What Makes Good TV Writers (and Execs), With David E. Kelley

0:00Matt Belloni:This episode is brought to you by Netflix, presenting The Diplomat. The drama series returns with tested alliances, new characters, and potentially catastrophic consequences. Starring Actor Award winner Kerry Russell, Allison Janney, Rufus Sewell, and Bradley Whitford. AFI raves The Diplomat ascends to the highest office in television in its third term and praises it as TV program of the year. With outstanding writing from Deborah Kahn, Decider calls it a masterclass in storytelling. The Diplomat, for your Emmy Awards consideration.

0:58Matt Belloni:History voters can access all episodes at starsfyc.com. It is Wednesday, May 13th. Our guest today is maybe the most prolific and celebrated creator in the history of television. Try to figure out how many shows David E. Kelly has worked on. It's kind of impossible. Dozens and dozens across five decades now. After starting his career as a lawyer, he came to prominence as a writer and executive producer on L.A. Law. He was running that show at age 33. and he soon began creating his own shows. At the Emmys in 1999, he won the top prize for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Drama Series for Ally McBeal and The Practice.

1:38Matt Belloni:That's the first and still the only time that has ever happened. More recently, he's run Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, Goliath. I love that one, although he says in our chat that it wasn't a great experience. Presumed Innocent. And he's got a new show, Margot's Got Money Troubles, currently airing on Apple TV, which marks the first time he's worked with his wife of more than 30 years in television, Michelle Pfeiffer. Today, it's David E. Kelly, recorded live at Puck's Stories of the Season TV event in Hollywood last week. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

2:14Matt Belloni:Before I ask, was there another David Kelly in the Writers Guild when you joined? Was that the E? Not that I'm aware of. No, you just figured you'd preempt that. Yes. You don't do a lot of media. I do not. And I was looking for interviews with you, and there's not a lot out there. Why is that? Well, writers tend to write and stay behind the scenes. Not anymore. I don't know if you've seen lately, but there's a lot of writers that tend to do a lot of press. Yeah, it was never my thing. So I like being behind the scenes. I rarely go to the set. I'm most comfortable when I'm at my desk writing and hiding behind the characters.

2:55And usually I like to let the characters do the talking for me. So if I'm uncomfortable tonight, you'll be nice.

3:03Matt Belloni:That's okay. I'm very nice to people on the show. That wasn't supposed to be funny. So you mentioned that your role on set is unusual and that you don't often go. uh what has changed the most about your process since you first started creating and writing shows to now uh not enough probably really um my first uh job was a show called la law and um we've heard of it i it it was a very lucky bounce because in terms of imprinting goes my first boss was Stephen Bochco. And he had a real discipline in terms of the writer's room. And it was kind of keep your head down, take care of your product. And I came from a law job before coming out to Los Angeles.

4:02And it was a similar discipline. You go in in the morning and you're either writing a brief or preparing a case. And you do what you do. And then you have a willingness to delegate other parts of the craft to those who do what they do. So you'll never see me picking wardrobe. You're not going to see me standing behind a DP telling them what shot to get. I do hear my shows pretty exactly. So the rhythms and the cadence and the tone of the dialogue, I'm pretty specific on. but beyond that and again i get i got this from steven um your best chance of success is to surround yourself with people who are experts in their particular craft be it uh production design makeup wardrobe cinema photography don't try to tell them how to do their jobs and if you're lucky

4:55Matt Belloni:they won't tell you how to do yours but but doesn't that annoy you a little bit like that would drive me crazy because you watch a show of yours and maybe an actor makes a choice you wouldn't have made or maybe there's a shot that doesn't capture the scene as you would have wanted it it does happen in broadcast it happened less just because by virtue of the fact you're making 22 to 24 uh episodes you're really on a treadmill right and you it just does not allow for actors to ad lib or go off book and now in the the obviously in movies and in the limited series you have a little more time so it does allow for that and then that's really uh where the the line um needs to be well walked and and you need to be uh in sync with your director and producers on the set do actors ever call you and say what what are you thinking here yeah no they will.

5:55So you're available. I remember one of the first shows I ever did, Kathy Baker, it was a show called Picket Fences. And she actually, I heard the pounding on my office door. She didn't even call. I just heard a pounding. And Kathy's a very genteel, loving, and calm person. And the episode on Picket Fences caused for her to exert some corporal punishment on her child. And it really offended her and um she was angry and she uh said she there was no way she was going to do this and say this and we're gonna have to figure it another way and i said kathy um i want you to just try it and uh if it doesn't work we can and she was so collaborative that i knew it wasn't an actor being an actor she had a serious issue with it but um the fact that it got such a reaction out of her, informed me as a writer that if this material had hit a nerve with her, we had a chance of hitting the same nerve with the audience and asked her to try it.

7:03And she did, to her credit. And she not only performed it, she ended up winning an Emmy for the very scene that she...

7:10Matt Belloni:Oh, wow. So I was going to ask if you cut it and you didn't. You used it. We used it, yeah. Oh, and she won. That's interesting. Do you still write your first drafts in pen? I do, yeah. My hand is wearing a little bit, but I do. that's amazing even but you do have a computer and you do i don't really know how to use it um i've turned it over to um wait people don't print out your emails do they do they print out my yeah like some you hear these no i can print an email okay i've evolved that no no i know but but my point is like you're not you're not emailing people back you're like looking at them on paper no no no i don't need any okay all right i have somewhat entered the digital world good good i was worried there writing scripts and dialogue yeah i did it for years on a legal pad and and that worked for me and um so i i left that part of my process in you mentioned the the broadcast days have you ever thought about the the record for the number of scripts you wrote in a year or a season with your various shows sometimes you would have two even three shows on the air yeah i don't know what that number was It was probably too many.

8:18Matt Belloni:It's probably more than 50. Yeah, one year could have been more than 50. Yeah. And you are still the only person who has won the Comedy and Drama Series Emmy in the same year. Yeah. That was for Ally McBeal and for The Practice. What was that night like? It was a bit surreal, really, because we had one for Ally McBeal. That came up first for comedy, and then the drama category was next. So I was up backstage because you get up on stage to collect the Emmy, and you say something incoherent and hope that your fly is up, and then you get off stage. And I barely just got off stage when I was getting pushed.

9:10you need to go back out you need to go back out um and it was dawning on me that the practice had won for um best drama which um was a shock that night and even um 20 some odd years later it's still a bit of a surprise because it's up against the sopranos and everybody expected the sopranos to win justifiably it was a amazing show as we all know but um yeah it was one of those nights

9:38Matt Belloni:The process of writing now must be different just because of the volume. And when you approach a show that you know is eight episodes or 10 even, how is it different than approaching a show that you know is going to be 22? Well, when it's 22... Do you space stuff out? Do you, you know... you get a little bit ahead. You start writing in May or June. You've just wrapped, really, in April. You take a month off and you start writing in May or June. And you're about four or five episodes ahead, so actors and the crew start to get a rhythm. But the production catches up with the scripts pretty fast.

10:23And then it quickly turns to one at a time as fast as you can. And you're lucky if you make your prep date by the last two or three episodes. And you do because you're required by guild rules to do so. Right. But you certainly want to get your hands on that script for a bit of a rewrite toward the end because they start to come out a little too fast and furiously.

10:47Matt Belloni:Earlier in your career, you would do deals where you'd be at Fox for four years. You would be at Warner's. You haven't done that in a while. Why don't you have a home studio? I feel like you're working everywhere. Is that because you want right project, right platform? Or is you have now the freedom to do that? What's behind the choice that you made to not be based somewhere? Yeah, it's a good question. And I go back and forth on the correct answer to that. And I'm not sure what is the correct answer. ultimately it's worked for me to be a free agent because it's so difficult to get any show to work these days because there's just so many of them and your best odds really are a melding of the passion of the creatives and the the the studio or the platform that's going to distribute your product.

11:47And with an overall deal, and if you're at one home, you may not be guaranteed that they're going to feel the passion for every particular project.

11:59Matt Belloni:Or they might push you into something that maybe you don't love. Correct. So as a free agent, it's a very inexact science, but I feel that when you birth a project, then you can sort of take the temperature of the buyers and you can get a sense of who shares that passion, who is maybe more ferocious and zealous for wanting to make it. And more times than not, we go with that buyer. You've worked at all the streamers now. Is there a different vibe or different feeling at the different streamers or between streamers and traditional TV outlets? Yeah, they're all different. I've enjoyed, I've had good experiences at almost all of them.

12:47Matt Belloni:Almost. Almost. Feel free to share the one that you didn't. Well, the first one with Amazon was a growth experience. Okay. Not Goliath. Goliath's a great show. It was Goliath? What went wrong on that one? Well, it was just new in the television-making days. Yeah, that was 2015, 2016, right around there? Something like that, yeah. So we just... It was fine in the end. We worked. it out but yeah and you've gone back there i have not yet oh you haven't but but i thought you have a project there may or may well we're we're working with them now but i'm not nothing has come to air yet okay so um but the regime changes sure been multiple since well the show turned out well i it did but it did yes uh is there a is there a platform you haven't worked you haven't worked at paramount is that right i have not no is that by design or just no i just um again it's Usually, I put the blinders on with the projects and say, where is the best home for it?

13:47There's nobody that I would rule out. I tend to probably favor legacy companies. Not that there are many of them left, but I feel, I've worked with all the tech companies and they're very smart people at all of them. But I probably feel more of a connection because I'm old with some of the legacy folks. I remember when I first came out to Los Angeles and being in a room with executives and studio heads and network heads, I felt there was a real camaraderie that we were all in it for the same reason. We wanted to make film, be it movies, and hoped that if you were lucky, you got to make something you were passionate about, and it would also be a good business decision for the company.

14:49That's not something that we get every day now. It feels like companies now start to look, what can we sell? And maybe by chance, we'll get to make a good product as well. So it's a little bit of the inverse. And you feel that in the room with executives? I do, yeah.

15:09Matt Belloni:Interesting. What makes a good TV executive? That's a hard question because it's a very inexact science. For me, and I say it probably selfishly from my end, but if I were going to step into the shoes of a platform or studio executive, I think my process would be find the best writers, creators that you can, try to land on a project that they're passionate about and let them go. Get out of the way. Get out of the way. Yeah. But you don't feel like a lot of the streamers get out of the way. Not enough. Hmm. No. Why do you think that is? uh it's a culture it's not that they're not smart yeah there's a lot of the same people that worked in tv before it's um it it's it's it's it's very hard to articulate the the uh if I were going to make an analogy um 25 years ago if you go into a restaurant and you didn't like the food you said I don't like the food and well what kind of food do you like okay well We'll try and bring something back that you like.

16:28Now, that same buyer would not just ask for something different. He would or she would want to go into the kitchen and pick out the seasoning. Sure. And show you how to cook it. And it's just a different culture. I've enjoyed all the executives that I've worked with on my most recent projects. but there is way more meddling than there used to be when I started. Again, in broadcast, remember when I was doing L.A. Law and then Ally McBeal and The Practice, Boston League, you were moving so fast and furious. Studios and networks did not get cuts of shows. They wanted you to give them a show that made the air date.

17:13So we would be making the show when it was done, when it was baked, We would get it to the network, and they would be grateful that they could make the delivery date, and they would air it, and we would all hope that it would be creatively successful. Now, the process is they want cuts way in advance. They want to weigh in on those cuts, and sometimes it can inure to the benefit of the show and sometimes not.

17:40Matt Belloni:It's interesting to hear that from someone like you. I would definitely be in the camp of get out of the way, but I hear you saying different. What's the one thing you learned from Stephen Bochco that you still hold with you today? Well, I learned many things from him, but probably the one that resonates with me the most is respect the audience. They're smart. Do not dumb down the plot so they can follow along. count on them to be ahead of you and right up to them, not down. Do you still adhere to that today? I do. Try. I've gotten dumber, but I still try to run. So let's talk a little bit about your current project, Margo.

18:28Matt Belloni:What attracted you to that? And why did it take 30-something years of marriage for you and Michelle to work together on a show? Well, the book drew us both to it. And we both wanted to do it. So we had to do it together. Separately? I read that you showed it to her. Yeah. The drawing power for, I think, all the producers and the talent involved was the book written by Rufy Thorpe. It was really, it's very original and affirmative. And for me, I always gravitate to strong character pieces and plots that allow you to mine the emotional centers of those characters. And this book did all of that. And I think everybody who read it, read it as fast as they could and wanted to do it as soon as they finished reading it.

19:19And with respect to Michelle, when I had read the character of Cheyenne, I could only think of her as doing it. And gave her the book and said, you should take a look at this. And she read it and connected with Cheyenne as well. And off we went.

19:36Matt Belloni:And how had that not happened before? There just hadn't been that kind of part? or have you purposely not worked? Most of our career, she was in movies and I was in television and the two didn't really intersect. Now, in this day and age, they do. Actors work both in both mediums. We just agreed that, you know, better to stay in our respective lanes. I'm pretty particular about my creative wants and so is she about hers. So why test it? but um but it really um it was um pretty easy at least from my end i mean you can see if you've watched the show and you see your work there's nothing to complain about she's pretty good she's very good in it i was uh i felt pretty lucky as a as a producer and writer to have an actor of that ilk saying the words this episode is brought to you by holiday inn by ihg everyone knows holiday Inn, right?

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21:23Matt Belloni:This gloriously off-kilter noir is an AFI television program of the year and one of 2025's most critically acclaimed shows. The Lowdown is available for your Emmy consideration on Hulu and Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Now, one of the themes of the show is OnlyFans and Elle's character doing OnlyFans. And it's sort of, it's an odd situation because I feel like OnlyFans has been around for a while, but we've now got two shows that are on the air right now in your show and euphoria that have storylines around only fans and sam levinson on euphoria has been criticized a little people saying it's exploitative that you know the that you're they're sort of objectifying sydney sweeney while also commenting your show hasn't avoided that and i feel like it's a it's the way that the material is approached did you have concerns at all about depicting this sort of way people are making money now uh no because it was so well done in the book i if you had come to me uh independently and asked me to do a show about only fans i would have daunted you would have said what is that yeah but but um i felt i had uh roofie holding my hand in terms of the research and the subject matter the characters were very uh well drawn And Eva Anderson came on to write the show with me.

22:48She kind of took custody of a lot of the OnlyFans content stuff because I'm a bit of a prude. So I was sort of... Don't watch Euphoria. Get my blinders on on the story and emotional architecture. But I let Eva run point with some of that nasty stuff. Sure. Yeah.

23:11Matt Belloni:we won't spoil anything is there a show of yours that you've done that felt got the shortest shrift that did not get a chance to be the show that it would have been sort of your most the cancellation you regret the most or that you were upset at most about well I don't really have much to complain about because most of my shows have done well but there's been a couple one and dones Yeah, and deserve to be one another. Oh, deserving. No, I don't. You know, you swing. You're not a fighter? You don't lay down on the train tracks? No, sometimes you swing and a miss, and it's not good. And I've done shows that aren't good, so when they get canceled, I say, okay, I get it.

23:52Matt Belloni:But there must be shows you think are great that got canceled. Well. Because I read that Harry's Law, for instance, with Kathy's Bates. That was the second biggest show on NBC at the time that got canceled. Yeah, and when you talk about how the world has changed a little bit, Like Margo is considered a pretty huge hit for Apple. And I think, I'm not sure of the data, but I think we're up to 2 million viewers after seven days. By the way, they will come and arrest you for saying that publicly. They do not reveal any data. It's okay. Harry's Law got canceled with 9 million viewers on one night. Oh, wow.

24:31Matt Belloni:That's how much the world has changed. So, and that show, um, that was NBC, that was NBC and that was built to go on. So, um, yeah, I have a little bit of regret that that got canceled, but, um, overall it was a net positive because I got to work with Kathy Bates for two years and we were proud of what we, we got to do and, um, some win and some don't. Is there a show of yours that you would most like to reboot? That seems to be the rage right now. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of reboots, and there's not one of my shows that I've ever watched after it's aired, believe it or not. I kind of look forward and don't look backward.

25:11Part of that is you're always tweaking, and once it's aired and done, you can't retweak it. So it's never a pleasant experience when I watch an old show because I'll think, oh, we could have zigged it here instead of zagged.

25:23Matt Belloni:Well, LA Law is streaming now. You can go back and— I know, and it's been enough years that I may not remember the plot that I could go back and watch those. You know this because the famous elevator scene is now a meme that people use, like walking into the elevator shaft. I know. You didn't write that, did you? I did write that. You did write that. I remember that. I was, I believe, like nine or ten years old. I'd have to check the year. I watched that live, and it traumatized me. I could not believe that happened on a TV show. I'm sorry. By the way, it was 67 episodes that you either wrote or produced in the year 2000.

26:03Matt Belloni:I don't recommend it.

26:09Matt Belloni:I have this as a question I wrote down and now I feel dumb asking it. You have not fooled around with any AI tools at all? Not yet, no. Are you interested in that? Well, I've used it for research. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's search. Yeah. But you haven't said, you know, write an argument between these characters in the voice of david e kelly no i haven't i should probably try it but i have not yeah i i did that with aaron sorkin this was a couple years ago was it and it and i said he said he did it for an episode of the west wing and it was god awful yeah and it was bad i imagine it would be bad yeah i'm not uh i'm wary like everyone is about AI and skeptical of it, but I don't think it's going to replace the good writing.

26:57I could be wrong. I think it will be a tool that we can use. I'm less worried about the use of AI than the misuse of it, because obviously there's a potential for abuse.

27:15Matt Belloni:Are you talking about like the world ending? I'm probably more wary of the people who are leading the charge with AI because if you look at the heads of state in our tech world, in the last two years, there seems to be no ethical line that they won't cross. and now I kind of think there is no ethical line. It's just the bottom line with them. But I do think it can be a useful tool, but only a tool. Sure. Do you like to hire lawyers as writers? I do, yeah. Why is that? Well, if they're good writers, not because they're a good lawyer. But you like that in the background. I do, yeah. It helps with an authenticity if you're working on a legal project.