MTiH #6: Bridget Stokes on not forcing things.

“Networking is a lie. If you’re going out there like, ‘How can I do this good thing for my career?’, it will do nothing for your career. But you can go out and meet like-minded people and just vibe."

Hey! In this month’s Making Things is Hard, I’m talking with wonderful Emmy-winning director/producer/writer Bridget Stokes. Films she’s directed include Boy Genius (2019, starring Miles Brown and Rita Wilson) and Herman and Shelly (2012, starring Nina Kassa and ME!).

She’s also directed and co-executive produced seasons of HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show, for which she’s received three Emmy nominations, including winning in 2022 for Outstanding Directing for a Variety Series. Other TV work includes Hello Jack! The Kindness Show (starring Jack McBrayer), and films she’s produced include The Lost Husband (2020, starring Josh Duhamel and Leslie Bibb) and The Volunteer (2013, starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Ebon Moss-Bachrach), both directed by Vicky Wight.

Bridget and I went to college together, but we actually got to know each other better after graduating. I am proud to say the one leading role I’ve played in a film was in a Bridget Stokes joint, the aforementioned Herman and Shelly, which was a fantastic experience. (I’d tell you to go watch it RIGHT NOW, but unfortunately it’s not streaming anywhere at the moment.) Oddly enough, my character Herman was a Young Adult novelist, and then just eight short months later, I decided to start writing Denton Little’s Deathdate, my first YA novel. Coincidence? Genuinely hard to say!

Bridget is currently raising money for Zugzwang, a new movie she’s written and will direct, a noir detective story that she’ll shoot in Mozambique at the end of 2024. I love the things she makes, and I can’t wait to see it.

In our interview, Bridget talks about navigating the tension between art and commerce, how being on-set is like elementary school recess, and why you need to be true to your voice and not force anything. We talked over Facetime. I’ve condensed and edited our conversation for your enjoyment.

So, first off, I want to talk about winning an Emmy. Not that I want to focus on awards, but I’m always curious to know: has that changed the way you work creatively? Has it changed the way people respond to your work? Has it given you more confidence? More doubt?

That’s a great question. I would say the simple answer is it has changed nothing.

Yeah. [We laugh.]

Like, I literally haven’t been hired on anything since I won the Emmy, which was over two years ago.

How can that be?

Well, the industry has gone through quite a seismic shift.

That’s true. That was aligned with everything changing. [Note: the writers’ and actors’ strikes and a general tightening of spending on content among the streamers]

You know, there’s like the Hollywood thing of everybody being like, “She’s won an Emmy,” and that’s how I’m introduced in rooms, and all that kind of thing. And all my friends who are working are appalled that I’m not working ‘cause I have an Emmy. So there’s this perception that it would change things.

But, you know, I’m not like, offer-only now. I’m still slogging it out in pitches, putting together my 100-page pitch decks and selling with all my enthusiasm why I want to do stories and it’s still not landing any greater percentage of the time than it did before. Which…yeah. [pause] I have a lot of thoughts about that.

Well, great. [We laugh some more.] It’s always fascinating to me. And I’ve seen it within the theater world, friends getting nominated for awards. Sometimes it does help, sometimes it does open doors for a little while. But more often, it feels good—it’s a sign you’re on the right path, your work is good—but it’s not The Answer, so to speak.

There are so many milestones set up. I remember when I first came out to LA, a friend of mine had made a feature that had gotten into Sundance. That got her an agent, and she moved her family out to LA for a year. And she met everybody, and also was introduced in these rooms like, “Her film was in Sundance this year!”

And after a year, she left. She went back to New York, back to her production company where she was making docs she was passionate about. I think having that story in the back of my head… And there was an interview that’s stuck in my brain with Judd Apatow where he was like, “Nobody’s ever offered me a job. Nobody’s ever wanted to hire me on their film. It’s all been stuff that I’ve put together.” And he’s done everything!

Or Ava DuVernay was talking recently about how impossible it was to try and make When They See Us. So I don’t think I ever thought— I wasn’t disappointed. Like, I go to the statue [her Emmy], and I talk to her, and I’m like, “Girl, you should be doing something.” And she just placidly stands there and does nothing. [Bridget turns to her Emmy:] I’m sorry!

So yeah, I don’t think I ever thought in my mind, This is it! Now: smooth sailing.

I think you were already well enough into your career to understand the way it goes, as opposed to maybe winning an Emmy in your mid-20’s, and then it’s like, Wow! Here we go! I’m on a rocketship. And then by 30, you’re like, Wait, what happened?

Well, yeah, it’s a rollercoaster, you know?

So, with rollercoasters in mind, is there a creative struggle you specifically want to talk about?

I think the creative struggle for me… I think it’s a career-long creative struggle, but I was thinking of it in terms of the last feature I did, Boy Genius.

Which I loved.

Thank you. It’s that constant tension between art and commerce that in some ways is unique to film. It’s different than a fine art, or painting, or sculpting because it’s not doable without enormous amounts of money. And teams of people.

And I love it because every independent filmmaker of every generation comes up and goes, “It’s easier than ever! You can shoot a movie on your phone!” And it’s like, “You could shoot a crappy movie on your phone and do all the jobs yourself.” I don’t think you’re doing something transcendent that way. I would love someone to prove me wrong.

So it’s that tension. Boy Genius started out as this really phenomenal script that Vicky Wight had written and we were both so excited to be making it. And you start out in your head—I’m doing these extensive shot lists and drawing things out, the first part, where you’re imagining it in your mind.

And then you get into casting. And it’s like, “Well, who means something?” Or you get into, “What’s the dynamic of the director versus the actors and can you ask certain actors to audition? Or does it have to be offer only?” So you can’t really go, “Let’s get this ensemble and get everybody in a room and make sure they gel and have chemistry reads, and all those kinds of things.” Like, I’m not a name that warrants that.

And I should’ve prefaced it with this: every actor in that movie I loved, and it worked so well. It was a great ensemble, and everyone was so funny and unique. I’m just really talking about the process and how you’re very early on making those commercial considerations, and how do you stay on course for your vision? And say something with your work while still having all those things continue to come in? So that was the struggle of it all.

So Boy Genius had been your and Vicky’s baby for a while. What was the moment when you were able to raise the money, when you knew it was actually happening?

It got set up and fell apart and got set up again. So, initially, we went down the road, as one does—I’ve now visited this terrain many times—we attached cast, we were meeting with department heads. The money was supposed to come in.

The money never came in.

In retrospect, we had Herman and Shelly and The Volunteer that we had made in 2010 and 2011. They were really indie. Crowd-funded, maxing out credit cards. Everybody, as you know, came on for love. Nobody was like, This paycheck!

So, in doing Boy Genius, and then The Lost Husband, they were much bigger budgets. They were trying to achieve more with stunts and special effects and animation and all kinds of stuff. So part of it was that we started going into this Hollywood world with those projects, which we hadn’t really done with the previous ones. So we didn’t know a lot in terms of how to navigate it.

So it got set up, then went away, because we didn’t really understand how things work. And then Vicky found an amazing opportunity to not just make two more films but also to start the film company side of what had previously been a video game company.

You know, when you chat with people, like, “What was your path?” And I did this coming up—I was like, let me talk to every director about how they made their movie. And it’s both inspiring and completely useless because everybody’s like, “You know, there was this guy who just made a ton of money at his fruit stand and he just needed to get rid of it for tax purposes.” And it’s like, well I can’t do that. You just go out there, and bang your head against the wall a ton and something random is always the thing. It’s never replicable. Ever.

Of course. Was the shooting of Boy Genius pretty smooth in your memory?

It’s almost not a question I could even consider because it was so fun. I don’t think anything’s smooth, but Vicky was a phenomenal producer and took—as many unsung producers do—a lot of the hits that would have made me feel stressed as director.

We had a thirteen-year-old lead, he only had nine hours he could work—an hour was lunch, a certain amount was school. We had eighteen days, I think. We had a pretty low budget. We were shooting in LA, which is not cheap. But, yeah, it was awesome.

Part of being a director or an actor is that the amount of time you get to spend on set is kind of small compared to your whole life, right? But it’s so fun. Like, however long your shoot is, it’s like: you spent twenty days going to recess every day for twelve hours.

And recess can be traumatic; like, everyone brings their emotional trauma to recess. But it’s like one long lunch and recess. You’re eating cool things, and you’re hanging with your friends, and you’re trying to make cool stuff, playing imaginary.

I love every part of it. I love the prep, I love being on set, I love being in a sound mix, being in a color correct, working with the music supervisor. It’s just the after, when you’re then like, “Okay, let’s start to raise money for the next one!” Then it’s like, “Eugh.”

Like, I don’t want to raise money for movies, but I have to trick myself into being like, “This could be fun too!”  Otherwise, the 90% of your time that’s not on set doing the thing…you know, you’ve wasted.

Seems like you have to get so excited about this idea, seeing that recess time in your mind and letting that fuel you as you talk to people about it. And instead of thinking, Let me get money, it’s just like, Let me spread my vision. And if they want to support it, great. But it’s a real narrative shift in your head to have to do that to fool yourself.

That is the trick. You’re putting your heart out there. And it’s definitely not gonna be for everyone. It’s gonna be for a very small group. But when you find that group, the believers, then you get to make the thing.  

I think I tried to mitigate [the challenge of having to always raise money] with television. That has always been the plan. There’s such a long time between features, and I love being on set so much, at least I can go play in someone else’s sandbox in the in-between times.

So that’s kind of a constant rhythm for you? Are these gigs always popping up? How does TV directing work in that way?

I kind of had wanted to set myself up to be a little bit of a journeyman director, where I would come in, do episode 7 of X season, and get out. It’s a finite amount of time, and you go really hard in that amount of time, and you peace out. You have edit days, but you’re not getting final cut. You didn’t write it. You didn’t work with the writers. You’re just coming and executing.

So I thought I was going to do that. That was my first two episodes. And they happened right in the pandemic. And then I went up to do another guest directing gig. It was a new show for Apple with Jack McBrayer [Hello Jack! The Kindness Show]. They had live action, animation. So I was really excited. I did my spiel, and they said, “Well, what would this show look like to you?”

And I was like, “Well, that’s a weird question for a guest directing job. But it’s the first season, so I get it.” So I went and did one of my fifty-page pitches. Like, “It could be like Gene Wilder, Willy Wonka, and The Neverending Story, and magic, and all the things that I loved as a child! It could be full of color and life and joy, and we’re selling kindness!” I was really excited about it because we were in a pandemic. And I was like, God, we really need a show about kindness!

And all the producers were really excited about that concept, so then I got hired to do the first six episodes. And then I got hired to be the producing director, and stay on and do six more episodes. And it was such a dream, but totally not what I’d set out to do in TV, which was be in and out!

And that quickly and weirdly led to A Black Lady Sketch Show, which has a similar set-up, where you direct all the episodes. You do the whole season. So, again, not in and out.

You did every episode of A Black Lady Sketch Show?

For seasons 3 and 4.

That’s amazing, I didn’t realize.

It was awesome, yeah. I think technically with DGA rules, it’s gotta be a financial decision because you don’t know what sketches are gonna be in which episode. You shoot a number of sketches and then Robin Thede figures out how they fit and what goes together. So they’d end up having to pay, you know, six directors for all six episodes.

But also, just the pace of it, and how that show works, it makes a lot of sense that you’d want one person. It’s already so chaotic, you’ve gotta have one team. You can’t have people coming in and out.

Was the creative experience of that show satisfying?

Oh my gosh, it was so fun. You have one day to shoot each sketch, sometimes two sketches a day. And we were wanting to make it incredibly cinematic. And you’re doing a horror-comedy one day, and a dramedy the next day. Lots of parody, and matching tones and stuff.

So that’s what was so fun and incredible about it. Even in episodic, when you have a week to shoot a thirty-minute episode, if you miss something, there’s a chance that you can go and get that close-up. Here, the set was up in the morning, and you had to be on every single day because it was getting torn down at the end of the day. Like, you weren’t going back.

And I imagine—I mean, I haven’t done theater and been in the community theater world since I was a teenager, but it’s that same feeling of like, This is it. Do you know what I mean? Which you don’t get in film. And I love that feeling. That’s what I loved about doing theater. You’re on, and if you don’t deliver…

That’s it. One shot.

Yeah. Robin and I actually were at a screening, and we were seated next to an Academy-Award winning director. And we’d just seen his film—and I won’t call him out because this maybe reflects poorly on him—and Robin said, “I’m sure you don’t know who we are.” And he was like, “You guys did A Black Lady Sketch Show! I love it.” And he turns to me and he goes, “That must have been such an excellent film school for you.”

And I was like, Geez, dude! And that really encapsulates a lot of… And that’s why the Emmy’s not making me any money. You see the connection?

Wow. Not patronizing at all. Have you had any experiences where you go onto a TV show to do a directing gig and it’s a bad experience? And what does that look like?

It’s almost always like… There’s some element of every show that’s a bad experience.

So many people, so many personalities.

A lot of people in the film industry, contrary to whatever is out there in the culture, are really dedicated artists who want to tell stories and create. And then there’s a few people who are there for their ego. So there is always the negotiating of folks who need to get something out of this personally and trying to just keep coming back to, “Okay, but we’re telling a story. Let’s tell the story the best we can.”

So there’s always a little poisoning of the well. Because there’s always those people everywhere, on every show. Or it’s just, you know, you’re twenty days in, and everyone’s exhausted, and no one’s on their best behavior. So there’s always a little bit of bad, but I would qualify every single project I’ve ever worked on as a joyous and wonderful experience. Because we’re telling stories. We’re not curing cancer. It’s such a privilege.

It really is. And it’s good to remember that. Any kind of creativity that you get paid anything for is really a privilege.

It might be one of these other tricks, but going into things with gratitude has really served me.

I love that.

And I definitely get cranky and shitty too, but I think it’s just coming back to that. Constantly reminding yourself.

That’s great advice. Is there any other advice you would give yourself at the beginning of your directing journey?

For sure. My twenty-year-old self wouldn’t have listened to this, so it’s moot. I think you just have to live it. But the advice is: it doesn’t matter. Don’t get stressed about the not happening of things. And also realize the opportunity in that, which is to just experience life. Right? Like I think I’m a much better mother now than I was when my kids were young because, when they were young, I was like, “I gotta like, do everything all the time!”

There’s all these stretches [as a director] where things aren’t happening and aren’t gonna happen and the truth is, you can’t force it. You go and you be creative every day, whatever your thing is. You put words on a page. You go out and shoot something. You meet with your creative crew.

But don’t push any of that. There’s no pushing it. There’s nothing you can do except be yourself and be true to your voice. I say this a lot to people in terms of networking:

Networking is a lie. If you’re going out there like, “How can I do this good thing for my career?”, it will do nothing for your career. But you can go out and meet like-minded people and just vibe. And continue relationships with people who you actually like! And things will come up. You guys will be like, “Let’s do something together!” Or they’ll get on something and think of you [for a job]. And it will happen. But none of it can be forced. And I spent a lot of time trying to force things.

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Thanks to Bridget for chatting and sharing so much good stuff! One of the obvious side benefits of these interviews is that I get to catch up with creative people I love, and it’s really nice.

Please check out Bridget’s films and TV work! Boy Genius is a delightful PG film for the whole family, currently on Peacock. And A Black Lady Sketch Show (Seasons 3 and 4) is smart and hilarious and not for the whole family.

Have a superb weekend! Take a walk with a friend, draw a picture, play a board game, write letters to voters, and don’t force anything. Big love!