Interview (Part 1): Kayla Sun

My interview with the 2023 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Kayla Sun wrote the original screenplay “Boy, Girl, Fig” which won a 2023 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Kayla about her creative background, her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to her.

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Kayla talks about her film school education and the inspiration for her Nicholl-winning script.

Scott Myers: Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

Kayla Sun: I grew up in Nanjing in China. I lived there for the first 18 years of my life.

Scott: Were you interested in writing at that point or was that later on?

Kayla: Yeah, I have wanted to be a writer ever since I can remember. Even as a child, I was writing novels just on papers. I struggled between whether I wanted to write novels, or do film, or draw manga, for a very long time, but I decided to go for film first.

Scott: So you liked movies?

Kayla: Yeah.

Scott: Do you remember some of the more memorable movies from your youth like things that stuck with you?

Kayla: Yeah, movies that have just astounding imagination, really stuck with me, like Spirited Away and Tim Burton’s Big Fish.

Scott: Yeah. Actually, for my blog, I featured Big Fish today.

Kayla: I saw that. I was going to read it.

Scott: You got a BA in art and economics at Vanderbilt. Had you relocated to the United States at this point or how did that work?

Kayla: I went to Vanderbilt for undergrad. I studied art and economics because at that point I still was making the decision what to pursue.

Scott: One creative and one maybe more practical?

Kayla: Yeah, but I also found economics to be interesting because I didn’t have knowledge of how money works.

Scott: Yeah, well, most screenwriters I know don’t.

[laughter]

Scott: Then you got the MFA program at the Film and TV Production at USC. Did you go directly from Vanderbilt to USC?

Kayla: No. After I graduated from Vanderbilt, I worked in New York, in a gallery in Chelsea because I also loved art. I made paintings and sculptures myself as well. I knew I wouldn’t stay long because I felt like I belonged with storytelling, but I wanted to see that part of the world because I spent so much time learning the craft of art.

I also worked a little bit in China for a film production company before my Master program started.

Scott: It says you were the Jeffery Jones Scholar in Writing. That sounds like a very special award.

Kayla: Oh yeah, that was a scholarship at USC. I just really enjoyed writing. I applied and they were wonderful and gave me the scholarship.

Scott: There’s a short film that you did that has gotten quite a few accolades. 2022, a film called “The Code of Family” that won the New York Women in Film award, right?

Kayla: Yeah.

Scott: Best female director in narrative short and four other awards and it’s currently screening so could you give us the background on this film? The Code of Family?

Kayla: The story is about an Asian grandma trying to learn computer science behind her family’s back. A few years ago, I learned about this grant, the Alfred P. Sloan Grant that would give you somewhere between $10,000 to $25,000 to make a short film that’s related to science or scientists. I really wanted to tell this story and applied and was lucky that I got the grant.

I was very close to my grandparents growing up, but I remember when we started to use smartphones and laptops, the elderly, they felt like they didn’t belong in that world and they were very ashamed to ask for things like a smartphone.

So they kept those wishes to themselves, and we only found out by chance and finally bought my grandparents smartphones, but the experience affected me a lot. The older generation also wanted to learn new technology but sometimes people don’t give them the opportunity to. People ignore the fact that you can learn new things no matter how old you are.

I read about this Japanese programmer. She was already in her 80s and she never touched a smartphone or laptop until she was 60 years old. And she taught herself how to code and then became a phone app designer. That was really inspiring to me and I decided to create this short story inspired by her. The characters are based on my own family.

Scott: Wow, that’s wonderful. You previously directed some short films.

Kayla: Yes.

Scott: Is that your goal: writer director?

Kayla: I would say writing comes first.

Scott: Speaking of writing, you have written a truly wonderful script: “Boy, Girl, Fig.” This is the script which won the 2023 Nicholl. Here’s the logline:

“Aden was born with a rare condition where he becomes invisible to people who love him. He struggles when he falls in love with his childhood best friend.”

What was the inspiration for this story?

Kayla: I just had it in my head. There’s no real inspiration for this. I had a lot of weird characters in my head, and this one I really liked and thought that he deserved a love story for himself.

Scott: So it started with Aden?

Kayla: Yeah, with this condition. It was actually the girl who was invisible to the people who loved her first. But after I wrote the first draft, I thought it wasn’t fun enough, so I switched the gender, and that became the screenplay now.

Scott: And was that the character, named Velare, right?

Kayla: Yeah.

Scott: That’s interesting. It wasn’t fun enough and so you switched the genders. You’ve got these two, they both have these unusual conditions. One is this invisibility, but the girl, Velare, as it turns out, can see into the people’s future, specifically their death. Where did that idea come from? Was that floating around as well when you were cooking this into your imagination?

Kayla: Sort of. The reason I thought about these characters, for Velare, it’s because I sometimes see into the future and if I see something possibly ends badly, I would refuse to start, especially with relationships. I think she represents that fear.

Aden has a similar thing, he represents people who, when they are loved, they want to hide and push away.

Scott: You say on page one: SUPERIMPOSE: A FAIRY TALE. Could unpack that for us.

Kayla: I had the story for a while. I drew a manga version of it. I wrote a script. Right now I’m writing the novel version of it. I think for some time I was trying to find a reference, like a comp for this story, and I couldn’t really find anything.

And at some point I realized that my story and the structure was more like fairy tales that I read when I was a little kid. So I thought, OK, yeah, actually it is a fairy tale to me. It’s a modern day fairy tale.

Scott: Yeah. It’s even reflected in character names. Eleven and October, Mr. Eleven, Mrs. June, Mr. Nine, Mrs. First…

Kayla: Yeah, they’re all numbers and months and weekdays.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Kayla shares insights into the two central characters in her script “Boy, Girl, Fig”.

Kayla is repped by Bellevue Productions.

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