Fabrication is a television production company formed by writers, for writers.

The company came about through the meeting of three minds: Alexandra Cunningham (NYPD Blue, Aquarius), Sera Gamble (Supernatural, Aquarius) and John McNamara (Trumbo, Aquarius). Friends, colleagues and mentors to each other, one would always seek advice from the other two when it came to writing.

As John himself says, “we’d talk about how much better the notes we were getting from each other were than the ones we were getting from the studio and network.”

From there, it was a natural step to take the mentoring aspect of their relationship to a professional level, and extend that support to other writers.

In October 2015, an exclusive development deal was formed between Fabrication and Marty Adelstein’s Tomorrow Studios, and together they have a number of projects underway (including an adaptation of Bryan Christy’s The Lizard King, the period drama UnAmerican, and a reboot of the 1970s classic The Persuaders).

Creative Screenwriting recently spoke with John and Sera about their latest show, The Magicians. Soon after, we were fortunate enough to also be able to chat with Alexandra about Fabrication – its formation, the experience its three principals bring to the company, and the opportunities it affords up-and-coming writers.

David Duchovny as Sam Hodiak in Aquarius. Photo by NBC/Vivian Zink/NBC – © 2016 NBCUniversal Media, LLC

Tell me about how you first became connected with John and Sera.

Alexandra Cunningham

In 2000, John’s then-girlfriend, now-wife, got me my first job, on NYPD Blue. She was an ABC executive at the time. And so the first Hollywood party I ever went to was at John’s house, about a month after I moved here!

Then I worked with him on a crazy show called Fastlane that he did with McG – it’s where I learned to write action and met a lot of amazing writers. So basically I met him in 2000 and first worked with him in 2002. We’ve been friends ever since and have worked on several shows together over the years.

I met Sera through John, I think around the time of the writers’ strike which was 2008. They had worked together on a show at that point, and that’s how I met her.

What led you to form Fabrication?

I became really close to both of them as a unit. Whenever I had an idea, or was optioning a book, or had written something on spec or wanted to talk something through…I always found myself sending an email to them, and saying “is there a time that I can get you both to sit down, so I can hit you with this and you can give me your impressions?”

The two of them were doing the same thing, and we used to joke about it. We called ourselves “The Brain Trust”, which I’m sure a lot of groups of people do!

So we’d say “Can we convene The Brain Trust in the Bond Room”…The Bond Room is what John calls his garage. At some point, after we had done that however many times, it occurred to us – probably to John first, because he’s the quickest to the draw on things like this – that we should just form a company, so we could be doing it officially. And people would be paying us to do what we do anyway.

So we thought we’d combine forces.

Peter Facinelli as Donovan ‘Van’ Ray in Fastlane

Tell me about Fabrication as a company. Are you looking for new writers to join you?

We are. We’ve actually had a very exciting development year, so we have a lot of stuff in the hopper at various stages of the process. We have about six or seven projects that are at stage outline or script or ready to be taken out.

So yes, we’re looking for writers who might be a little frustrated with the traditional development system, and who want to work with producers who are writers. Producers who know what it’s like for them, who are going to give notes that are really based on what we can see the writer’s trying to do, rather than from some other motive that maybe isn’t so creative.

That’s sort of what we’re looking for, and also for our own projects which are in the hopper as well. Each one of us has at least one thing that either we came to on our own, or that Marty and Becky Clements have as a studio. They have a lot of material that they’ve optioned that they offered us. So it’s been a very exciting year.

You seem to cover a wide range of genres with the projects you have on the go…

We all come from different kinds of shows. John is good at a lot of things, but he’s very good at heist and caper and espionage…and history, obviously, as he wrote Trumbo.

Sera is also good at many things, but has tremendous experience in genre, which is now more important than ever to the industry. She’s very naturally instinctive and creative in that area, which is not something that I’ve ever worked in.

I come from cop shows and procedurals, and have done some history-related things. So we cover a lot of bases…We don’t want anybody to be able to get a handle on what we do! Or put us in any kind of box. I don’t think you can; if you look at any of our resumes, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

But as a company, I feel like we’re welcoming to people who are interested in writing about all different kinds of things. I think there’s at least one of us who can speak from experience to what a writer is trying to accomplish.

Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper and Bryan Cranston as Dalton Trumbo in Trumbo

What did you learn from some of those earlier experiences on huge shows like NYPD Blue, that you’ve now brought with you into this part of your career?

I’ve been lucky to work for a lot of amazing executive producers and showrunners, who really knew what they were doing. I do feel like you almost learn more about what not to do than what to do from jobs sometimes.

But I think what I’ve taken away from all the jobs I’ve had that I want to emulate, is the value of loyalty and the value of listening. Once you choose to work with someone it should be because you believe in them and you believe in their vision. It’s about enabling that, rather than trying to impose yourself on someone else – you shouldn’t hire that person in the first place if that’s what you’re going to try to do.

So the best people that I’ve worked with have wanted to work with me because they believed in me; they wanted to support me and be loyal to me. That’s what carries me, I hope, through everything I do.

John is one of those people I learned that from. As I said, I met him early in my career and – Sera would say the same thing – he’s always been a shining example of how to treat your colleagues and how to support people. Hopefully that’s what we’re doing as a company; I know Sera and I both value that above anything about John.

Dennis Franz as Dt. Andy Sipowicz in NYPD Blue

It’s been said that “writer is king in television”. What kind of industry do you see television as being for up-and-coming writers?

There’s no question that television is the place to be. Writers are the ones who drive it – it begins and ends with us. It’s always been that way but now it’s just a particularly exciting time to be in television.

“Golden Age” or whatever aside, it’s more that there are so many opportunities here, and the thing that all of those opportunities have in common – whether it’s network or cable or streaming – is that the writer is the driving force behind the project. Without them, it fails. And so for anybody who wants to be a writer, that’s why you’re getting into it in the first place.

Television is the place to be. I’ve heard of people who’ve had very positive experiences in features, but I’ve also heard a lot of stories that weren’t positive. It’s not like everything is sunshine and roses in television, but at the end of the day, it is what you make it. Because if you’re the writer or showrunner, you are the creative force behind it, so you are the one who’s determining the experience you’re going to have. Nobody else is doing that.

[In our interview with John & Sera, Sera also spoke to this question.]

Sera Gamble

Sera Gamble: It’s an interesting time to be a writer who wants to develop television, because there are so many places that need content now.

I have a personal creative theory about one of the reasons we’re calling this “peak TV” now: there are so many outlets for television that the naturally fractured audience allows for more niche ideas everywhere. No single network that exists is trying to capture every quadrant and every demographic. Because of that, shows are maybe a little bit smaller in their reach, but they’re often more special. And they get just a little bit weirder.

But not every conventional development process – even the best intentioned ones – will protect the weirdness and originality and sort of “niche vibe” of a project. It’s just not what development is built to do – it’s built to make something as widely recognizable and likable as possible. We’re not really interested in making those shows – we’re interested in making very specific, very strong-flavored shows. We see it as our jobs, and we’re working with other writers to help protect their vision as much as possible.

It’s a hard thing, to hold onto the original little beating heart that made you want to write a pilot. Because you don’t know what it is until you write it. So we see ourselves as the guardian of that little nugget at the center of the idea, as much as we can be.

Finally, Alex, do you have any other advice to offer our readers?

If there’s anything else you can see yourself doing, you should probably do that!

But if this is what you want to do, then you’ve got to do it every day. You have to believe in yourself, but you have to be open to the thoughts of others. That doesn’t mean you have to take them, but you have to learn to listen as well.

And there’s no point in being defensive, because the only thing you have to say to any note that you’re given is “thank you”.

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