How Nell Scovell survived male-dominated TV writers’ rooms
BRANSON MO NEWS:
Comedy
Interview
By
Amy Nicholson
After working on everything from The Simpsons to Charmed, she discusses casting couches, bigotry and bullying in her new book
Nell Scovell with Conan O’Brien.
Photograph: Courtesy of the author
Nell Scovell has a lot to teach the next generation of TV writers: how to break the ice on a new set by cracking your dirtiest joke, how writing the episode of The Simpsons where Homer eats a deadly blowfish allowed her comedy to get serious, how she screwed up hiring on the first season of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and how to select used film studio furniture that’s less likely to be covered in bodily fluids. (Answer: pick floral fabric, not leather.) Yes, the casting couch is real – which, as Scovell writes in her new memoir Just the Funny Parts, is a “cutesy name … that sounds a lot better than ‘rape sofa’”– and yes, early in her career, the head writer of variety show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour aggressively maneuvered her on one, commanding her not to muss his toupee.
It’s a startling anecdote, and perfectly timed to today’s #MeToo movement and our global conversation about women in the workplace, especially as Scovell also penned Rose McGowan’s first season on Charmed and co-wrote Sheryl Sandberg’s bestseller Lean In. “I’m a little sad that they actually came up with the metaphor of waves for feminism,” says Scovell on the phone from Los Angeles. “By definition, a wave goes in and it comes out. I would really like it to be a tsunami that creates a flood that forever changes the landscape.”
In the pages leading up to the violation, Scovell, the only woman writing for the Smothers Brothers, already loathes this misogynist who cut her out of …
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