Listen to the exclusive chat with Lang Fisher '02CC and Columbia University School of the Arts graduate Melinda Hsu Taylor. The panel was moderated by Columbia College alumna Katherine Chang (Co-President of CUE), and covered their professional journeys, making the leap to showrunning, and their writing process.
LANG FISHER is a writer, producer, and director. She is the Co-Creator and Executive Producer of the Netflix series Never Have I Ever with Mindy Kaling. The People's Choice Awards named it Best Comedy Show of 2020. Prior to this, Lang has been a writer and producer on three seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, five seasons of The Mindy Project, and was a staff writer on the Emmy-nominated final season of 30 Rock. The 30 Rock episode that she cowrote, 'Deed in a Weary World' was named one of Variety’s “25 Best TV Episodes of the Decade" Before venturing into sitcoms, Lang wrote for The Onion, for which she won a Peabody.
MELINDA HSU TAYLOR is an Executive Producer on Nancy Drew and was the Showrunner/Co-Creator of Tom Swift, both on the CW. She is a lifelong genre geek. She started writing at age 8, when she authored a Star Trek fan fiction series in her childhood bedroom in Bangor, Maine. Her TV credits include Lost, The Vampire Diaries, The Gifted, Falling Skies, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Medium, and one-hour pilots for Netflix, Quibi, NBC and Lifetime. For her work on Lost, she was nominated for an Emmy and a Writers’ Guild Award. She is an alum of the Warner Bros. TV Drama Writers' Workshop as well as the WGA Showrunner Training Program. She mentors new writers through CAPE and Mentorship Matters, helped found the Asian American Writers’ Brunch, and also serves on the Advisory Board of the Sarah Jones Film Foundation, which fosters set safety.
