Anthony Q. Farrell is a Canadian writer, producer, and showrunner.
Courtesy of Ian Watson
Anthony Q. Farrell is a showrunner and executive producer who used to be a writer on “The Office.”
After a successful run on the show, he couldn’t land another writers room job for over two years.
Farrell shares how staying creative got him through that tough time and led to his second big break.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Anthony Q. Farrell, a showrunner and producer who was a staff writer and story editor on “The Office” from 2008 to 2009. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I was a writer on “The Office” for two seasons back in 2008 and 2009. It was my first TV writing job.
I started off in theater, acting, writing, and directing. That led to comedy school, where I did standup, improv, sketches, and I eventually got into writing.
When I moved to LA, a friend who liked my writing introduced me to his manager. A few years later, I got my first job on “The Office” through NBC’s diversity program.
Working on “The Office” was a really good experience. I was told from the beginning that I was there for a reason, and not to be afraid to contribute ideas at the writers table.
I was one of the few people of color in the writers room, but I never felt shut down or anything like that. I jumped right in and was pretty vocal whenever I felt like I had to be.
Overall, “The Office” was one of the better writers rooms in terms of having at least a few people of different cultures and ethnicities — it had more people of color in its writers room than most of the shows at the time, not counting shows that were about people of color. There was me, Ryan Koh, Mindy Kaling, and then Halsted Sullivan who joined while I was there on season five. Normally there’s maybe one person of color in our world.
It was good to be around great writers and soak up as much as I could from them.
I was laid off from my job on “The Office” in 2009 alongside Paul Feig
During my second season of the show (the show’s fifth season), they started trimming down the writers and four of us were let go: me, Ryan Koh, Paul Feig, and Lester Lewis. Since it wasn’t just me, I was like, “Alright, I get it.” This was 2009, right after the big recession.
I thought, if they’re letting go of Paul Feig, who’s a big deal, then I couldn’t possibly feel bad. The show offered to give me any references I would need. Even to this day, if I still needed to give references, I know I could reach out to Greg Daniels, Paul Lieberstein, or Jennifer Celotta and they would happily sing my praises.
So I walked away from the job feeling pretty good. But being let go was still a shock, especially to my finances. On “The Office,” I was making the Writers Guild of America (WGA) minimum, which back then was a little over $3,000 per week.
I grew up in a lower-middle class home, and before “The Office,” I was an office assistant making only about $30,000 a year. I had finally gotten to a point where I could make a good living doing what I love, and I’d gotten used to it.
To make matters more complicated, I had a daughter who was born right before I got the job on the show, so she was two years old when I got let go.
I wasn’t initially worried about getting another job because I thought I’d be fine. Industry people who wouldn’t have been open to a meeting with me before were very open now, because I’d had this job on “The Office.”
What happened instead was that after the Writers Guild strike, all the writers rooms shrunk. It was a really difficult time in the industry.
There was no space for me.
I went from being on the hottest show on television to being nowhere
I definitely started wondering if I was ever going to land a second job. I’m generally a pretty positive person, and I always put a positive spin on things — but this was really challenging.
Paul Feig and Lester Lewis had such long careers, so they already had other projects going on. Ryan Koh started working again fairly quickly as well.
When the layoffs happened, I was in the process of developing two different series I had created — one for CBS Studios and one for Disney XD. I was thinking, “Okay, maybe one of these will move forward and I’ll get to create my own shows and it’ll be perfect timing.”
Unfortunately, those projects fizzled out. I got paid to write the scripts, which was nice, but now what? I was taking a lot of meetings, but there was just no movement toward my next writing gig.
It was really surprising to me that after writing on a show as popular as “The Office,” in a relatively diverse writers room, that I wasn’t able to land another TV writing job.
The writers room for “The Office” had two diversity program participants, including myself, which was uncommon — Greg Daniels requested that extra spot. Unfortunately, that interest in diversity shown by Daniels wasn’t the norm for the other rooms I was now interviewing for.
It was a race thing, for sure
Looking back, I think that part of why I couldn’t get another TV writing job after “The Office” was because the writers rooms were smaller. But if I’m really honest about what was happening, I’d say my race was certainly a part of it.
I met with other shows through the diversity program before landing a job on “The Office.” It was setup so that the studio would pay for a “diverse” writer’s salary for three years at the staff writer level. If the writer is promoted during that time, the show’s budget would have to cover the salary difference — but for the most part, all the shows had to do was hire us. I joined “The Office” as a staff writer. By the time I left the show, I was an executive story editor.
After I was let go, I met with multiple different shows to find my next job, but then heard afterward that they weren’t going to use the diversity slot. That was a common thing back then, where the shows basically said, “We’re hiring a writer, but not in the diversity slot.”
Why would you not want a person of color in the room, especially when it doesn’t cost you anything?
Through the diversity program, the studio was basically saying, “Here is a free person who is skilled, talented, and ready to write for you.” For the shows to respond, “No, we’re cool,” really blew my mind.
I remember thinking, “What are they afraid to say in front of a person of color at work, that they want to be able to say freely without them there? So much so that they’d take an opportunity away from someone?”
After the first three years, that diversity program writer’s salary is paid entirely out of the show’s budget — so it wasn’t uncommon for writers like myself to find themselves either out of a job or looking for another staff writer level position, even though they may have already been promoted where they were before.
A lot of BIPOC writers have dealt with this in LA — they’re a staff writer, then story editor, and then they have to go back to staff writer level because they had to move to a different show, once again on a diversity contract.
The result is that a lot of those mid-level writing jobs: co-producer, supervising producer, story editor — are missing when you look at Black show creators’ résumés. If they made it to where they are, it’s because they created their own show and got to make that leap to producer level.
My family cut costs where we could, and I started looking for jobs outside of Hollywood
At this point, nothing was working. I had a family to support, and I needed to make steady money somehow. My wife and I noticed that the mortgage on a house would be cheaper than the rent of the place where we were paying for, so we gathered up all the money we could and put a down payment on a home.
We relied as much as we could on my wife’s salary — she was the VP of operations at a bank at the time. I had always been interested in teaching, so I reached out to Kaplan to start tutoring SAT prep to high school students.
I still needed something more steady. Since we’d moved down the street from a mall, I went to all the different stores there and asked who was hiring. That’s how I ended up working at Macy’s.
The main draw for working at the mall was that it was close to my daughter’s school at the time, so I could drop her off and then go to work.
Even though I had to take these gigs, I didn’t give up on my passion
I might have been feeling dejected about my career, but I never half-ass anything. I was great at my Macy’s job. I was always trying to make sure I was helping the team somehow, some way. No matter what I’m doing, I’m very engaged — I never want someone to say, “Oh I don’t want to work with that guy.”
That being said, the whole time I was working there I was wondering whether or not I was ever going to get back into a writers room. I was dealing with a lot of imposter syndrome during that time.
I’d be folding shirts and thinking: Did being a writer on “The Office” even really happen? Is this going to be the rest of my life? How am I going to get out of this?
I decided I wasn’t going to wait for someone else to give me a break. I was going to create my own opportunity. I just had to figure out what the next step was going to be for me.
I had freedom with these part-time jobs to take meetings or do auditions — so I hustled. I was writing features, working on a web series, and doing improv. I just kept putting myself out there creatively and finding ways to keep my brain as creative as possible.
I’d had that first big break; I just had to keep believing that the second one would happen
When I started working on my own projects, I became like a magnet for more work. There’s something about being active and putting out that creative energy. Other people want to be around that.
One of the projects I was working on was helping my friend Laura House with her pilot for Nickelodeon. We met in a writers workshop I was in when I first started out, and became good friends. We kept each other in the loop with all of our projects, because I loved her writing style and she loved mine.
Helping with her pilot connected me to Nickelodeon, and I was offered a job on “The Thundermans.” I was finally able to quit my job at Macy’s after nearly a year, and started making the same pay I had on “The Office.” I kept tutoring SAT prep on weekends for awhile though — just in case.
My work on “The Thundermans” was year-round and lasted four seasons. That was the credit that really set things up for me, because I’ve been working ever since. That was 2013.
I’m currently showrunning two shows in Canada — season one of a show I created called “Shelved,” which is an office comedy set in a library in Toronto, and season two of a series called “Run the Burbs.”
It’s been a weird-ass rollercoaster. Everyone’s journey in this industry is different, but it’s always a journey. The biggest lesson I learned is that whenever I get to a place where I’m not sure what’s next, the thing to do is just create.
Taking detours as a writer is a great thing
My advice to other aspiring writers: Don’t be afraid to live life, because it’ll all be usable eventually. The experiences I had as a tutor and working at Macy’s became material for me to use in my work.
That’s true for any creative person — use your experiences to keep creating, and you may be surprised where you end up.
If you work in Hollywood and would like to share your story, email Eboni Boykin-Patterson at eboykinpatterson@insider.com.