Interview (Part 1): Charmaine Colina

My interview with the 2024 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Charmaine Colina wrote the original screenplay “Gunslinger Bride” which won a 2024 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Charmaine about her creative background, her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl has meant to her.

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Charmaine reflects on her education and how writing a eulogy for a beloved family members convinced her she could be a writer.

Scott Myers: Charmaine, congratulations on winning the Nicholl Fellowship this year. That must have been quite exciting for you.

Charmaine Colina: Thank you. I’m still pinching myself. It’s like [laughs] it doesn’t feel real. Sometimes it feels very real and other times I feel like I’m in a dream, but thank you so much. Two and a half months in, I’m still super excited, and yeah, still trying to come down.

Scott: I’ve interviewed every Nicholl winner since 2012, and so the reactions are almost always the same, just a really great experience for them. Let’s get a little bit of a background here on you. I think originally you’re from the Philippines, is that right?

Charmaine: Yes, I was born there, and we moved here when I was a baby. I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley in a little town called San Gabriel. It’s just south of Pasadena. Yeah, that’s where my love for movies and TV all started.

Scott: When you were young, your bio mentions you liked Saturday morning cartoons.

Charmaine: Yes! Saturday morning cartoons definitely. Saturday was special. If it were like any other weekday, I didn’t want to get out of bed. Who wants to go to school? But on Saturday mornings, my sister and I would get up super early. This is back when they played the “Star‑Spangled Banner” in the morning before all the TV shows started. We’d eat Captain Crunch and watch Superfriends, Scooby-Doo, Josie and the Pussycats, and Bugs Bunny. We watched so much TV. We also watched a lot of TV with my grandma, who didn’t speak a lot of English. We bonded over “I Love Lucy.” That was her thing. I’ve seen every episode [laughs] of I Love Lucy, love them all. Watching TV with Grandma was how I got into Westerns too. We watched all the reruns of “Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza,” “The Rifleman,” “Big Valley,” “Wild Wild West,” you name it, I’ve seen them.

Scott: You got a BFA from UCLA and an MA from UCSB, but they’re different. One’s in art, one’s in education. Maybe talk a bit about your education.

Charmaine: I always had this creative part in me that wanted to make something, whether it was drawing or writing or building things. I was really leaning toward art in high school. And that was a challenge, trying to convince your immigrant parents, “Oh yeah, I’m going to go be an art major.”

It’s like immigrant children don’t do that, but somehow I convinced them, “All right, well, at least you’re at UCLA. You’ll probably change your mind when you’re there,” but I didn’t. I stuck with Art and was able to put my degree to use, post‑graduation. It was more of the creative thinking aspect of it.

I worked for a toy company and for children’s entertainment companies like Saban, creators of The Power Rangers, and Hanna‑Barbera and Cartoon Network and Universal. But it was more the consumer product side of entertainment. Brand management of licensed properties.

And I loved it. I had even thought about pursuing an MBA. But there was a period where I was laid off three times in less than seven years. Merger after merger after merger. It was so frustrating, and I thought, OK, I need something more stable, and so I considered teaching.

That’s when I decided to pursue a master’s degree in education and teaching credential. That was my solution to all the instability. [laughs]

Scott: You went to UCSB.

Charmaine: Yes.

Scott: Santa Barbara is so wonderful.

Charmaine: Amazingly beautiful. I lived in Carpinteria, two blocks from the beach. I miss it so much. Peaceful and quiet too. I didn’t realize how quiet it was in Carpinteria until I moved back to LA. Now, remember I grew up in LA, but having been gone for only four years for grad school, I became accustomed to the calm vibe of the Central Coast. I couldn’t even sleep when I moved back to LA. Every sound would keep me up at night. It took a while to get acclimated again.

Scott: I know that area pretty well, because I lived in Ventura for four years.

Charmaine: Oh, there you go!

Scott: “Carpinteria: The World’s Safest Beach.”

Charmaine: Exactly. That’s what they tout, the world’s safest beach and there are still no parking meters in the cute downtown area. But yeah, the Central Coast, oh my gosh, you get it, having lived in Ventura. The whole vibe, it’s just different from LA. Way more laid back. Even downtown Santa Barbara is mellow and relaxed. Coming back to LA was a shocker, even though I grew up here.

Scott: You were teaching for a while, but then you ended up at the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting. How did that transition happen?

Charmaine: It’s interesting how when something tragic happens in your life, you’ve got to just pick up your broken self and forge ahead. Can you take those broken pieces and turn them into something new? When my dad, Gerry, lost his battle with leukemia in 2007, my world fell apart. Dad was the one person in the world who “got” me — it was like we were cut from the same cloth. It was devastating for my family. And it was my responsibility as the eldest child to give his eulogy.

I knew this was the most important thing I was ever going to do with my life. I had to make the eulogy feel like him. He was smart, he was kind, he was generous. And so funny. Every day was April Fool’s Day growing up in our home. He was a jokester, and in my opinion, the inventor of the “dad joke.”

So, I put everything that I knew about love and kindness and humor into writing and giving Dad’s eulogy and it was amazing. It was beautiful. And transformational. After that experience, I realized that Dad had given me one last gift. I finally saw myself as a writer and a storyteller. It wasn’t just a side thing, like writing funny stories for my friends. There was more to this. There was something real here. This is something I could actually do.

Then a few years later, it still takes a while getting there because life happens, right? I thought, you know what? I’m going to take a screenwriting course. I love movies and TV, so screenwriting makes sense. I started at UCLA Extension by taking the first three basic screenwriting courses and I thought, wow, this is awesome. This format, this is different, but I love it!

I had so much to learn. Before starting those classes, I had barely even read a full screenplay, ever. But screenwriting was such a perfect fit. If I have stories to tell, the medium that I would want them to be brought to life in has to be movies or TV because that’s where my heart is. As a kid growing up in an immigrant family, the TV was always on. Always. Then on Friday and Saturday nights, we’d all pile into our old Plymouth and go to the drive-in movie. So many fun childhood memories at the San Gabriel Drive-in.

After the UCLA extension courses, I joined a writing group — ten years later, the group is still going. But I knew I needed to learn more. That’s when I entered the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting in 2019. I also needed real deadlines since procrastination has been my kryptonite since kindergarten — my mom will attest to that. During the eight-month program, you write two feature screenplays. The UCLA instructors are top‑notch and you’re with a small cohort of writers the whole time. Then COVID hit in March 2020, and we had to go online. I had just started Gunslinger Bride. I finished a rough first draft in August.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Charmaine reveals the inspiration for her Nicholl-winning script “Gunslinger Bride” and how her family members served as inspiration for some of the story’s key characters.

For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner since 2012, go here.