It's really cool to be part of history, but it's also really exhausting and boring

Welcome to another edition of the Fred & Dan Blog! Our mission with Fred&Dan Productions and this blog has always been to make people think in ways they’ve never done before - to spark creativity and facilitate conversation in unconventional ways. A place where you can open up your email and have a bit of creativity to take with you into your day or week!  

This is another edition of our interview series, where we chat with entrepreneurs and creatives to learn how “they done did it.” We want to find the secret sauce that makes them successful in their field to inspire you and give you the crazy notion that you can do it too.

Today we're talking to Rose McAleese, a fellow writer and creative who is currently on strike. This was such a great conversation that we decided to put it into two parts. You can listen to the full version of part one or read an edited version below. We're pretty excited about this one. Buckle up, bitches. 

F&D: Thanks again for doing this and for hopping on with us this morning. Welcome. 

Rose: Thank you so much. 

F&D: To get things started, we'll just have you introduce yourself. Tell us who you are, what you do and all that fun stuff. 

Rose: Tight. Hi. My name is Rose. I'm a Scorpio. I am a Cancer Rising. Just kidding. That's the most LA way to start anything. My name is Rose McAleese. I am originally from Seattle, Washington. I am currently living in Los Angeles as well as Seattle and sometimes in Atlanta. I am a writer, and I am hella useful. That's what it says on my business cards. 

F&D: Love that. So do you want to just start with kind of telling us about your background, what you do specifically, maybe what you've worked on, and then how you got into writing professionally?

Rose: Yeah. Okay. So it all started, I was born on Halloween, which pretty much set the tone for my existence. I was raised in an Irish bar and tourist trap Pike Place market in Seattle. So I was raised by an Irish man and a feminist. writer. So I was kind of forced to be a writer. Like, even if I wanted to avoid it, it was just naturally in my DNA.

I started my writing journey doing poetry. I was really into spoken word poetry. I did that for 10 years. I competed, I traveled, I taught. I started when I was 13 and then by the time I was like 24, I was kind of like in a weird way burnt out. So I kind of stepped away from poetry for a while. And then I was a journalist for a short amount of time, where I was working for a magazine in Seattle, Washington called City Arts magazine. So I did that for a really long time and then I fell into screenwriting, but in between all three forms of writing, I did not have an original form of education.

I barely graduated high school.I graduated with like a 2.3 or 2.5. Could not get into a college to save my life. In that college time, I found what I like to call alternate forms of education, where there was writing circles I applied for, writing programs that I attended,  just anything I could get my hands on and make my own alumni system or own networking system, even though I didn't have the means of a college education.

And then on a whim, I got into this program called Hedgebrook, which I highly recommend everyone to look into. It's an all women's focus, writing retreat. There's an amazing group of humans that have gone there, Janet Mock to Felicia D. Henderson to Gloria Steinem. So many people have gone there - Amy Tan.

You just basically are Virginia Woolfin’ it. There's a cabin in the woods and you just live in the cabin. There's little to no internet and you just, you just by yourself going crazy and writing. And it's like pretty magical.

At one of those programs, I met my then future boss, Felicia D. Henderson, and she told me to apply to a program at Universal Pictures called the Universal Pictures Emerging Fellowship Program. I applied for it on a complete whim, did not think I was going to get it, somehow scammed my way successfully into that program and that was basically the closest form of education that I have ever experienced.

I learned everything I could about screenwriting, the business side, the creative side, the bullshit side, the beautiful side, just kind of all in this jam packed year intensive. And then after that, it kind of like leaning on to that networking system that I kind of cultivated before the program.

Using that, I turned those people into mentors as well as job opportunities. I became a WGA trainee, which is the Writer's Guild of America trainee, for a TV show on BET called The Quad. I did that for a season and a half, and then after that there was a bunch of other, like smaller shows that I worked on that I got paid to write those shows, but those shows never saw the light of day.

Then I worked on some smaller stuff. I worked on a show called Sneakerheads for Netflix. And then currently I worked on season two, three, and once the strikes over season four of, STARS TV show, BMF. 

F&D: That's so cool. We love hearing people's different paths of how they got into the industry. Cause it's like there's never no one right way, one right answer. And so it's great hearing something like completely different of how you could just kind of take your fate and your destiny into your own hands. 

Rose: I'll be honest, though. Did I know I was doing that? Absolutely not. Like, it wasn't until, like, you know what I mean?

It's like, you're like, “oh fuck, I did put that shit in my own destiny.” But I think that's like the unfortunate thing when someone is in the beginning of their career is like, I could tell you, these are the things you should do, but you won't realize that that's actually what you did until you step back and you're like, “Oh, my life has become evidence.

So look at someone's career you really admire and then look at someone else's career you really admire. And then just kind of from those two sources, create your own original path. 

F&D: Each week on our blog, we do a little blurb about the strike. We try to keep people updated, especially because a lot of our readers aren't people that are necessarily as involved in the industry as we are. We'd love to get your perspective as someone who is working on a show, as a writer in a writer's room. How does that affect you personally?

Rose:  Yeah, I will say, I will speak for my own personal experience for sure. But one of the great examples of how to describe the strike to someone who's like, “I have no idea what's going on,” is a podcast by the name of Talk Easy by Sam Fragoso. And the guest is Alex O'Keefe. And Alex is currently running to be a member of the WGA. 

For me personally, the strike is very strangely timed because my job on BMF Season 3 ended April 24th. So I knew that no matter what from April 24th until about mid August, I wasn't going to have a job.

Well. As we are recording today it is September 4th. I still do not have a job. So I'm allowing myself to be a little freaked out, but I have a little different experience than some people. Because I have a friend, her first writing job ever, her first show that she was ever going to be on, the first day of work was supposed to be May 3rd.

I feel like a lot of Millennials and Gen Zs who are probably reading this will understand when I say this, it's really cool to be part of history, but it's also really exhausting and boring.

My main thing that people need to realize about the strike is, this isn't rich people complaining about being rich. This is everyday people complaining about not being paid enough to take care of their family and have a livable wage in a city like Los Angeles. Not only was Hollywood affected by the pandemic, all industries were affected, we were affected by it in a very different way because the writers were the first to get cut out of a lot of the things.

There's so many people that are working in these labor unions that just do not get the respect or the financial compensation that they deserve. I think it's really great that we're also talking about this on Labor Day weekend.

Also, fun fact that I like to point out to people, we are on day, I think it's like 100 and we're almost at 120, I believe. 

F&D: No, we're past that, I'm pretty sure. It's like one, it's like 126...

Rose: Okay, then this is going to be worse… the amount of money we've asked for them to pay they have lost 20 times over. The amount of money that we're asking is what Disney makes in a day at their theme parks. So it's all these things where it's just like, they look like idiots. And one of the things that I also think is upsetting is that they're blaming the consumer.

Oh, like we have to charge you guys more to do streaming because you guys are sharing passwords. And it's like, no, Netflix, you're the only studio that doesn't have another form of income. Disney has theme parks. Apple has Apple products. Amazon has Amazon storefront. Uh, Netflix, what do you have? You just do streaming.

You don't have another form of revenue. How are you going to blame the consumer when you yourself just have a bad business model? Buy a product that helps you make money, but do not blame the consumer. 

So that's a long winded way of answering your question about the strike, but I'm doing fine.

I think that mentally, I'm pissed off. It's exhausting and daunting having to have this conversation every 10 to 15 years, right? Like the fact that these negotiations happen with the unions all the time and that we have to continuously have this conversation. 

There are a lot of elements that go into making a movie or a TV show. The one element that starts it all is the story. Is the writer. The greatest magic trick Hollywood ever played on us is making it feel as though the writer does not matter. The writer is the true fucking, the heart of it, the blood of it, it's the thing. 

And then everyone gathers around. It's this beautiful thing when you make a movie or when you make a TV show  you see all these people that just come together to rally behind the writer, behind the story. And now you have these people being like, yeah, we don't need you.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's Fred and Dan Productions interview series. We'll see you back here for part two. Same time, same place. Okay, bye.