Interview: Lisa Joy
Go Into The Story Interview: Lisa Joy
My in-depth conversation with the creator and co-executive producer of the hit HBO series “Westworld”.
Lisa Joy got her start as a Hollywood writer working for the ABC television series “Pushing Daisies,” then as writer-producer on the USA series “Burn Notice.” She wrote the spec script “Reminiscence” which made the 2013 Black List and sold to Legendary Pictures for a reported $1.25M. In addition, she (along with her husband Jonathan Nolan) is creator and co-executive producer of the HBO series “Westworld”.
I first met Lisa when she took two of my screenwriting classes online. At the time, she had recently graduated from Stanford and was working in the legal affairs department at Universal (I think my memory is right about that). Eventually, she went to Harvard Law School, but we stayed in touch throughout her time there. Lisa wanted to be a writer. Movies. TV. She was passionate about learning the craft and it was clear to me she had the talent to make it. I kept telling her, “Just keep writing what you can, when you can.” She sent me feature scripts she’d written while taking a full load of classes in law school. Then one day… well, read the interview to find out how Lisa went from practicing law to creating stories.
Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:
Part 1: “I started reading a couple screenplays just to see what it looked like. It kind of struck me that there were some similarities between poetry, which I’d always loved and screenwriting. You don’t have that much space. You have to convey things very compactly.”
Part 2: “To me, I really never thought that it was possible I would become a working writer. It’s truly, if you told me I was going to become an astronaut who colonized Mars, that would be about the equivalent feasibility for me.”
Part 3: “I’d say that the thing I learned from him [Bryan Fuller] the most is to be bold and to try to stick to your vision as much as possible because no one else is going to do it and you can have death by a thousand cuts with an idea.”
Part 4: “But the thing that is first and foremost to me is, ‘Do I love the character? Do I empathize with them?’ I even think you have to love and empathize with the villains you write, especially them, in a way. Otherwise it just becomes caricature.”
Part 5: “The fact that ‘can you have it all’ was the question posed to women specifically — was complete bullshit. It makes everything a binary all or nothing choice. And if ‘all’ is impossible — then we must settle for ‘nothing.’ The paradigm itself is messed up.”
Part 6: “At the end of the day just sit down in front of that blank page. It’s terrifying, the tyranny of the blank page and all the expectations you put upon yourself. But then you turn off the naysaying voices in your head. And you write. Just write.”
Lisa is repped by UTA.
Twitter: @lisajoynolan
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