Even the most cursory TV viewer will have noticed the rise and rise of the showrunners. They’re the people who come up with an idea for a series and then oversee everything from script development to casting to choosing directors. They run the writers’ room and sit in on the editing and generally hang around on set making sure everything goes according to plan (specifically, their plan).
“Basically it’s your baby and your responsibility and you’re there for the entire time. It becomes this crazy all-consuming thing,” says Gretel Vella.
Gretel Vella: creator, writer, showrunner.Credit: Steven Siewert
Vella is showrunner of the Stan series Totally Completely Fine. She’s also its creator, writer and executive producer. That’s a lot for a 29-year-old.
Vella is first to admit that her ascendance through the TV ranks has been exceptionally speedy. She graduated from NIDA in 2017, and a year later directed her first episode of commercial TV. Within another year she was working on the international hit The Great, and Totally Completely Fine was just around the corner.
“Sometimes I struggle a little bit with imposter syndrome because I think how did I get here so quickly?” she says.
Vella is primarily a writer, and the recipe that led her to run her own show at such a young age has a lengthy ingredient list. Obviously, there’s sheer talent, especially when it comes to dialogue. There’s also hard work – overseeing Totally Completely Fine meant she didn’t have a weekend off for more than a year.
Plus there’s a healthy sprinkling of right-time-right-place luck. While studying for her masters in writing for performance, Vella was the first person at NIDA to choose TV as their area of interest. “I did an eight-part comedy series and as part of that I was put in a TV writers’ room for two days to do some note-taking. It was there that I met Tony McNamara.”
Thomasin McKenzie in Totally Completely Fine.Credit: Stan
McNamara is a screenwriting heavyweight, whose credits range from Love My Way to The Favourite to Cruella. The Great is his baby, too. “He asked to read some of my stuff and liked it, so he asked to meet with me.”
The two hit it off, and McNamara suggested a deal. He’d hire Vella as his personal assistant for a year and then try to get her a writing gig on another series he’d created, Doctor Doctor.
McNamara stuck to his word, and Vella was given two episodes to write. They proved educational. The first lesson was that TV is a team sport, and its writers can’t be too protective of their work. “I’d written this really elaborate medical scene and I’d written in all of the choreography and how everyone should move around. It was my first taste of a director turning to me and saying, ‘You don’t get to decide any of this’.”
Vella’s work on Doctor Doctor impressed McNamara enough that he then brought her onto The Great. The job took her to the UK. “I was kind of meant to be there for six weeks as a staff writer but we really bonded and I think I was really useful to him, so I was lucky enough to be kept on. I’ve done three seasons now and worked my way up to producer.”
In Australia, it’s a struggle to score just one TV credit, but within a few years Vella had managed to have her name attached to several international productions. “It basically opened the door for me to get my own show and be a showrunner for the first time.”
One of the stranger aspects to the whole showrunner deal is that the most powerful role in TV has its beginnings as one of the least valued. It’s the peak of a career ladder that begins with the staff writers whose names might not even make the credits. They’re the ideas generators and brainstormers who throw out their thoughts in writers’ rooms, hoping something will land.
Vella became a writer on the hit series The Great, starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult.Credit: Stan
From there a more established group of scriptwriters will take the broad brushstrokes and start nailing down specific plot points, dividing up threads into A, B or C stories, and pacing out the number of beats each needs to feel fully developed.
Once you have a full scene breakdown for an episode, a more senior writer will have the job of writing an actual script. “I think a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, you just pull it out of your brain and get it down on the page’ and that sounds kind of terrifying, but there’s actually a really specific process that makes it far less scary. There’s not too much room for error by the time you get to writing.”
TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO GRETEL VELLA
- Worst habit? I have to triple-check I haven’t accidentally called someone before I speak about them.
- Greatest fear? That I have accidentally called someone while I’m speaking about them.
- The line that stayed with you? “No man is a failure who has friends” from my favourite film, It’s a Wonderful Life.
- Biggest regret? One time I was at a James Bay concert with my brother and my best friend. James’ manager came up to us and asked if we were Peter and co? We said no, but I always wonder what would have happened if we’d said yes?
- Favourite room? My mother’s kitchen.
- The artwork/song you wish was yours? It’s probably a cliche, but Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.
- If you could solve one thing… Most definitely period pain.
A writer with McNamara’s level of experience can play with the formula. “With something like The Great, Tony is a really experienced writer and he actually likes to write as you’re shooting the thing. It’s really off-the-cuff. You can make decisions based on what you’re watching on the production floor. You’d write a new episode in a few days and then go: this is the way the series is turning now.”
But for Vella’s first time as showrunner, Totally Completely Fine was fully scripted by the time production began. It’s a wise move, especially given the delicate terrain the show traverses. It follows a young woman who inherits a family home that turns out to be a popular site for people to end their lives. It’s a comic drama that could – in the wrong hands – have been a tasteless mess.
Vella says she still struggles with “imposter syndrome”.Credit: Steven Siewert
Vella came up with the show during lockdown. “I was actually witness to two suicide attempts in the space of a week, which was really awful. On the second one my Uber driver said to me, ‘Every day I take this route and every day there’s someone else here trying to do this.’ I came to the conclusion we were in a bit of a mental health crisis and I think everyone was coming to that conclusion at the same time.”
Vella had experienced anxiety and depression since she was 14. “The themes have always been in my work but I decided I wanted to explore them properly. I started to research guardians of the places people would go to attempt suicide and I wondered what would happen if someone who was anxious and depressed themselves took on that role.”
The show began production just two years after Vella came up with that idea. What followed was a wild – and weekendless – introduction to showrunning, and coming out the other side Vella says she does feel like she graduated to another level.
“For most of my career I’ve been the youngest person in the writers’ room and often the youngest person in meetings. It’s only now that I’m staffing rooms I’m running that people are younger than me. I feel like now I’m making that transition to a bit more of an experienced, older writer.”
She’s also gained a wealth of perspective, which she’ll bring to the next three projects she’s developing: a dusty noir detective thriller, a break-up comedy and a great feminist buddy comedy.
“Particularly my generation, it’s that hustle culture thing, you always need to be hustling for what you want,” she says. “I’m discovering that sometimes slowing down and actually concentrating on one thing at a time and giving it the time it needs creates a really great product.”
Totally Completely Fine and The Great are on Stan. (Stan is owned by Nine, the owner of this masthead.)