Interview (Part 1): Sean Harrigan

My interview with 2023 Black List writer for his script First You Hear Them.

Sean Harrigan wrote the screenplay First You Hear Them which was named to the 2023 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Sean about his creative background, writing his Black List script, and the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day this week, Sean talks about how his background in acting influences his writing and the inspiration for the script First You Hear Them.

Scott Myers: I believe you have an acting background.

Sean Harrigan: I do. Yeah, I actually went to school and got my BFA and MFA in acting. That became a lot of the focus during school. Though I was always writing and doing screenwriting on the side.

Scott: Where’d you go to school?

Sean: So I went to UCSB, UC Santa Barbara for undergrad and then UC Irvine for grad school.

Scott: Did you study screenwriting at all in the BFA or the MFA programs?

Sean: It was mostly something that I did on my own. I took one screenwriting class when I was in school before starting the BFA — a screenwriting course that was taught by Jon O’Brien at Santa Barbara City College.

I took it with one of my friends, who’s also a writer and was also on the Black List a few years ago. We ended up writing our first two scripts together, which should probably never see the light of day. They were ones that we had our training wheels on for and gave us practice there.

Then in school, I had a choice before I went to UCSB. I was planning on doing a creative writing major, but then a roommate of mine had been in the acting program there. That felt very exciting and engaging, so I decided to pursue that.

The schooling for grad school or undergrad when you’re in an acting program, those can be very intensive. They can be very focused, but whenever I had time, whenever I wasn’t in rehearsals or in a play, I would be working on screenplays.

I wrote two on my own during the course of school. Then one of them, once I finished school, ended up placing in a contest. That gave me momentum with screenwriting. At the same time, I realized for me, there was a difference between being an actor in school versus being an actor out in the industry.

It’s such a different kind of feel when you have your next part guaranteed for you. There was something about the ease and ability for screenwriting where you just need yourself and your computer. That’s the fundamental thing of practicing the art, whereas there’s so much that goes into just being able to try to get on set or in a play or to fund your own work. There’s so much work that goes into it ahead of time.

Scott: I could never face what the actors have to face, that personal kind of rejection with auditions and such.

Sean: My old manager said with screenwriting, they don’t judge you on your cover page. With acting, you can be the best actor for whatever that means, but not be the person who gets cast because you’re not the right fit for the role. There’s elements of that with writing. Having the right concept, the right relationships. But it’s different. The work stands a little bit more on its own.

Scott: It’s actually what I was going to ask you because I’ve actually known quite a few actors who have gone into writing. What are some of those transferable lessons you learned as an actor that you can then bring to your writing? What have you discovered in doing that?

Sean: I think a lot of it is under the surface, but at least for what I’ve been able to discern, there is a sense of having to put yourself in the character’s shoes and figure out the logic and emotional logic of why they do certain things.

You’ll sometimes watch something and you’ll go, “Oh, I know they wanted to get this person to this end result, but I don’t know why the character did this.”

I think I have some understanding of, “OK, if I am putting myself in this character’s shoes and thinking like they are thinking, what is the logic that gets them up to this plot point or this event. And if that doesn’t connect, how do I find that connection in a way that feels organic to what their experience would be? How do I connect to what that experience would be?”

Scott: You’re speaking my language because I wrote a book on character‑driven screenwriting and storytelling. I always tell my students every scene, you’ve got to do two things. You’ve got to find where are they emotionally in it? When they enter the scene, what’s their emotional state? What are their goals?

In particular for the Protagonist, you’ve got to be where are they in terms of their arc and how is it seen affecting them. It’s all character stuff.

Sean: Yeah. It’s really a mix of the connecting with them internally. Then also having that bird’s-eye view of where you’re trying to get them to and how that tells the story both plot‑wise and thematically.

Scott: There’s nothing worse than watching something and a character does something that you know the only reason they do it is because the writer needed them to do it.

Sean: Yeah. I think you can feel when it’s not organic to the character’s choices, which isn’t to say that as a writer, I sit down and just follow my character wherever they want to go, though I’ve always been tempted to try that.

I am usually thinking of it from within the structure of the concept and plot and themes. But I if I have these beats plotted for them, I still have to find out what connects them from beat to beat, not just what connects my plot points.

Scott: That’s a good segue into your Black List script, “First You Hear Them,” because the characters certainly are presented with multiple choices along the way.

They could do this or they could do that. Every single one, I have to say, was completely plausible based upon the characters and where they were in the moment.

Sean: Thank you.

Scott: Here’s a logline for your script:

“A group of 20‑somethings, try the quote-unquote ‘perfect’ drug for the first time. It’s only when they come down from the euphoric high that the hauntings begin. First you hear them, then you see them, then they come for you.”

What was the original inspiration for this story? Was it like an a‑ha moment where the concept just struck you, or is this something that evolved over time?

Sean: A little of both. This was the first horror that I had written. Most of my stuff has been in genre or sci‑fi space.

What I like about horror, and I think this is true for sci‑fi, too, but especially horror, is that you can really explore interesting thematic or social ideas behind the stories because so much of horror that can lend itself to that kind of metaphor.

With this, I said, “Looking at the prevalence of addiction, especially with the opioid epidemic and beyond, what would a horror movie about drugs look like?”

One of the first elements of it was “OK. You take a drug, and you have hauntings happen to you.” Then one of the a‑ha moments was shifting that and saying, “Oh, actually, what if it’s when you stop taking the drug? That’s when you have the hauntings.”

That felt a little more interesting and also organic to the metaphor that a lot of addiction can stem from trying to keep the things that haunts us at bay. And then to make that literal, in the story, you can keep these hauntings away as long as you keep taking more of the drug. That’s when it clicked in.

It went through a lot of different variations from that. I explored, “Where could this live?” I had an idea that was a post‑apocalyptic version of this, then latched on to the idea of more of these kids going through it.

Actually, the first scripted draft of this was much more “Trainspotting.” It was looking at a mix of Trainspotting meets “It Follows” or something like that. Having these people who are in this really intense state of addiction from the start and going through that experience.

Along the way when it got some reads, someone had suggested, “What if you said changed it over to people who are a little younger, fresh out of college, maybe somebody who’s first trying the drug for the first time, making it a little bit more relatable and almost playing with that DARE, “Reefer Madness” type of fear? That’s when it shifted into what it is now.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Sean discusses the challenges of writing his first horror screenplay.

Sean is repped by Empirical Evidence.

Twitter / X: @swharrigan

For my interviews with dozens of other Black List writers, go here.