Nell Scovell and the Boys Club of Comedy Writing

Hollywood writer and Lean In co-author Nell Scovell spoke to the community on October 21 about the challenges she has faced as a female comedy writer.

 

During her childhood, Scovell enjoyed the wit of her family members, particularly some of her aunts. “I never grew up thinking women couldn’t be funny,” she told the Groton audience during her Circle Talk.

But the world and the workplace were not like her family, and she called it a “real surprise” to realize that “our society doesn’t always support funny women.” The subtitle of her memoir, Just the Funny Parts, is “And a few hard truths about sneaking into the Hollywood Boys’ Club.”

Despite the challenges, she went on to create the original Sabrina, the Teenage Witch TV series and write for The Simpsons, Murphy Brown, Monk, The Muppets, and numerous other shows and films, including a stint on Late Night with David Letterman that led her to write a Vanity Fair article about the sexism she encountered there. “There were three women on the Superme Court," she said, "and zero working on late-night TV.”

Scovell’s writing career began in sports—the Boston Globe liked her sportswriting for the Harvard Crimson and offered her a job. She moved on to magazine work and ultimately to television. She said she wrote her very first joke in fifth grade: What is the world’s smartest dinosaur? Answer—Roget’s Thesaurus.

 

Scovell said she wishes she had been able to read Lean In—the best-seller she co-wrote with Sheryl Sandberg—when she was twenty-five. "Women are afraid to own their success," she observed.

The fight for gender equity in the writer’s room will be a legacy of Scovell's successful career—and will only improve entertainment. “A fairer sampling of humanity,” she said, “will always produce better comedy.”