Two Women On The Way Up Reveal What It’s Like Breaking Into TV and Film Directing Right Now

Decider’s This is What A Director Looks Like piece featured the perspectives of seven incredibly cool women, some of which have been directing for forty years at this point, while others are just getting started in their careers. And while all had interesting things to say about the industry, including their general optimism about the opportunities for women these days, it was Jude Weng and Nicole Delaney that I realized had very similar, and timely, advice to share. Both have worked in TV as well as films, both are highly in-demand, but both are also women of color that want to be considered not just for projects that feature diverse characters and actors, but also be given the chance to tell stories about a typical white male protagonist, too. You know, the kind we’ve already been watching for decades. Here, the women open up about both the chances and challenges that lie in front of them, just as their careers are taking off.

Weng’s first feature film Finding ‘Ohana premiered earlier this year on Netflix, but she’ll be the first to tell you, it was the opposite of an overnight success. “It’s actually been a really, really long journey,” she told me over Zoom. “I went to film school in 1998, I did the women’s directing program at AFI. When I finished that program, I had a meeting with the DGA. They were very nice. They were congratulating me, ‘Oh, you finished this prestigious program. What do you want to do?’ Now, this was a year after I’d done the program, so it was January 1999, and I said, ‘Well, I would love to direct television and films,’ and they said, ‘You know, less than 0.5% of features are directed by women and less than 1% of TV is directed by women. So you should find something else to do.’ That was the DGA’s advice in 1999. Now, if you look at today’s statistics in 2021, things have changed. But you know, surprisingly, not so much better than you would imagine. So we still have a long way to go.”

But Weng is no stranger to a long road ahead, explaining to me that she directed her first play in second grade, and after that, “I directed everything I could get my hands on.” Weng is the child of an immigrant family and grew up in San Francisco during the mid ‘70s. Her father owned a small diner where she would spend any time she wasn’t at school, where she says she “really hungered for stories and storytelling,” and would chat with the customers in between doing her homework. “That’s when I would get to hear their stories and hear about their travels.” She would use those stories to inspire her own work, which included writing, directing, and producing plays, sketch comedy, and theater. “I think it was going to film school in 1998, where I said, Okay, I’m doing this for real. Now, I’m going to turn this into a job, not just a hobby.”

Weng has since gone on to direct not only Finding ‘Ohana, but episodes of shows such as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Fresh Off The Boat, Black-ish, The Good Place (which she credits with having an incredibly collaborative set) and more. And in being on a set, she has paved her own path when it comes to creating both the environment and fashion she feels most comfortable in. “Much like a lot of other women who are emerging directors in the industry, we don’t have a whole lot of role models to look to, most of our role models are male,” Weng said. “Because of my unusual childhood and background, I was already sort of a tomboy type of gal. I’m a really physical director, when I’m working with people I will get down on my hands and knees and lie on my back. I want to show my actors the type of blocking that I’m thinking of. But also, I feel like when I literally get on the ground, and I’m lower than everybody else, I’m sending a signal to my cast and to my crew, that I roll up my sleeves, and I will get myself dirty in order to get the shot. So I feel like with that kind of mindset, and that kind of attitude, and that kind of physicality, I dress in a way that allows me to move.” Weng explains that her uniform now consists of prAna pants and Blundstone boots, as both have the potential to get wet when she’s on location scouts or doing what she can to get a shot, as well as a button-down shirt to bring “a certain level of professionalism,” to the set.

She also credits Crazy Ex-Girlfriend showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna with helping to shape her visual of what it would not only be like, but look like, to be leading a production. “A few years ago, she started something called #femalefilmmakerfriday and what was so wonderful about that was not only was that a way for female filmmakers to post and share photos of themselves on set [on social media], but how can you become something if you don’t see what that looks like? Since then, I’ve actually got to see what other female directors dress like and it’s really interesting.”

“Having just directed my first feature doing Finding ‘Ohana has certainly opened a lot of doors and all my TV directing has opened a lot of doors,” Weng said, revealing that she has “more meetings than ever,” but what she’s ultimately noticed is that, “Other people’s interest in me is heightened when it’s not a white male lead. I believe I can direct something that involves a white male lead, I’d be happy to direct something that involves a white male lead, but I think people look at me, I’m a woman, I’m a woman of color and I think they think oh, the perfect pairing is if she could do something that’s Asian American, or she can do some that is specifically in this category. I’m still grateful to be considered for those projects, by the way, I’m saying yes to a lot of those projects. But I feel like when I do take those meetings that don’t have a person of color lead, I’m just not taken as seriously for those opportunities.”

She’s also no stranger to creating her own opportunities, something she encourages others to do as well. When it comes to directing, she wants other filmmakers to know “That it is eminently doable and achievable. If somebody has a dream to be a director themselves, it is absolutely possible and within their reach. Filmmaking has become so democratized it is within everyone’s reach to pick up a cell phone or pick up a 5D camera, these tools are all accessible to us now. Also don’t expect the first thing you do to be fantastic. Directing is a craft and craft means it’s something that you put in 10,000 hours into improving that skill.”

Weng also advises people to “Go and live an interesting life. The kind of life you’ve lived, and the kind of experiences you gain as a human being contribute to your experience on set, how you relate to people, how you manage people, how you manage a crisis, all of those things. Those are things that you can’t learn in film school. It took me 21 years out of film school to make my first feature. Obviously, I wish it didn’t take that long. But I’m glad that I’m finally here and it’s absolutely been worth the journey.”

That journey has also helped prepare her for directing two very different mediums. “Directing television and directing features are two very different muscles. There’s a funny saying in episodic television, that as a director, think of yourself as a guest in someone’s house, bring a bottle of wine, and don’t rearrange the furniture. There’s a lot of boundaries and limitations that you have to respect because a TV show has its own cinematic approach, it has a tone. As a guest director, your job is to learn how to fit into that, but at the same time, look for ways to organically elevate the episode. So for me, I have a saying for myself when I go onto one of those. It’s find ways in which I can rearrange the furniture in a respectful way, because I believe that’s actually my job. But when you are a feature film director, you get to be the architect of that house. You get to decide every single thing and every single person that is hired.”

And Weng jumped at the chance to design the type of set environment she felt would produce the best work from all involved. “On a film, I get to set the tone and for Finding ‘Ohana, three of our four kids had never acted before, they had never set foot on a stage before. They didn’t know what marks were, they didn’t know what a stand-in was, I didn’t know any of that stuff. For me, I took the job very seriously that I was going to be able to provide their very first film and Hollywood experience and I wanted it to be awesome. So I actually made a point of really handpicking a lot of heads of departments and making sure that they understood this was not business as usual for me, not just because it was my first film, but because I wanted to create this special culture where these kids are going to feel nurtured and supported.”

Weng has plenty of advice that she hopes to impart on other women aspiring to be a director, saying, “It’s exciting that studios, producers, talent… I think they’re looking at female directors in a way that they really haven’t in the last 10 years. So I think there are definitely more opportunities that are opening up. But it’s exciting to see also more middle-class films coming up, thanks to streaming and those kinds of platforms. But I can’t encourage women enough, we really are a community and we can help each other out. The more we reach back and offer a hand, it just creates this really wonderful cycle of giving and support.”

For Delaney, she not only had one pair of hands reach out, but three very talented pairs of hands last fall when the sisters of Haim asked her to direct their performance on Late Night With Seth Meyers (which features a cameo from Robert Pattinson, no less). “They’re my very dear friends, and they wanted me to direct this piece,” Delaney explained. “We came up with the vibe and premise together for how we wanted it to look and how it executed. I felt really lucky that they’re very much champions of female stories and music. Obviously, they work with Paul Thomas Anderson on a very regular basis. So I felt very lucky to even be included in the types of filmmakers they want to work with.”

“That performance with Haim was the first for me of its kind,” she continued. “I’d never really done any kind of musical performance, which was so cool. But I think that growing up in the ’90s and getting to see all of the fun stuff happening in music videos, when music videos were basically experimental films. I think it is an amazing way for people these days to still break into narrative.”

Delaney has served as a writer on shows such as Big Mouth and Search Party, and had her first bite at directing with Thirsty, a short film which was part of the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019, as well as part as the FXX series Cake. The film stars Jay Ellis playing against type (not) as a very hot dude while Maya Rudolph voices the mosquito that falls in love with him after literally getting a taste. And even though the actors were already attached, most people she pitched it to assumed Delaney would be making an animated film, but she knew it had to be live-action. “Because Cake was making such unique stories, they interested me and didn’t really ask how I was going to execute it,” she said. “I felt so lucky that I could find producers who wanted to give me money to make such a bizarre story and having the confidence in me that I could pull it off.” While she says her style has “evolved for sure,” it’s also dependent on the story she’s telling, and in the case of Thirsty, pushed her as a filmmaker once she realized an important question she had to ask herself was, “What is this story asking of you visually?”

The visuals included using drones to convey the mosquito’s point of view, and she recalled, “What I loved about working with, they’re literally called the drone guys, is typically they’re shooting things that are exteriors and establishing shots. So I told them, go have fun. Go twirl the camera around, get into the psyche of this woman, and it was sort of a similar conversation I was having with my DP. They were like, wow, that’s the most fun I’ve ever had shooting something. They really just went and had fun.”

And she did too! Eventually. “Directing sort of scared the shit out of me and also was [euphoric],” Delaney confessed. “It was suddenly this feeling of all of the things in filmmaking that I had synthesized, where it occurred to me that this was how all of those storytelling instincts, everything was going to come out. It was a euphoria being behind the camera for the first time and continues to be.”

And so now that she’s directed an Insecure hottie and a hilarious mosquito, she’s ready for that white male story too. “I definitely notice that people come to me for stories about Black women,” Delaney said. “I think that they’re right to do that, but I also want to be able to go back and tell the story about the white male protagonists, because it’s coming full circle and I will have had the experience. I think that I’m getting opportunities that I probably wouldn’t have been getting five years ago. Obviously this award season, it is so thrilling to see the work that’s coming out. I’m kind of just in awe of it. I am hopeful and optimistic.”

She’s come a long way, considering she admitted, at first, “Honestly, it was really hard to envision myself as a director. When I got to film school, [I realized] every script I’m writing has a white male protagonist and I had to stop and think why, why is this happening? It was because every filmmaker I had adored and wanted to follow in their footsteps were white males. Not exclusively, but I realized I had to take a step back to consider what it would be like to share other points of view and how I had to access those other kinds of stories. So when that moment happened, it was suddenly like, I could explore all these other directors that I hadn’t taken the time to consider, because we’re all sort of raised on this one cinematic experience and I feel like that’s changing so much these days, which is great.”

After attending film school at Columbia in New York, it was once Delaney returned to LA that she realized exactly how important it was to have female filmmaker friends, noting that she “found a community of people that I could commiserate with about what was going on in the business.” She also cherishes the camaraderie with her female friends, who offer her notes on scripts and an ear to hear her talk out a story, explaining that “They know me so well, they’re able to help me come at my work from a more authentic place.”

And then it’s up to her to follow some of the most useful advice she’s gotten, which is “Telling the most authentic version of the stories that you can tell, and trying to find a way to personalize and put your thumbprint on stories where directing is a very vast medium. How do you forge a path to make things look different and feel different?”

Delaney is hoping to put her personal style towards directing TV episodes, which she still hasn’t been able to crack just yet. “I think once you’ve made your feature is when people give you the opportunity to do episodic, because you’ve had your opportunity to do something on a larger budget, that you’re presiding over on a feature level. So they know that you can handle that scope of a project. I think episodic directing is such a cool way to amplify your visual storytelling abilities, get to do different types of stories, get to work with different types of actors, and cinematographers and kind of just widen the breadth of the people that you’re meeting. The feature almost seems within more reach than episodic in a lot of ways, even though I’m making a living as a TV writer.”

The great news is that she’s currently working on writing her first feature, called Motherf*&er. “It’s a very personal script about my family. I’m gonna go back to writing it right after we jump off this Zoom. It’s a catharsis that I didn’t know I needed and I didn’t know I could get by writing a movie about my family. It’s sort of like an homage to a Nancy Meyers generational romantic comedy. It’s been a joy to write, but it is also tough to write about the people closest to you and have enough distance where you realize: this isn’t me, but this is a character who resembles me. She doesn’t have to be exactly like me and in fact, she shouldn’t.”

Stream Finding 'Ohana on Netflix