“The germ of the idea for Quiz Lady was that my brother is a trivia whiz and a genius. He’s that annoying type that remembers everything he’s ever read,” confesses screenwriter Jen D’Angelo (Solar Opposites, Hocus Pocus) of her new film Quiz Lady starring Awkwafina as Anne Yum – also the type that remembers everything she’s seen and read and her polar opposite sister Jenny (Sandra Oh) who forgets almost everything.

“My brother always wanted to be on Jeopardy!,” continues D’Angelo. “He’s tried out his whole life, for the high school edition, the college edition, the general Jeopardy! show, and the teacher edition, because he was a teacher. He’s always made it into the contestant pool, but never made it on the show,” she adds with remarkable conviction.

Flash-forward a few years later when Jen was working as an assistant on the Sony lot, she would drive past the Jeopardy! stage looking for ways to get her brother on the show. “So, that was a very basic idea of wanting to do a road trip comedy where the goal was something that felt so simple, but for these characters, it felt so meaningful,” continues the screenwriter.

Anne’s dog, Mr. Linguini made his way into Quiz Lady based on one of D’Angelo’s friend’s with a pug named Agador Spartacus (Aggie) after Hank Zaria’s character in Bird Cage. “I love Aggie so much and she always makes me laugh because she’s this ancient pug that is always snoring.”

Jen D’Angelo

Jen loves Anne’s character because she’s such a recluse. “She obviously has love to give and a pug felt like the perfect companion for her. Then that character evolved throughout the course of the movie to become the central element of danger.”

Two Sisters – Are They Really That Different?

Quiz Lady unspools as a story of two sisters with opposing value systems trying to make it through life. However, it would be a mistake to simply dismiss Jenny as the scatter-brained one who will may never get her act together as she “finds herself” because without her, Anne would never have mustered the fortitude to appear on Can’t Stop The Quiz.

“Jenny is very much open to the world and throws herself at life full force. She is very much ‘leap before you look.’ And then, Anne is ‘look and never leap.’ She’s just very scared,” explains D’Angelo. They are genetically linked, but opposite sides of the same coin. “They have completely different reactions to the way that they were raised.”

Anne and Jenny aren’t sparring all the time. They do share many tender moments. “They’re both very sweet women that just want to be loved. They had completely different reactions and ways of going about finding that love. I think Anne felt like she never really deserved it, so she tried to convince herself that she didn’t need it, and she was happy with her lonely, insular life with her dog and her routine.”

“Jenny, meanwhile, is searching for love anywhere she can and looking for purpose and meaning and trying to find something that will make her feel whole. I think in that sense, they’re both very similar because they’re trying to fill a hole inside of them with the wrong thing. Jenny is looking for the next big adventure and Anne is trying to say, ‘Oh, I don’t need an adventure. I’m happy where I am.'”

Anne and Jenny are extremely different yet fundamentally the same.

A Silly Comedy

Jen D’Angelo acknowledges the style of comedy in Quiz Lady is silly… but heartfelt. “I really love that. Ben Franklin (Tony Hale) is one of my favorite characters because he takes himself so seriously. Ultimately he’s this very silly character, but he cares so deeply. I think it allows us to care about him more too.”

The screenwriter cites 30 Rock as a TV show that influences her comedic style. “I love that show for its joke density. They never have a throwaway line and everything is an opportunity for a joke.”

Then there’s the animated family comedy Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, which D’Angelo describes as having “such a wonderful blend of comedy and heart. Every frame of that movie is packed with jokes, and they’re jokes that you wouldn’t even notice until you’ve watched it several times. They’re in the background.”

The screenwriter doesn’t use a set formula to determine the joke density in Quiz Lady. “I think it really is a matter of understanding who the character is, what they want, and why they’re not able to get it. If you have that in mind, you have empathy for what this character is going through and how they keep getting in their own way. They are stuck in a cycle of failing in the same way over and over.”

Jenny is also highly protective of Anne and won’t let her stand in the way of being happy. In one scene when Jenny suggests Anne go on the quiz show, Anne flatly refuses. Jenny responds, “I’m not gonna let mom’s bullshit ruin your life.”Anne replies, ‘Too late and walks away.'”

Anne Yum (Awkwafina) Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

“That moment is so sweet to me and it’s so simple. There’s not even that much on the page, It’s the actors bringing that to life and it’s completely in their performances that you feel that despair and heaviness,” states D’Angelo. The writer relishes these concise scenes because it affords the flexibility of more outlandish jokes following them.

Sandra Oh was also adamant on an opening scene where her character Jenny makes noodles for Anne. “To show that act of kindness she goes out of her way to crack the egg into it. It was those little specifics that made it feel so real, like a real family.”

Can’t Stop The Quiz could have been set in Jenny and Anne’s hometown, but instead it was set in another town, triggering a road trip storyline. The road trip not only serves to amplify the silliness of the jokes, but it’s imperative to yank the sisters out of their natural habitats and putting their lives in free fall.

Developing Character

Jen D’Angelo worked intuitively to develop the characters rather than write deep character biographies and outlines. “It was an interesting journey with this script because I just started writing it. I didn’t outline it. I was just in a mood to write something and I didn’t know what it would be. I had this idea in my back pocket since I first moved to LA.”

“I just dove in and discovered the story. I definitely started it from more of a place of just a character study. Once I had that, it was a matter of going back and adding in more plot and more stakes.”

During this process, Jen  realized that Ken (John Park), the gangster that kidnaps Mr Linguini, was too thin. “We saw him when he came in and then at the very end. I think it was Sandra’s idea to add in this scene where she goes into the gangster’s den.”

“It was very interesting to rework the plot once we had the actors attached and they had ideas of what they thought their characters would do and what to see their characters have to face. It was a very interesting process  of working backwards.”

Quiz Lady kept the number of drafts to a relative minimum. “I did two drafts before we sent it to Awkwafina. Once Awkwafina and Sandra Oh were attached, I wrote another draft which we sold to Netflix. While we were at Netflix, we hired director Jessica Yu.”

“Jessica, Sandra and Awkwafina and I met up in London to do a script workshop where we read through the whole script, talked about these characters, their family, and things that we wanted to see from the story. And then, I did another rewrite.”

Jenny Yum (Sandra Oh) Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

After five drafts, Netflix decided they weren’t proceeding with Quiz Lady. So, they took it 20th Century Studios and Will Ferrell’s Gloria Sanchez Productions and the project was jumpstarted once again before being sold to Hulu. D’Angelo wrote another draft during that phase.

Writing Asian-American Characters

Jen D’Angelo didn’t set out to write a comedy about two Asian-American sisters.  Instead, she had the “quintessential American family” in mind. It was only after Awkwafina and Sandra Oh responded so positively to Quiz Lady, that Anne and Jenny’s characters were transformed into something more specific.

It was really during the script workshop with director Jessica Yu, that the story took shape. “There was a lot of talking about our families and realizing that, although the specifics are different, and there’s a lot of stuff that I wasn’t familiar with because I am not of Southeast Asian descent, there were still so many similarities when it comes to shame and feeling like the black sheep of the family, and feeling like your cousins are living this dream life and you’re forgotten in the other side of the country in a place that’s not as nice,” reveals D’Angelo.

Awkwafina, Sandra, and Jessica, not only wanted to tell their culturally-specific Asian-American stories, which they felt are lacking on our screens. They also wanted to dispel the “model minority myth” and address these racial stereotypes in a fun way. Occasionally, they do lean into stereotypes, albeit in an exaggerated manner. “They were talking about how in Asian culture, there is a trope of these gambling grandmas and they thought that felt more authentic than a gambling father.”

Similarly, they researched the Tongs (immigrant Chinese criminal gangs) to inform the gangsters in Quiz Lady.

Theme

As Anne and Jenny bluff through their issues, Quiz Lady is about family and love according to D’Angelo. “It’s also about shame and how shame can ruin your family. I really love this idea of these two sisters who were raised in this environment that was not good. They had parents with undiagnosed mental illness that caused their lives to be complete chaos. And then, that forced them to develop this shell.”

“Jenny’s shell is deceptive because she doesn’t really have an outer one. She throws herself at everything, but she has an inner shell of never letting anything get too deep and never really looking inward. Anne has this external shell of shutting off the entire world.”

Anne and Jenny lacked the warm, loving, and caring environment they needed as kids. They doubted their worthiness of love and subconsciously blamed themselves for it. “This film is about them realizing that they don’t have to hold on to that.”

A Writer’s Voice

Jen D’Angelo fully embraces her silliness in Quiz Lady. “I feel like there’s always an element of playfulness. There’s also always a bittersweet element tpp. I really love putting in sad, real issues and making people sad, but then having a happy ending. That’s my favorite journey – to have people laughing, and then unexpectedly crying, and then smiling at the end.“