Interview (Part 1): Tara Tomicevic

My interview with 2021 Black List writer for her script “Thicker Than Ice.”

Tara Tomicevic wrote the screenplay “Thicker Than Ice” which made the 2021 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Tara about her creative background, her script, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to her.

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Tara discusses how her creative journey started with acting and has brought her to pursue screenwriting, especially TV.

Scott Myers: Let’s start at the beginning. Here’s a brief bio: “Tara is a Croatian war refugee who grew up in Italy and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley on a full scholarship.” That’s a lot going on there. Could you unpack that?

Tara Tomicevic: Sure. I was born in Croatia, or, Yugoslavia at the time. When I was four, there was a civil war. My dad saw it coming, and we got out of there just in time. We moved to Italy because it was next door and my dad had spent some time there.

We moved to Como, which has since been made famous by Mr. Clooney.

Scott: George Clooney, yeah, I was going to say.

Tara: We did not live anywhere near the villas that you’re picturing now [laughs]. We were there for six years. We moved to the States when I was 10, and even then we did a bunch of moving around. We lived in Buffalo, New York, for three weeks. We lived in Utah for a couple years. Then we settled in Sacramento, for middle and high school. I went to Cal for college, and then I moved to LA. I joke that I’ve lived in LA longer than I’ve lived anywhere else in my life and I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.

Scott: If you’ve been in LA for a month, they consider you a regular there.

Tara: I’m a veteran, then. [laughs]

Scott: What did your dad do?

Tara: I know it sounds like I’m an army brat, but I’m not. One time it was escaping a war, and one time it was the cliché American dream. It was very challenging for my parents to make a living in Italy, and to have faith that I would have opportunities as a non-born Italian. It was going to be tough for an immigrant kid. We came to America hoping that I would have options.

Scott: Have you got multiple passports at this point?

Tara: I do.

Scott: You go to Cal. What was your major there?

Tara: I was a Mass Communications major.

Scott: How did you end up in that major?

Tara: Truthfully, I was a teen actor, and I thought I was going to be an actor forever. And being the practical person that I am, I realized that what I major in was never going to make any difference. I just studied what I thought was interesting, which was this interpretation and analysis of media, its messages, and how the business of media works. It was a broad major and I was doing a bunch of Equity Theater on the side, which was where my heart was.

Scott: Did you move to LA to get into acting?

Tara: 100 percent. I couldn’t wait to get to LA. I wanted to move here when I was 12 and I just could not understand why my parents would not let me be a Disney Channel star. [laughs]

Though at the time all I wanted to do was act, I very quickly realized that the pursuit of acting was not for me. In the Bay, I did one Equity Theater show, and then I started getting offers and auditions all over the Bay. I very quickly realized that this was a much bigger pond, and it did not work that way.

I always felt like I was waiting for permission. I felt I had no control over my career at all. I interned at a bunch of casting offices, and I had a bunch of actor friends that were pretty successful, and I saw how much of it was out of their hands. That scared me.

I’m too proactive of a person to wait for the stars to align, and that’s how a lot of that profession felt to me. As a result, my friend Brandi Nicole, who was feeling just as miserable being an actor, and I were like, “Well, we’re auditioning for a lot of crap. We’ll at least write something that’s crap plus? At least we’ll be proactive. We’ll be productive. We’ll feel engaged in what we’re creating.” And we did that. She wrote a short. We Kickstarted it. Then we were like, “We’ve interned at casting offices, we know how that works. Why don’t we hire a casting director?” We paid $400 to hire a casting director to make three phone calls for us. We got incredibly lucky and got Chandra Wilson to want to be our lead.

Scott: This was “Muted”?

Tara: Yes. Then Malcolm Jamal Warner wanted to do it to be opposite her. Then we found ourselves on the set looking around like, this is amazing. It was truly amazing. The whole point was for us to create our own material as actors.

This was at the time when Brit Marling broke out for writing and starring in two Sundance features. That was the model that we were inspired by and were trying to emulate. Then I got to that set, and I absolutely loved acting opposite Chandra, it was a dream, but I also realized that acting had never been as fulfilling as bringing this thing together from nothing. The producing and the writing were so much more fulfilling. Then I made another short film, “Cuddle Party,” with Matthew Irving Epstein, and that went to Tribeca after “Muted” was acquired by HBO. I had to sit back and say, “The best things that are happening in my career, I created.” I made them happen. I didn’t wait for them to come to me, and I was also much happier in the process.

That was it. I stopped acting, and I started writing pilots and features. Then a few years later found myself the Showrunner’s Assistant on “Scandal.” That’s when everything changed, and I realized that TV was it. All the turns and the pivots, they make sense now.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Tara talks about two short films she wrote and produced, and how she discovered the true life story behind “Thicker Than Ice.

Tara is repped by Paradigm and Lit Entertainment Group.

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