers around him. Chatting with him filled me with an energizing spirit, and I hope reading our discussion below will encourage you, too!
PR: Before becoming a TV writer, you were a journalist and a journalism professor. Why did you decide to shift careers, and what really made that jump happen?
Sean Collins-Smith (SCS): I’ve loved movies since I was a kid. Every other weekend, I would go to my dad’s house, and we’d go to Blockbuster to pick out a couple of movies to watch. We did that for ten years, and that really got me into wanting to do movies. But growing up, there was no film world in Richmond [Virginia] to speak of. The only things shot there were historical epics, some of which did not do very well. So, I became really enamored with storytelling in any form, including journalism, where you convey what happened to the masses.
So, I studied journalism in college and then went to work for NBC News. I was working the midnight shift, and one night in the back of a news van, I was 20 feet away from a dead body. I had gotten my shots, and the cops were there, and the crime tape was up. I interviewed someone about what happened. All this time, I had this idea in my head for a script that I had never started. I decided—you know what? I’m going to open my laptop in the back of this van and start. And so I did—I started the pilot in the back of the news van. It took me a year to write it because I had never written a pilot before… So, it was almost a 20-year journey of thinking I wanted to do movies, realizing I liked storytelling, and sitting down to actually write that story.
PR: Are there other stories that you experienced when you were a journalist that have influenced your TV writing?
SCS: Not necessarily, but I do think covering crime and dark topics directly informs my work thematically. Most of the things I write about include dead bodies. My first script was about an assisted suicide hitman. [The premise was], if you want to die, and you’re worried that your family is going to challenge policies because of anti-suicide clauses, you can hire this team that will stage your death. They’ll make it look like a murder… I don’t think I would have come to that [idea] as naturally as I did [without working in news]. The idea itself originated from when I watched my grandfather wither away and die in hospice because he had mesothelioma. And so, it was just one of those things where you think, “There has to be a better way.” Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean you hire a team of suicide people, but you do think, “Is there a more humane way to do it?” So that was the origin of the idea. But I think the tenacity to embark on this very dark, weirdly comic idea came from seeing death every day on the news.
PR: After changing careers and moving, what were those early days in L.A. like? Even down to the nitty-gritty of getting settled and starting to build your network of writer friends.
SCS: That’s a good question. So, for me, I had never lived in another place. I had only lived in Richmond for the first 31 years of my life. My wife, then girlfriend, Allison, was like, “You know, Sean, people move. People go to new places. It’s not like you have to die where you were born.” She had already moved to three cities in five years. So when we [eventually did] move out here, I felt very fortunate to have someone with me who had experienced this part of life. I wasn’t alone. Now, I do think there’s an allure to being alone because then it kind of feels like you can do whatever you want. But there’s such a sense of loneliness sometimes when you go to a new place alone because you feel like a fish out of water and you just don’t know anybody.
But, [in terms of writing], I tried to leverage my win at Austin (Editor’s Note: Sean won the Austin Film Festival in 2018 with his pilot, LIFER’S ANONYMOUS) to set up meetings. I didn’t really start taking generals until the following spring because I moved there in November. So my manager just said, “Look, spend the next six weeks settling down, and, in February, we’ll start doing generals.” And that’s what we did.
PR: What was the thing that you feel got you staffed in your first room?
SCS: God, there’s so many things I feel like I’m going to just keep rambling. Well, first things first, I got staffed with that first script that I wrote in the back of that news van, so that felt like a big full circle moment. It started in the most banal way possible: I had a day job. I was working at Pierce Community College in Woodland Hills teaching journalism, and I got a text from my manager, Luke Maxwell at Three Arts. He’s like, “Do you like baseball?” That’s all he said. Especially in LA, you have no idea what this is leading to: Did he get box seats somewhere? What’s going on? And so I gave a very diplomatic answer. I was like, “I grew up watching baseball, and I haven’t been to a game in 10 years, but I like it.” He just responds, “I can work with that!” And that was it.
A month later, Luke texts me, and he’s like, “Hey, I’ve got a meeting for you with Mike Schur. It’s a staff meeting for the Reboot of FIELD OF DREAMS.” So I hop on the Zoom meeting, and Mike is great. He’s so nice, and he’s so contemplative, and he asks really good questions. At the end, he says, “You seem like a really interesting guy, and we’ll be in touch if something goes down.” Two weeks later is the Austin Film Festival, so I come, and I’m a finalist for a third time with the script I wrote called WONDER DRUG. I show up, and Mike Schur is on schedule to be in Austin. I was telling my wife, “We should take advantage of this. This is very serendipitous. We cannot let this moment slip.” They still hadn’t staffed FIELD OF DREAMS yet. They hadn’t picked any writers.
So I went to a panel of his, and toward the end, he spotted me, and remembered my name – with this hair, by the way, I’m easily spotted – And so when it was over, I came up to him, and I was like, “Hey, you know, I have a couple ideas I’ve been thinking about for FIELD OF DREAMS, a couple pitches I had been thinking about.” And he was like, “Oh, yeah? Let’s talk about it.” So I pitched him a couple ideas, and one of the ideas I had pitched, he was actually already going to do that idea, completely unbeknownst to me.
Three days after AFF, I got a text from my manager that was like, “Mike Schur just submitted your name to Universal”. So, when I tell people, “Austin’s magical,” – that’s what I’m talking about.
PR: When you’re in a writer’s room, how do you know when a pitch is something to share versus one to sit on and withhold?
SCS: That’s a good question. I’ll be honest, in those first few days, I think I was quieter than I should have been, and maybe I was quieter than I should have been in the entirety of the room… But I noticed that when I had an idea I thought was good, it kept sticking in my head. I felt my heart rate increasing, and I felt like, “Okay, there’s something here.” So, that’s usually when I would listen to my body, and be like, “Alright guys, I might have a solution for this problem.”
If you think of it, and 30 minutes later you’re still thinking about it, then okay, you should talk about this.
PR: Just off seeing you at the festival, you seem like a person who somehow maintains a huge network of friends and collaborators. I’m wondering, you’ve probably met so many people over the years, so how do you keep up with those people when there’s just so many people to talk to?
SCS: The short answer is… I don’t. I try to, but I procrastinate so much. I have 258 unread text messages, and 33,000 unread emails, so I don’t keep up with everyone, but I do try to keep up with people who I explicitly remember… Have you interviewed Saeed Krumpler? The guy’s so smart. When he meets people, he has a grid of every person he’s met with, which is so freaking smart. I do not have a grid, as you see, I have unread emails… But, I do try to keep up with people who I explicitly remember, [because] you have to try to narrow it down. You can’t read everyone’s scripts, and you can’t keep up with everyone, or you’re gonna drive yourself crazy.
Thank you so much, Sean, for your time, advice, and kindness at the Austin Film Festival, and looking forward to seeing what you do next!
Payton Russell 
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