Meet Brett Melnick of @WhatsUpNorthTV

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brett Melnick. 

Brett Melnick is a writer and producer, who just finished running the first season of the political satire digital series “What’s Up North”, which he co-created in partnership with Instagram and BuzzFeed. 

Brett got his start in the writer’s room of The Last O.G., a TBS comedy starring Tracy Morgan and Tiffany Haddish. As a writers’ assistant, Brett was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to write digital promos for the show, which later aired on TBS and the TBS digital app. 

A graduate of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, Brett studied as a direct mentee under director/producer, Rob Cohen (The Fast And The Furious, xXx) and wrote a pilot script under Cohen’s supervision. While a student, Brett directed a 30-minute television pilot that was recognized at the New York Film and Television Festival, and, in the same breath, wrote and produced a Spongebob Squarepants short film that was chosen as a worldwide finalist in Nickelodeon’s “Spongebob Squareshorts” competition. 

Brett is a member of the Second City Improv, and uses his improv and music background to create parody hip-hop music in his free time. 

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I feel navigating an industry such as the entertainment industry comes with great difficulty, but shows constant experiences for growth. In several instances of life there have been major struggles and hurdles I’ve had to cross. The first that comes to mind was in my freshman year of college, at a school in the Midwest, I was hazed and bullied and went into a bad depression that took me about three years to get out of. I began to lose my sense of sense and my confidence and ended up losing 40 pounds of weight. Forcing myself out of this hole was a major difficulty, as I had to not only learn and trust myself but had to develop trust with the rest of the world all over again. 

One thing that makes us as humans so very precious and unique is that everyone has a different set of personal experiences and difficulties. I believe that it’s much more powerful to embrace and learn from those experiences and difficulties than to disaffiliate from them. 

I feel that everyone’s journey would be best travelled if we removed a stigma towards the concept of struggle and accepted that everyone goes through struggle in their own way, as it’s all-in-all just a part of growth. The worst thing that we can do as people is suppress our true emotions just because we fear expressing them may come across as weakness. 

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I work now as a comedy television writers’ assistant and an assistant to a comedy television showrunner. Through the experience, I’ve been blessed to work alongside many of my inspirations growing up from Tracy Morgan, Kerry Washington, and Jordan Peele to Lloyd Braun and Kevin Reilly. My passion is in writing and producing comedy television. I have however been immersing myself into the digital and tech world more and more as of late, and recently created a pilot of a satirical news show for Buzzfeed and Instagram. The project, What’s Up North, explores social and environmental topics facing the world, and through sketches and interviews with professionals in the field, ends each episode explaining the ways in which viewers can make active differences to the world on their day-to-day. Our pilot got such a positive response from Buzzfeed and 

Instagram that we were flown to New York to premiere our project internally for corporate at Buzzfeed and Instagram. 

All-in-all, what I believe sets one person apart from another is an innate belief in oneself, and possessing a fearlessness to dive into the fields that you fear, and learn from them to better yourself and reach your new limit. I very strongly believe that we as humans have no limit to our abilities and accomplishments. If you want something, pursue it, learn from it, and fail if you have to, but never stop yourself from learning and growing, as growth occurs in a variety of ways. But the only way you can achieve growth is to push yourself, and face that in which you fear. 

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
I think the biggest role model to me has been my current boss, Saladin K. Patterson. His personal story and pursuit of growth and knowledge very much resonates to me and with my story. Similar to me, Saladin grew up with an interest in technology, and explored innovation in the S.T.E.M. realm. Now, unlike me, Saladin was so brilliant in the engineering field that he went on to study engineering at M.I.T., exposing himself to a field of study that is very computational and calculated. Saladin has since taken a pivot from engineering to pursue a career in television writing and producing, and has succeeded considerably within the field, however, he still has a very evident engineer mind. I’m always so very impressed with how he crafts story and develops jokes. The pairing of his creative mind and his logistic mind is honestly a treat to witness in action. I’m very much thankful to be able to learn and grow my own tone and comedic styles through watching such brilliant people around me do in at the highest level on the day-to-day.

Contact Info:

• Address: Wilshire and Highland
• Website: bmelnick.com
• Email: melnickbrett@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebrettmelnick/
   https://www.instagram.com/whatsupnorthtv/
• Other: Watch Episode 1 Of What’s Up North Here https://www.instagram.com/tv/Bw7lZh4lDBG/

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