When I was little, my parents took away candy except on the weekends. So I'd rush out of my room at 5:00 A.M. on Saturday and sit in front of the TV, jamming my face with candy.
Dana Walden
It's no longer permissible to have sexist comments, but growing up in this industry, I spent time in many other organizations where it was just commonplace for men to talk about how a woman looks or give a woman a little bit of a harder time in a meeting and then say, 'I'm just joking - it's because I care about you.'
You have to develop a broad range of projects. One thing we've seen with 'This Is Us' is that people want to escape a little bit into the lives of others with beautiful emotional storylines where a country that needs a good cry can have one without seeming crazy. So I would say my real takeaway is that we should all be pushing for extreme emotion.
It's hard to tell why something touches a zeitgeist and when that same show doesn't in other places.
'Prison Break' on Netflix has generated a whole new generation of viewers.
The development process is not that simple... When I started working at Fox in '92, the company had decided that dramas were dead: they weren't viable businesses and because newsmagazines were so efficient to produce and financially so much more tolerable than a drama. So that year, our company developed very few dramas.
What differentiates leaders is the ability to recover following a mistake. I make mistakes all the time, but I cop to them, apologize, and move on. Contrition is powerful.
I think the best entertainment tackles social issues in a sort of seamless way.
In 1995, I had been chosen to make a short presentation about the state of the TV business at a company retreat in Santa Barbara. At the time, I felt we were not real competitors in network television. The studio wasn't prolific; we didn't have much of a brand.
When Calista Flockhart read for 'Ally McBeal', I saw this perfect chemistry between the words on the page and the person who would embody that character.
We are providing a platform to creators who are expressing their emotions; they are expressing what they are feeling - fears, joys, terror. That's what art is about, and we don't want to censor it, but neither would we permit violence which feels gratuitous or glorified to be on our platform.
'American Idol' was an extremely expensive show.
Our news is Fox News. It's a cable channel and has nothing to do, frankly, with the entertainment area of the company. It's the model of how this company was launched, and there are a lot of independent stations and Fox O&Os who have hugely successful news that our programming is the lead-in for.
As a woman in this organization, I can say that I don't ever feel that I was discriminated against or prevented from opportunities.
When I got the first e-mail suggesting we cast Zooey Deschanel in 'New Girl', I thought, 'That's exactly right.' In the pilot of 'Modern Family', when Cam is holding up the baby with the 'Lion King' theme, it was very clear we had something special.
My mother had no interest in cartoons. I remember thinking, 'I am never going to grow into that person.' Which is so ironic - now I get to work on 'Family Guy' and 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama', all of these great animated series! TV was my passion.
To be a great creator, you have to be vulnerable. You're creating characters that have a little bit of yourself in them... And you want to know it's a safe environment for that.
A director has to be on the set when the crew is called and is the last one to leave at night. I'm not saying it's not possible, but that's partly why we're not seeing more women.
