Interview (Part 1): Laura Kosann

My interview with the writer who not only was named a 2021 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting recipient, but also had two scripts make the 2021 annual Black List.

Laura Kosann made quite a splash in Hollywood in 2021. In November, she was named a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting winner for her original screenplay An Ideal Woman. Then in December, that script plus another screenplay Laura wrote (From Little Acorns Grow) were named to the annual Black List. If that weren’t enough, the good news continued when in April 2022, it was announced that Laura had been hired to adapt the female-driven comic book Mercy Sparx for MGM.

Laura was kind enough to carve out some time for us to talk about her background, the craft of screenwriting, and her screenplay An Ideal Woman.

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day this week through Saturday, Laura reveals how she discovered screenwriting and how she went about learning the craft.

Scott Myers: Where and when did you start to develop an interest in storytelling and writing?

Laura Kosann: I always grew up watching old movies. I was always playing movies in my head growing up, creating them from scratch and I always loved to write. In whatever medium that meant. I just always knew I wanted to build stories and worlds.

And then in high school, I got an internship working at The Public Theater’s Delacorte Theater in Central Park, for their Shakespeare in the Park program. That’s where I got really into plays. I would read them by the metric ton. I lived at the Drama Bookshop; I’d spend hours there reading. At night before bed I wasn’t reading magazines I was reading Tom Stoppard and Edward Albee and Paula Vogel. And during that internship, I would also sit in and watch the rehearsals. I absolutely loved watching the directors work with actors. Just…the process. And these were incredible actors — Lauren Ambrose and Oscar Isaac as Romeo and Juliet. Michael Stuhlbarg as Hamlet. Jonathan Groff as Claude in Hair. That was a magical experience to be blessed to have.

So in general, theater and playwriting was just a big part of my foundation as a writer. It still is. And I think it’s one of the reasons my stories are very character-driven. It wasn’t the traditional screenwriting background. I was an English major in college and I think that’s also why I always bring something a little literary to the table in my screenplays! The same way that I love plays, I love books. All of that culminated into who I am as a storyteller.

Scott: I think playwriting is a terrific grounding for writers. I remember interviewing a writer who had a background of playwriting, and he said, “If I was given a scene with two people in a room, and I could make that scene interesting, I felt like I could do pretty much anything.”

Laura: It’s so true. Theater is this living, breathing thing. I remember when I first saw August: Osage County on Broadway, it took my breath away. I read that play so many times. And everything else Tracy Letts’ wrote. I am that person that would go see The Ferryman ten times if I could. With theater, you’re sitting in the audience and you cannot escape what’s in front of you. You are part of it with the actors. It’s this constant ever-changing, living and breathing thing.

In high school, I wrote a play called “The Sellout” that I submitted to this drama competition in our high school. I got third place, and it meant that I got to direct my play, and it got to be shown to the school. I remember watching the performance and seeing my words being read by two actors. Hearing the audience laugh. It was this feeling of, “Wow, I can bring stories and characters to life that are inside of my head. This is all I want to do.”

Scott: My first agent is a manager now. He’s out of LA, but he opened an office in New York over 10 years ago with the idea that he was going to look for young playwrights.

As the so-called Second Golden Era of TV emerged, he figured playwrights would be valuable because they know how to write characters and they know how to write dialogue, both staples of traditional television storytelling. It really worked out well for him. He brought a lot of playwrights to LA to work in TV.

Laura: Yes I feel like even when I have meetings, producers have said, “We love playwrights, because they bring this different thing to the table. We’re looking for playwrights.”

I love that The Black List expanded into theater. When I look back on a lot of my journals growing up, they have pages and pages of dialogue that goes absolutely nowhere. [laughter] I didn’t know how to stop myself at that age. I was young. I was obsessed with dialogue and characters. That was always where I started and where I think I still start from a bit.

Scott: I tell my students, I say, “Dialogue is conversation with a purpose.” Sounds like your journals were more just conversation.

[laughs]

Laura: Conversations that would never end. They would just go. They might have sounded snippy and good…but you’ve got to have a purpose at some point.

Scott: You mentioned your sister, Danielle. You two started something called The New Potato. Is that still an ongoing thing?

Laura: It’s not, when Covid hit we both made the decision to do the stuff we have just always wanted to do. And it ended up being a great thing. We love working together, but Danielle is an incredible artist. She’s an amazing illustrator, painter, photographer. She started being able to do that full time. And I got to do now what I want to do full time. Danielle knows better than anyone that all I’ve ever said is “All I want to do is write and direct movies and tv.”

We started The New Potato when I was at Showtime Network at the time in New York City as a production assistant. Danielle and I had this idea for a website that was basically the world through the lens of food. It was supposed to be just for fun, centered around the New York food scene. But it ended up taking off!

The reason that experience was so wonderful is it allowed me to write and direct these comedic videos that got real wonderful exposure. They were short video sketches that were on the zeitgeist.

And then at some point I had this idea for a Christopher Guest-esque mockumentary about social media influencers. Because that was very much the world we were in. And I wrote and directed that movie.

Scott: The Social Ones.

Laura: Yes. That was the culmination of that whole experience I’d say.

Scott: The one little piece of the puzzle here I want to figure out is the screenwriting part of it. You did the playwriting. I’m assuming you wrote short stories, you wrote essays, you did the videos. Where did the screenwriting thing come into play and how did you actually learn to write screenplays?

Laura: I hate to say I’m self-taught because I really can’t stand how that sounds (laughter)…but I am I guess? I never went to school for it. The same way that I was living at the drama book shop reading plays, I started to buy every single screenplay that I could find. Now, it’s more readily available online to find scripts. When I was younger, it wasn’t. In my bookshelf, I still have the book that has all the Coen Brothers screenplays in it. A big book of Paddy Chayefsky screenplays. To find those gems felt like such a big deal at the time.

What’s amazing now is you can go online, and find everything from Jojo Rabbit to the pilot episode of “Killing Eve.” And the way I learned is I’d read scripts while watching what I was reading onscreen. I’d watch how it all would translate onscreen. And somehow that taught me. It’s an incredible exercise I’d suggest to any screenwriter. And that’s also why early scripts are my favorite. I don’t like when what’s on the screen matches exactly what’s on the page. I like to see what changes were made. Because then I like to think about why, and how those changes and those decisions can inform what decisions I make as a screenwriter.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Laura discusses what the origin was for her screenplay An Ideal Woman and two pivotal characters in the story.

Laura is repped by CAA and Heroes and Villains Entertainment.

Twitter: @LauraKosann

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

For my interviews with Black List writers, go here.