Write On: 'NCIS Origins' Showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
Release Date: 04/08/2025
Write On: 'The Smashing Machine' Writer/Director Benny Safdie
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
Writer/Director/Actor/Editor Benny Safdie is known for defying expectations and using his sense of humor to make a splash. He even once showed up on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon dressed all in silver, including painted silver hair and skin. So when we sat down with Safdie over Zoom to talk about his latest movie The Smashing Machine, we weren’t sure what to expect. For this interview, however, there was no face paint or sparkly clothes, he was simply wearing a shirt that said, “Radical Empathy.” Turns out there’s a very important reason for the shirt. “Empathy should be cool,...
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Write On: 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' Co-Writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“We try to answer two questions before we say yes to a job or embark on a spec script: Why does the protagonist need this movie? And the other is: Why tell this story other than to make money? That was our attitude going into Jurassic World. That was our attitude going into Avatar,” says screenwriter Rick Jaffa about how he and his writing partner Amanda Silver approach tackling a large film franchise. On today’s podcast, we sit down with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver to discuss their blockbuster new film Avatar: Fire and Ash, the follow up to 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water....
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Write On: 'The Long Walk' Screenwriter JT Mollner
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“I didn't think I'd be a good fit as a writer if they were going to do a PG version of the story. That's not where my strength lies, so the great thing is that the version Francis [Lawrence, the director] wanted to make was the version I wanted to write. A week later, we had a meeting with Lionsgate, we pitched the project, and they said, let's do it. So, it all happened very fast. It's really not common how smooth that process went,” says screenwriter JT Mollner about sharing a clear vision with the film’s director for making The Long Walk. On today’s episode, we chat with...
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Write On: 'Hedda' Writer/Director Nia DaCosta
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“I love adaptations. The beauty of adaptation, especially a classic, like Shakespeare and Chekhov or Ibsen, they’re such a gift because they give you this beautiful framework, and it’s almost like they’re begging you to take it and make it your own,” says writer/director Nia DaCosta about adapting Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play Hedda Gabler into her new film Hedda. Set in the 1950s, the movie stars Tessa Thompson in the lead role, Imogen Poots as Thea, and reimagines the character Eilert Lovborg as a queer woman (now Eileen), played by Nina Hoss. We chat with Nia...
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Write On: 'Splinter Cell: Deathwatch' Creator/Writer Derek Kolstad
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“As you do draft after draft, it becomes shorter and rendered down. And [Keanu Reeves and I] would go through scenes going, ‘Can people say less? Can the action be tighter? Can the action sequence be shorter?’ The action is an extension of the hero’s journey and if you don’t give a sh*t about the character, it doesn’t matter how great your action is,” says Derek Kolstad about his writing process with actor Keanu Reeves when they worked on the script that would become John Wick and spark an entire franchise. On today’s episode, we speak with screenwriter Kolstad about his...
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Write On: 'After the Hunt' Writer Nora Garrett
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.” –Otto Von Bismarck “It's funny, because when I was writing After the Hunt, I definitely wasn't like, ‘Oh, I want to write about this current socio-political moment.’ I was really just invested in the characters and the story,” says screenwriter Nora Garrett about writing a screenplay that probes the dynamics of power, privilege and social accountability. She adds, “What I didn't even realize was something that was drilled into me because of my acting training – that the work, the scripts,...
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Write On: 'Anemone' Co-Writer/Director Ronan Day-Lewis
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“[My dad] really started to inhabit the characters, especially Ray, speaking as him during the writing process. That was when I realized this was going to be its own kind of special beast. Working with him taught me so much as a writer and storyteller; by the time we got to set, we had a shorthand for everything,” says director and co-writer Ronan Day-Lewis about writing the script Anemone with his father, Daniel Day-Lewis. The film Anemone, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean and Samantha Morton, paints a portrait of a family torn apart as they struggle to come to terms with...
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Write On: 'All Of You' Writer/Director Will Bridges & Writer/Actor Brett Goldstein
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“You have to love all your characters. Even if you're writing a bad guy. You, the writer, have to write them with love and empathy, and treat each character, give each character, a full life and a full arc in your story, even if their screen time is small. Essentially, if you were following that character, they also have a full story, a full life,” says actor/writer Brett Goldstein about how he approaches writing characters in film and TV. On today’s episode, we chat with writer/director Will Bridges and writer/actor Brett Goldstein about their new film All of You, starring Imogen...
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Write On: 'Mussolini: Son of the Century' Director Joe Wright
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
On today’s episode, we speak with director Joe Wright whose new limited TV series Mussolini: Son of the Century, explores fascism through the early political career of Italy’s Prime Minister Mussolini in the 1920s. The show is incredible storytelling from beginning to end, mixing opera and techno rave music while drawing chilling comparisons to the current rise of fascism around the world. “We all have a dark side. We all have the choice to be the best of ourselves, or the worst of ourselves and we usually land somewhere in the middle. Working on Mussolini allowed me the...
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Write On: 'The Toxic Avenger' Writer/Director Macon Blair
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“The thing that started it all off was me saying [the character Toxie] should be a guy in a suit. In other words, let’s not do a computer-generated creature, let’s have a person in a suit and have that handmade, hand-stitched kind of quality to it where you can sort of see the seams a little bit and have that be part of the fun. I also said let’s have it be rated R. Hopefully y’all are not interested in a family-friendly PG-13 version of this movie, because that’s not what the fans of the original are going to want, so let’s keep it in the R-zone. And let’s make sure it stays...
info_outline“If you can make the twists [in the story] hit your character in an emotional way and set up their emotional arc, then when the case twist intersects with them, if it's hitting them in the deepest way, in the most unexpected way, maybe – then you've done your job. So it's getting that emotional arc to really bounce off of the crime story in the most impactful way,” says Gina Lucita Monreal about the most powerful way to fuse together story and character.
On today’s episode, we talk with David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal, showrunners and creators of the CBS show NCIS: Origins that brings a fresh perspective to one of television’s most beloved franchises as it dives into the early career of a young Leroy Jethro Gibbs (played by Mark Harmon in the original NCIS). Set in the 90s, NCIS: Origins taps into the nostalgia of the era, from great music from bands like Pearl Jam to life with pagers and payphones.
North and Monreal discuss getting to know each other a decade ago writing for the original NCIS, and how now they are pushing the boundaries of procedural television by creating more complex, character-driven storylines.
“The biggest challenge for us isn't the going back to the 90s. I mean, I think for a lot of procedural writers, that would have been a challenge, that you're losing the DNA and the fingerprints, all that stuff. But for Gina and I, that's not really ever the way we leaned into NCIS or wrote the show. Our episodes were definitely more about the characters, so that's what we looked forward to. And obviously in each episode of Origins, it's very character based. I would say the most difficult part of going back is just sticking to canon, knowing it. Weaving in and out, trying to, when you hit something and saying, ‘Okay, well, we know this happened in season three of NCIS,’ so trying to honor it while also using it to our advantage – that's difficult.
We get beat up a lot on X, and sometimes we have to just pick a path,” says North about the challenges of writing beloved characters with a lot of well-known history.
To learn more about North and Monreal’s writing process and hear their advice for emerging TV writers, listen to the podcast.