Go Into The Story Interview: Amy Berg

My Q&A with a top Hollywood TV showrunner.

Amy Berg is a writer and TV producer whose credits include Leverage, Person of Interest, Eureka, Caper, Da Vinci’s Demons, and the current hit STARZ series Counterpart. I crossed paths with Amy several years ago the way many writers do nowadays: via Twitter. In 2017, I reached out to Amy to do an interview and what followed was a months’ long back and forth via email.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire Q&A:

Part 1: “The first movie I ever remember seeing was Empire Strikes Back. I was way too young to be in that theater, but my cousin was babysitting and wanted to see it. Holy shit, my mind was blown.”

Part 2: “During my first few months in town, a friend and I wrote a spec for Buffy. I didn’t even know what a spec was at the time. All I knew is that I loved the show and wanted to write for it.”

Part 3: “We got a small writers room together and started breaking stories. At that point the two-season order hadn’t yet been secured. That we earned with two more finished scripts and a pitch meeting in which Justin and I took everyone at Starz and MRC through a season’s worth of character arcs and story ideas.”

Part 4: “In television, a writer’s responsibilities don’t start and stop at the page, particularly if you’re the showrunner. Showrunning is only 20% writing. The other 80% is managing people, places, and things.”

Part 5: “There’s more rising and falling tension in a television show versus a film where it tends to be a more steady build to the climax.”

Part 6: “For me, there’s no set formula but you always want your characters to lead the plot rather than plot leading your characters. The way to generate story ideas organically is to think about what challenges to put in front of your characters to get them to make choices that reveal something about them.”

Amy is repped by UTA.

Twitter: @bergopolis

For nearly 200 Go Into The Story interviews with screenwriters, filmmakers, and Hollywood insiders, go here.