Surviving a Blacklist… a Black writer in Hollywood.
BUCKLE UP folks, this is gonna be a wild one…
2020 was one of the best years of my professional career. It was the year I (sorta) survived being blacklisted as a writer in the entertainment biz. Since most of you won’t know me, I’m Brandon Easton — screenwriter and graphic novel creator with credits on shows like ThunderCats (2011), Marvel’s Agent Carter, Vampire Hunter D: The Series, Brave New Souls: Black Sci-Fi Writers of the 21st Century and much more.
This past year, I got to work on a slew of awesome projects like:
TRANSFORMERS: WAR FOR CYBERTRON — SIEGE (Netflix)
MARVEL ACTION SPIDER-MAN (IDW/Marvel)
JUDGE DREDD: FALSE WITNESS (IDW)
STAR TREK: YEAR FIVE (IDW)
TRANSFORMERS: GALAXIES (IDW)
FUTURE STATE: SUPERMAN/MISTER MIRACLE (DC Comics)
Not to mention a bunch of stuff coming in 2021 that I can’t announce for a good while.
However, let me start at the beginning — for those not in the entertainment biz, a person can become “BLACKLISTED” (generally considered to be unhirable because of perceived issues with work ethic, attitude, behavior or politics) relatively easy if someone somewhere in the system decides they don’t like you.
Most often, a person is blacklisted for extremely petty or shallow reasons and this can have a monumental impact upon their career advancement.
To take it to another level, the people who can initiate the blacklist often weaponize it against people of color, women or anyone outside of mainstream hires (straight, white men). Specifically, I’ve seen more African-American/Black male writers blacklisted than any other group in this town. (I’ll give you a few guesses why).
Before I continue — I’ll make it clear that I won’t name names anytime soon, those in my private circle know who is responsible and why, but I get nothing by calling these people out right now. With that said, I’ll give a little backstory for context.
By early-2016, my writing duties had been fully completed on a show and it was time to look forward to STAFFING SEASON (a hectic, breakneck period between March — June where talent agents, managers and other representatives scramble like hell to get their TV writer clients signed onto a show).
TV writers also hustle their butts off and employ multiple strategies to get the attention of executives and showrunners who make the decision to hire them onto the writing rooms of shows. It is part dog-and-pony show, part chattel auction and all insanity based upon the principle of transactional relationships being the norm.
With considerable momentum from my previous staffing assignment, I assumed that I’d be snatched up quickly for my next gig. There had been no issues at all (that I was aware of) on my last show and I looked forward to connecting with unfamiliar creators and executives on the flurry of meetings called the “water bottle tour.”
Fast forward to June 2016. Not a single offer anywhere to be found. Historically speaking, if you’re not staffed by mid-June, the chances of you getting staffed are slim-to-none and you’d better have a plan in place to make money until the next staffing season.
Yes, it’s really like that.
Nowadays, streaming services and a constantly evolving media landscape has changed this scenario a bit, but you still want to get staffed when all the bigger shows open up their rooms.
My former agents and former manager all felt something was amiss, but with no knowledge of malicious intent or activity, we all chalked it up to really bad luck and timing.
Then, things just got worse. Tons of meetings, no offers. Tons of recommendations from trusted colleagues in the business, no offers. Tons of emails, phone calls, drinking sessions at networking mixers, etc., etc., etc., all leading to absolutely nothing.
To say I was stunned and perplexed would be the understatement of the century. I believed I did everything right as a Staff Writer on a TV series (the lowest rung on the writing hierarchy) — I was usually the first one in the office and the last one to leave if I could help it. I did everything I could to assist my showrunners and colleagues and also tried to be as innocuous as possible to reduce tensions or stress in the writer’s room and on set.
Now, here’s where things get really shitty — as I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, Black male writers get blacklisted a lot in this town. Before I broke in, I knew of 2 Black dudes who got blacklisted, and after I broke in, I met about 3 more who got blacklisted — all for incredibly childish, simple-minded and potentially racist reasons.
There’s usually a litany of anecdotal excuses given: “they aren’t team players” “they don’t work well with others” “they have an attitude” “they made someone uncomfortable” and other justifications that can’t hold up to scrutiny because these allegations are generally frivolous and threadbare.
Between 2016–2018 I scrambled for work in vain. More meetings, more networking mixers, more emails and phone calls all with a zero sum. It felt like the more I pleaded my case of not understanding what the hell was happening to me, the more people started treating me like a leper.
Colleagues I trusted, colleagues that I’d recommend for jobs, colleagues that I’d listened to when they experienced their own dark night of the soul all stepped away from me. I felt like the proverbial hot potato that no one wanted to touch or be seen with.
You see, it wasn’t being blacklisted that hurt me, it was how quickly the blacklist took hold and was propagated. And also how quickly it took hold with my Black colleagues in the business. Black showrunners and upper level writers who could have hired me or recommended me for gigs simply didn’t.
I have no sense of entitlement in terms of being considered for jobs, but the people who KNOW me and know that I work hard and do solid work in a writing room jumped on board the blacklist-Brandon-bandwagon with gusto.
There were a few months where people I thought I could trust had suggested that I should admit that I was wrong and move on — the problem was that I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m one of those folks that will atone for their mistakes and make restitution whenever possible. I do not shirk my responsibilities if I hurt someone or create a negative situation.
This was a major wake-up call for me. I was never naive to the transactional nature of the entertainment biz, but it was disheartening to experience the shift in people’s attitudes toward you once you were no longer considered “hot.” It’s bizarre and brutal. I don’t recommend that experience for anyone.
By mid-2018, I believed my career was over.
Done. Kaput.
I spent 2.5 years banging my head against the wall while my mother in Baltimore was dealing with breast cancer chemotherapy and I couldn’t do a damn thing to help her. I had reached a point where I needed a gig to help her gain a level of comfort, I wasn’t concerned about prestige or credits, only a humanitarian goal of assisting my mom through a horrific scenario.
Remember, during ALL THIS TIME, I truly believed I had bad luck. I didn’t know of the damaging words that were circulated that obliterated my career progression: “There were issues on set…”
I won’t get into how I found this out, but when I did, I finally asked an executive connected to the situation what the hell happened and I received an empty answer about “issues on set” that to this day I’ve not seen a molecule of corroborating evidence. I kept a journal when working on the show where I supposedly did something wrong on set and I couldn’t remember a single moment where I did something or said something to impede production or anything remotely close to being a problematic writer.
I knew my place as a Staff Writer. I was learning set protocols and did everything in my power to maintain professionalism and competence. Yet, by the end of the conversation with the executive, the last few years of struggle had become crystal clear:
I became a victim of an anecdotal threadbare accusation of misconduct that had no basis in reality. It was just enough to throw a monkey wrench into my entire TV writing career. When you’re being considered for another writing room, executives and showrunners will reach out to your current/previous assignment to get a read on your character and work ethic.
Whatever had been said about me behind closed doors did an incalculable amount of damage to the point where no one wanted to give me a chance. Not even other Black showrunners and higher levels who knew of the political landmines for Black writers in town.
I could have been driven insane when considering all the opportunities I lost because of those amorphous “issues on set.” There was a part of me that never stopped moving forward in spite of those obstacles. Luckily, I had a comic book writing career that kept my rent paid and my refrigerator half-filled or else I would have had to take on a retail gig or two in order to make ends meet.
My luck changed at the end of 2018 when I was offered a couple of episodes on TRANSFORMERS: WAR FOR CYBERTRON — SIEGE. I did my job with speed and skill. My 2-episode gig got extended into 3 episodes which meant I wrote half of that series’ 6-episode first season.
Outside of being a lifelong fan of the Transformers franchise, that assignment was a major validation for a career that was circling the bottom of a toilet bowl. I had proved to myself that I could do the work if given the opportunity. That gig was a spark to my soul and became the first domino to fall in rebuilding my creative career.
Since early 2019, a slew of amazing gigs arrived which led to my first paid feature film scripting contract. That job led to me making history as the first Western screenwriter to ever have a script pass through SARFT — the Chinese state film censorship board. The movie, KILLING BETA, is financed and awaiting a post-Covid greenlight for production.
Now, on this first day of 2021, I look toward the year with the same increased sense of optimism that I developed back in 2018 when I signed the Transformers contract. I’m not stopping and will continue to do the hard work.
I only wish I could share my good fortune with more of my peers. A lot of folks showed me who they were when things got bad with my career. I didn’t expect a red carpet or even a hug, but I certainly didn’t expect the level of bizarre justification for the system where it was assumed that I “must have done something wrong” to be in my predicament.
To all those who remained in my corner during the darkest of times, I raise a glass in your honor. Thank you for being a human being.
To the rest of you… well… I’ll take no revenge or behave with rancor. I know who you folks are and what motivates you. I know that your character is based upon superficial trappings of success instead of inspiration or kindness.
It was a heck of a trip folks, but it’s really just getting started.
Best of luck in 2021.
Brandon Easton, Los Angeles, California.
“The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”
— Barack Obama