Anne Flett-Giordano Interview: Inside Sitcom Writing & TV Comedy (Part 1)

In this engaging episode, we sit down with acclaimed sitcom writer and producer Anne Flett-Giordano for an inside look at the world of television comedy.

Best known for her work on hit shows like Frasier, Anne shares her journey into TV writing, along with valuable insights into how sitcoms are created, developed, and brought to life. From the writer’s room to the production process, this conversation offers a behind-the-scenes perspective on what it takes to succeed in comedy television.

In Part 1 of this interview, Anne discusses the creative process, the importance of collaboration, and the skills needed to write compelling, funny, and memorable content for television.

If you’re interested in sitcom writing, TV production, comedy writing, and behind-the-scenes Hollywood stories, this episode is packed with insight, experience, and inspiration.

Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method

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Transcript

Speaker 2 1:08

Hi, this is Larry Wilson. Thanks again for joining me for another episode of How to Talk to Humans. This is a very special episode today because I have an extraordinarily esteemed guest. She's one of those behind the scenes people, a powerhouse of creativity. She has a new wing built on her home to house the voluminous number of Emmys she has won for her work in television sitcom writing. She's um indefatigable. She just writes and writes and writes. She's incredible. You've seen her work, you've enjoyed her work as far back as Kate and Allie, the hit television show. I think of that as a breakout experience for her. She may tell us that there were other things that she felt were more formidable. But uh she went from that to the incredible, long-running Fraser as a producer, and she'll tell us how that also fits into the concept of producer-writer. And then more recently, she did a long stint on the hit show Mom, where she brought her incredible gifts there. But we also hear about her amazing background in science fiction writing that even she doesn't know what the heck I'm talking about. But we'll we'll find out shortly. Please welcome my very special guest, Anne Flet Giordano. Hi, Larry.

Larry Wilson 3:03

Hi, how are you? Well that sounded really silly. Hi, I'm fine.

Anne Flet Giordano 3:08

No, it sounded good. Of course, there should be laughter. Laughter should be the order of the day when you're talking to someone who has spent their entire life writing stuff that makes people laugh. For which I was very lucky because it was lots of fun.

Larry Wilson 3:26

Now, I'm hoping that people who are listening to this are regular listeners to this podcast, because what you just heard there was a very interesting example of being self-effacing. That of course is a very important element in Wilson method training. This woman, who has five Emmys to her credit, just said she was very lucky. I would dispute that. I think there's some luck involved. In all of show business, luck plays a factor. But I can also tell you, I remember way, way back before she was famous, her incredible work ethic, writing, writing, writing. And there's a lot of writers I've met in my life who have problems who are blocked sometimes and they can't. This woman, Ann Fled Giordano, have you ever had any kind of writer's block?

Anne Flet Giordano 4:27

Um, well, yes and no, I suppose, but when television you're just faced with if I don't write something, he'll be dead air for half an hour. So some we always used to say that about uh a third of the episodes were great, and a third of the episodes were okay, and a third of the episodes were just on the air. And um that that's true of most shows, I think.

Larry Wilson 4:57

Well, that again is very modest of you. Those of us who are fans of these shows, Frasier is almost played continuously in my household, it's on all the time. And my son, from when he was very small, would be quoting stuff from Fraser all the time. And he I consider it like introducing him to the classics of literature. He sees what makes great sitcom writing, he sees when the characters' personalities are so clearly delineated that you can get a laugh off of them raising an eyebrow or uh just pausing before they answer because we the audience know them so well. Um, so it's very modest of you to say a third of them were good. We think they were all good, but I I understand what you're saying. Let me ask you something I bet no one's ever asked you before about this kind of work. One of the reasons I wanted you here on this podcast is because when we communicate, it's because we have some message or something we're trying to get across. Now, I know that you're a very pragmatic woman, you're a professional woman with an incredible work ethic, and so I'm sure you approach this like a job. This is my job to write these episodes of this sitcom. There's something very clever about the writing. For example, I love all your stuff, but on Frasier, the writing is extremely clever. And I wonder if you can speak to that idea of did you did you go into episodes thinking, oh, this is the unspoken subtext that we want to get across here? Or did you approach it like, nope, we want to start with a funny premise. This is just a funny premise. We don't even know what it's about yet. Tell me about that.

Anne Flet Giordano 7:10

Most all the stories come from writers' lives. And we would come in and just tell stories about things that happened to us and translate that into a show. So almost everything you see is things that actually happen to someone in the writer's room, and then you build on from that. And once the I and also I will also say about Fraser, I'm very good friends with with the creators, David Lee and Peter Casey and um David's angel is gone now. But they were all terrific guys, and they allowed you to be smart and they allowed you to do what we called ten percenters, which meant we thought, well, ten percent of the audience will get this joke, and that was okay. And then you also had, you know, somebody hit somebody in the head. So you had something for everybody. But I would say, especially on Fraser, uh, because of the nature of it, a family kind of dynamic, um, almost every episode was based on someone in the writer's room. That was true of mom, not that we were all alcoholics, but you could be. But we certainly we certainly did our best. Um and I did. Um but but what you're saying about, you know, once people love the characters, and I certainly didn't create Fraser, the Charles Brothers did, that was unsuited. Um which Peter and David came from. But um once people like the characters and if the actors are terrific, um David Hyde Pierce, one of my favorite people in the world, um at the Emmys, he won an Emmy and he said, I want to thank the writers because without them, and then he was just quiet. And I thought that was the sweetest thing an actor ever did. I uh and I I work with great actors, I mean just really nice people, Alice and Jenny and and Kelsey and everybody. But I I would say the same back to him because those eyebrows, what gets you through is the third of the episodes that we don't think are really our best work, is good acting. And David Hyatt Pierce is the one who can raise an eyebrow and that is is why you're laughing because he knows when to do it and he knows how to do it, and it it really they save your ass. So that's why a third of those episodes you still enjoy, but we don't think they were our I enjoy all of them, my family enjoys all of them.

Larry Wilson 9:42

Uh I know so many people who quote lines from the show because they think they're so funny. But I want to say, you know, you brought up a really interesting thing there because it clearly is collaborative. The actors have nothing to say unless somebody writes lines for them. And by the same token, the writers need really skilled actors to be able to bring these lines to life. So it's kind of synergistic. Like the the when you get that kind of combination, great writers, great actors, the writers are developing these characters so clearly. We know that uh that Niles character is a feat. You know, we know he's never done anything uh macho or manly. And so any suggestion of it, we're gonna start laughing already. Even if it's even if it's not a joke, just a setup is gonna start us laughing. In that same way, I would imagine. I mean, uh David Hyper is an incredible actor. Obviously, you've made that character so clear to him that he can really build on that and take that ball and run with it. And and you also said something I don't want to gloss over because I think it's so important uh vis-a-vis this podcast. And just said that all of the stories are coming out of real people's lives in the writer's room. Um this is so important because I think a lot of people think that there's some kind of weird, uh heavily intellectual, detached brain machine that just comes up with these things. But you're saying that these come from real people's lives.

Speaker 11:38

On a show like Fraser, absolutely. On a show like Futurama, no. What there's no total brilliance.

Speaker 2 11:45

But there's no there's no uh one-eyed recyclops women in real life? All right, be that way.

Anne Flet Giordano 11:52

But certain things are just very inventive and they're that by nature, but um but on a show like Fraser, yes, they did all come from our lives. On a show like mom, they must have come from our lives. Um but uh in terms of communication, one of the best things that makes the show good is that the writers and the actors are friends and on the same page and like each other because on a Frasier we stopped when we did rehearsals, we stopped after every single scene and talked to each other and said, What did you like in this? What did you not like in this? And they learned to trust you and they learned that if we could see it didn't work, if it didn't work, we were gonna give them something different tomorrow. And that kind of trust and that kind of uh communication is really important. Um, there were times when we were tired. I remember once when we were just it was about three in the morning and we were just all uh you know, the train was off the track. So we we just threw in a blow from last week and we knew the actors would know that means the end of this show and the joke. And we knew the actors would know that that meant something else was coming, but we were exhausted and they're cool with that. And that kind of thing, and they would let us know what what they liked and what they didn't and what worked for them. So the development of the characters is a it it's really, yeah, symbiotic. It takes two. It's not just you telling them who they are or them telling you who they want to be.

Larry Wilson 13:23

Oh my god. Do you know who's a genius, Sam?

Speaker 13:26

Uh Albert Einstein?

Anne Flet Giordano 13:29

No, me. I'm a genius. Do you know why?

Larry Wilson 13:33

Um, well, I always thought so.

Anne Flet Giordano 13:38

Why why do you think so? I think so because I was smart enough to ask you to be on this podcast. That's what shows my genius. Because you just said stuff that I would venture to say nobody's ever heard before in any interview anywhere. Now, you may think, what? What did I say? But you said something so fundamentally important to the power of expert communication. I didn't know this, Anne. I didn't know that there were writers who would stop after every scene in rehearsal and talk with the actor. I didn't know that. I thought they'd hand in the pages, they'd go and do it, and then maybe after it was all done, some would say, Do anyone have any ideas? But that level of communication is clearly responsible for such a superior product that you produce. That was um actually, well, a couple of shows I worked on did work that way, but that was mostly Fraser. On Mom, um, we would they would we would let them do the entire rehearsal and then we would talk. So it it varies between shows. Um but again we were really good friends with the actresses. They were all terrific, they were really fun. Um Jamie Presley's really good. I mean, we just had an incredible staff uh on uh on a Ferris was terrific, and Allison is just incredible. Um we had a different thing, so that but that was Chuck Flory's choice, and we would uh what just watch the entire thing and then go back. But every night you do a rewrite. I mean, there's you're there, your life is you have to have a really compassionate spouse because you do a rewrite every night.

Larry Wilson 15:30

Um where do you quit where do you purchase these spouses?

Anne Flet Giordano 15:34

Where do you help to have somebody else is in the industry because they understand and they're used to working too.

Larry Wilson 15:42

Well, you're saying it it sounded like it was mandatory to have one, and so I thought if someone's listening who wants a career, they're gonna have to go out and get an understanding spouse, which is of course a good thing to have. Um everything you're saying, Ann, of course, only proves how smart I am for asking you to be on the show. Um what you just said that you take for granted, and I've I've talked about this before on this podcast, when someone's an expert, they frequently take for granted their expertise. They think, well, yeah, it's no, I do this all the time, it's no big deal. Everyone knows this, except we don't know. When you just said you do a rewrite every night, do you realize, Anflet Giordano, that the majority of people watching these shows think that you write a script, hand it in, and then you're done. They they just think, well, you're done. In in Wilson method, I'm always telling them, because we're talking about spoken as well as written communication, I'm always telling them that writing is rewriting. And that the more you rewrite, the better it gets. And to be able to see people perform your material is an incredible benefit, obviously. You see, oh that worked, that didn't work, oh I can see how to make this funnier, oh I'm not so sure about that. Or am I putting words in your mouth?

Anne Flet Giordano 17:12

No, that is that is true. Um a couple of things I will address. Um the first is I'm really shy. I think a lot of writers are, and a lot of writers actually wish they were performers. So that's that's the two really sides of it. Um even when I was in grade school, I I I remember in sixth or seventh grade or something, I started writing little plays for the class or something, but but other people would perform them because I was shy. And uh that it's just a great way and it really does it when you see it done, it it really does tell you what works and what doesn't. Usually if everybody in the writer's room laughs at a joke, it's gonna work. Sometimes everybody laughs and on the floor it doesn't work and you're surprised. But that is what tells you. So I learned at a very age that young age that the way to get across to people, communicate with people, was not that I was going to be a great communicator, like I don't think I'm great on this podcast. But um but that other people like, well, if you had David Hyde Pierce just doing what I told him, you think he was really good. Um I would think David still I have.

Larry Wilson 18:29

I would think that David Hyde Pierce was an amazing performer, almost makes me laugh before he said anything.

Speaker 18:36

Yes.

Larry Wilson 18:36

Uh because he's you know, but that's different. And again, I chalk it to your modesty. Um I think you're fantastic. Well, I know it doesn't seem to you, but I'm here to tell you you're wrong in this particular instance, because you're so clear in your communication here on this podcast. You're so clear in the thinking that you have. Your thinking is organized. Uh and again, I know that to you, you're thinking it should have more razzle dazzle. No, we don't want razzle dazzle here. We want real knowledge that we can use to communicate with humans better. And what you're telling us, you're telling us in the context of writing for a sitcom, but this is mind-blowing the stuff you're saying. The fact that you're pointing out all the things that apply in other facets of life apply just as much to what you're talking about here. Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is too unbelievable. I want to interrupt this interview. This is something I don't do, but this is so incredible and has so much valuable information that she's sharing so freely. I'm going to make this into two separate episodes. So I want to stop here, let you catch your breath, try to digest some of the incredible things she said so far. Join us next week on How to Talk to Humans, and we'll have the second half of this extraordinary interview with one of Hollywood's very top producer writers of sitcom and Sweat Joe's Donald.