When I was introduced to the hilarious and gregarious Christy Stratton, I considered it to be quite the treat. I only feel bad because this article is way overdue: Christy and I spoke last month and much like the sitcoms and comedy series she’s written for (Modern Family, King of the Hill, Awkward, Hope and Faith, Raising Hope, Everyone’s Crazy But Us), one crazy thing happened after another to delay production. This was no sweat for Christy who is simply focused on making people laugh by bringing them humorous material. We spoke about writing for the hugely popular sitcom Modern Family, her web series Everyone’s Crazy But Us, and how folks appreciates an animated world created for adults (King of the Hill).
Comedian and actor Janet Varney, who stars in Everyone’s Crazy But Us, couldn’t help but rave about about the show’s creator: “Christy is, simply put, a dream. She’s so warm, but so wickedly funny- my favorite combination in a creative mind. She’s generous and deferential to her actors and crew, and yet she also knows her vision and has a strong point of view that she communicates through its execution. I’m ready for her to be in charge of Hollywood.”
Janet Varney
Following is my conversation with Christy Stratton:
You worked on the Emmy-nominated show Modern Family (at the time of this interview, The Emmy’s had not yet aired) which has tons of fans. Can you give us some insight into how the writing room operated? Also, can you tell us about some of the episodes that you personally wrote?
Modern Family works differently than the other shows I’ve worked on. On some shows, you get to pitch your episodes (’oh this happened to me in high school, here’s how I would put our characters in that scenario’) and then you’d shepherd the episode through the process. With Modern Family, the staff was split into two rooms. As a group, your room would break an episode and then the script would be assigned to a writer or writers — they like to pair people up, which had its challenges but was ultimately fun. For the first episode that I wrote, I collaborated with a writer named Danny Zuker. The story centered around the oldest daughter Haley as a boss working in social media. Another episode that I worked on with Stephen Lloyd was about a fun Christmas dance. On Modern Family, when you’re assigned a story, you (and your partner, if you have one) will write an outline based on the stories your room broke. Then you get notes, then you compose the first draft of the script that gets presented to the room.
You started off doing a lot of grunt work and once worked as a DJ on am radio. How did you become a successful comedy writer from there?
Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, I never knew I could be a TV writer. I went to the University of Florida and knew I wanted to finish my studies in the spring, then do some kind of TV internship in the summer, then graduate right after. But I forgot that broadcast TV shows don’t shoot in the summer, so my opportunities were woefully limited.
I landed an internship at Universal Studios in Orlando, which was a lot of schlepping sandbags around for commercials, escorting celebrity guests to the bathroom, that sort of thing. One time, they had a roller blading competition through the park for ABC Sports, and it had been raining, so I was in charge of blowing the streets dry with a leaf blower. Nancy Kerrigan skated by me and didn’t fall, thanks to my hard work! It wasn’t glamorous, but how often is a starting point glamorous? Although showing Cathy Moriarty to the bathroom was sort of glamorous.
Nancy Kerrigan
I became a PA on a show called America’s Funniest People where I answered phones and got lunch for Tawny Kitaen and Dave Coulier, which shot in Orlando. I came to LA for the first time to take a test to get into the DGA trainee program – if you got in, they would get you work on film and TV sets as a PA. I didn’t get into the program, but being here made me realize it was town full of possibilities. I mean, look at how many different kinds of restaurants you could find on a single city block.
While I was working as a temp during the day, I discovered the Groundlings school and then ended up at the Acme Comedy theater, where you auditioned and you could get right on stage, you didn’t have to take classes. Sketch comedy is a great place to figure out your voice, as you have to create characters, a story, tone, an ending, jokes – and you have but five minutes to get it all across. After that, I got into the Warner Bros. TV Writers program where I had a great mentor named Adrienne Turner, who is still there, crushing it. A King of the Hill script that I wrote during that program was what got me on the writing staff of King of the Hill.
King of the Hill
King of the Hill was such a funny show. How long were you working on that?
I was there for 7 seasons. It was a great place to learn how to write because you had characters with fantastic voices you heard in your head very clearly. And our stories either came from family situations, or we’d bring in newspaper stories as inspiration. It wasn’t impossible to come up with ideas because of so many places you could go. You got to produce your own episodes, taking them from script to record to approving design elements. I’m so grateful for my experience on that show!
I know you created your own web series (which can be watched on Funny or Die) ‘Everybody’s Crazy But Us,’ which Janet Varney got an Emmy nomination for. I understand you initially pitched it to NBC. Why weren’t they the ones to pick it up?
With NBC Universal as a studio partner, I pitched the idea to the networks and never before had the experience where I had to hold for laughs. One network executive said it was one of three pitches she heard all season that made her cry laughing. Which is why I was so heartbroken when no one bought it. But at a certain point I was done complaining about it – which is saying something, I’m a good complainer – so I thought I would do it my damn self, as a digital series. Two years before this, there was this young man who had contacted me via Facebook - Alex Zeldin - to say one of my King of the Hill episodes was his favorite, and could he take me to lunch and pick my brain about writing? I said sure, because what are the chances that my one fan would murder me? He said he’d been doing a lot of web content and I thought ‘one of these days I’m going to need you.’
Two years later, I sat down with Alex and asked how to make a web series happen. He advised me and, with his partner, helped me to produce these webisodes. I shot the first five, then a sixth several months later to qualify for the Emmys, and thank goodness we did that because Janet ended up getting an Emmy nomination for it.
Do you have to be super-quick and on the fly (with your humor) for comedy writing?
Here’s the thing: I am not that person. I don’t come up with a joke in 5 seconds. I wish I could! I write it out and take time to craft it. I love pitching stories and coming up with surprising things and twists for characters. Lucky for me sometimes rooms have a need for that person (like me). They’ll say they already have a bunch of ‘joke in 2 seconds’ people and need people who can fill things out.
My son, who is 8, tells jokes that – I’ll say it – are not great. Children have a fearlessness that I admire. I don’t have that fearlessness that makes you just throw things out there, not worrying about others’ opinions. I judge myself harshly even for these words I’m saying right now.
On the topic of children, you’re also a mom. How is the work-life balance as a television comedy writer?
You figure out how to do this. Some writing rooms go late, so you have to consider that when you’re staffing. When I’m writing a draft, I like to escape my family and go to a hotel for a few days, and I’m lucky my husband is okay with this. Also, watching TV for research just seems like I’m watching TV when my husband comes home and there are dirty dishes in the sink. And a lot of my ideas I come up with right as I’m about to go to sleep – I’ll fumble around for my pad and my pen on my nightstand and my husband will wake up and go “who’s dead?!” We’ve been very lucky though because I am writing a couple of pilots currently and he’s able to take our son to school. Now school today - as you know - requires a lot of parental involvement. The kids get homework and it is also your homework because it’s too hard for them. Between the two of us - and my husband taking over when things are hectic - we manage to do it.
We’re in this crazy political climate today. One of my readers, Eric R., asked if political correctness has ever gotten in the way of writing something you wanted to write for Modern Family?
We’ll have interesting discussions about these things in the room, but the show has such a developed, apolitical voice that the writing isn’t really conducive to storylines about, say, Trump. We might put a little joke in in a draft, but we ultimately steer clear. There was one character we wrote about who was a bully that was gay. I worried then that there was going to be major fallout from it, but no one said boo.
This next batch of shows coming to TV during the Trump era will be interesting to tune in for. I am curious where people will go: You don’t want to alienate viewers. You want to invite everybody to the party.
I’m very excited about the King of the Hill reboot coming up. That show really expressed different opinions and varying shades of things. It will be interesting to bring it back because it would touch on things that are political...There’s no subtlety with Trump, so I don’t even know how you broach that in comedy!
You can follow Christy Stratton and her musings on Twitter @ChristySMann and Instagram @christystratton