Conversations with the Inspiring Nikita T. Hamilton

Nikita, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I never know where to start when I get asked this so I’ll start at the very beginning and hope you don’t get bored a quarter of the way through. I was born and raised in Miami, FL and am a first-generation Jamaican-American. I’ve loved television and film from day one of being introduced to them, but the love was so strong that at the age of five my Mom banned TV during the week. She said, “the house could be on fire and you probably wouldn’t move,” so according to her the decision was both for my brain cells and my safety [laughs].

Needless to say, I was not happy throughout my school years when kids would be talking about TV shows and I had nothing to add. On the upside, I had lots of time for sports, band, and studying, and I ended up getting into my dream school, the University of Pennsylvania. At the time, I thought I wanted to be an MD. It had never occurred to me that writing for TV and/or film was a career or at least not a career that I could have.

As my college years neared their end, I’d figured out that med school wasn’t for me, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I’d done an independent study interrogating the evolution of the Mammy stereotype in film and knew I had an interest in representations of black women in film and television, but that wasn’t a career. A friend suggested that I get a Ph.D. in Communication focusing on representation. I could teach about, and critique, the media I enjoyed as a professor one day.

However, none of that ending happened because we make plans and God laughs. I got into the University of Southern California and by my fourth year in my program realized that I didn’t want to teach about television and film. I wanted to make television and film. After getting an advisor that understood my goals and my project, I decided that I would finish my dissertation while trying to work full-time in TV. In hindsight, that was nuts. A dissertation is a full-time job, but who doesn’t like an adventure?

After almost four months of unemployment and moving out of my apartment on to my best friend’s couch, I got offered my first real TV job: Writer’s Assistant on season 2 of FX’s “Atlanta.” The gig was only for three months, and explaining to my Mom that it was a “smart move” to leave the full-time, year-round job I’d just gotten at Fullscreen three weeks earlier for this gig highlighted the instability of the career I was pursuing. I had to trust my instincts and thankfully she trusted them too. After Atlanta, I went from job to job, finished and defended my dissertation, and eventually got the position of Showrunner’s Assistant on Freeform’s “The Bold Type.” I found a mentor in my boss, Amanda Lasher, and she gave me my first opportunity to co-write a script on season 3 of the show, which premieres on April 9th. In January, I was offered my first job as a Staff Writer.

Honestly, it’s hard to believe that it’s only been 2.5 years in TV for me. I now have a podcast called “The Whisper Network” that’s all about different jobs in Hollywood. I do stand-up and co-host an LA backyard show titled “Just Tryna Make Friends, and I wrote/produced/starred in my first short film “Call Out Black” last year, which won an award at Long Beach Indie. It’s been quite a ride, so far and I can’t wait to see where this journey takes me.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road definitely hasn’t been smooth. I didn’t have a home for four months at the beginning of my TV pursuits and I had a short stint without an apartment early last year. Thankfully, I had friends who lent their couches and spare rooms, but not everyone does. Assistants in entertainment don’t get paid very much and the jobs are often short making those jobs positions of privilege. What I mean by that is that oftentimes the people who can afford to be Production Assistants (PAs), Writers’ PAs, and Writers’ Assistants (WAs) are people whose parents can afford to help them with expenses. Pay keeps a lot of people who don’thave that kind of help out of the business and it’s definitely a problem. I once had three part-time jobs on top of a full-time assistant gig to make ends meet.

My advice to women (you don’t have to be young because I sure wasn’t) is to be undeterred. If you have the talent and the work ethic, go after what you want. If that means that you have another job on the weekends, that’s what it means. If that means two hours before or after work every day working on sample scripts or specs, that’s what it means. If someone doesn’t believe in you or works against you, that’s fine, you won’t include them in your future award acceptance speech or TED Talk.

Also, find your tribe(s). That might be a writing tribe of people who can read your work and give you notes, and you do the same for them. It could also mean a tribe of people who just encourage and nourish your spirit, but aren’t in your field. Everyone needs support and I wouldn’t be where I am with my support systems.

Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
I’m a television writer who is still getting used to calling herself that. I get the privilege of sitting in a room with other talented, creative people and talking about characters who are usually completely made up. Have you ever argued with someone over a non-existent person’s potential actions because I have.

I think I bring a mix of creativity, emotion, and some academia-influenced analysis to the writers’ room. I’ve been learning more and more about structure and have continued to learn more about emotion from senior writers in the “The Bold Type” room. It’s great when you’re around people who want to share their knowledge with you. The goal is to become the best writer you can be and to make a showrunner’s vision come true so that’s what I’m trying to do.

Looking back on your childhood, what experiences do you feel played an important role in shaping the person you grew up to be?
I’ve always been a bit of an overachiever though I would never categorize myself as competitive. I could care less if someone beat me at Monopoly. I also hate Monopoly. I’ve just always wanted to meet the bars that I’ve set for myself and they usually happen to be high. I think the reason for that is that my Mom never let me think that there was something I couldn’t achieve if I went after it with everything I had. That’s not to say that she acted as if there weren’t systematic or societal obstacles in place for a Black woman in America. My Mom is too smart to have sipped the meritocracy kool-aid, but she believed I had it in me to climb those obstacles. Her belief and her prayers helped me believe too.

My Grandma is a woman who started working at 15 years old and grew her own business in Jamaica. She figured out what she wanted and she went after it. From a young age, I knew that women could run things and run them well, and she told me not to hesitate. “If you want it, go get it.” Between those two women and God, I don’t think I have a choice in running the race towards success as hard as I can. They’re quite the cheering section.