Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Harner.
Hi Rachel, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m originally from a very rural town in Washington State on the Olympic Peninsula called Forks. It’s incredibly picturesque but also incredibly rainy, and from a young age, I gravitated towards reading and writing as my favorite things to do during a storm. I also gravitated towards TV, but not in the way that you’d think. I’m an only child, so instead of watching cartoons with my siblings, I’d watch whatever primetime dramas my parents did. So while all my friends were watching American Idol, I was obsessed with shows like Eureka, Heroes, and Lost.
But that didn’t immediately translate into wanting to pursue a career writing or producing TV. In fact, for all the TV I watched, I had never met anyone who worked in the industry and was fairly oblivious about how TV or movies were made. When it came time to apply for college, all I knew was I liked telling stories and I wanted to get as far away from my small hometown as possible. I cast out a wide (if arbitrary) net of applications and was incredibly lucky when I got into Harvard, becoming the first person from Forks to ever be accepted into an undergraduate program at any Ivy League university. I was also incredibly lucky that they have an extremely generous financial aid program that made it cheaper for me to attend Harvard than any in-state university.
I quickly found myself involved in way too many campus plays; doing everything from building and painting sets, to designing props, costumes, and, eventually, stage managing and producing. Combining my experience making theater with my love of reading and writing, I wrote a full-length play as my thesis project and from there, I was hooked. It was actually while working on my play that I made the jump to TV, writing the first ten pages of what is still one of my samples after getting frustrated one night with my thesis.
That ability to move beyond genres and mediums is a huge part of who I am as a writer today, and I constantly find myself working across film, TV, and stage, with a few forays into fiction and poetry just to keep it interesting. I think working in theater and embracing that “no job too small” mentality has made me a very hands-on person, and I’ve sought out industry jobs that allow me to learn and be part of every aspect of the creative process. Beyond writing, I’m the creative executive at Spycraft Entertainment, an espionage-focused production company where I’ve helped develop film and TV projects with companies like Netflix, Amazon, AMC and NBC. Being a writer on the “other side of the table” allows me to really get into the trenches with the creatives we develop with, and my ability to wear both my business and storytellings hats simultaneously has been hugely helpful in all aspects of my career.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I always joke that any kind of creative life is lived “despite of,” instead of “because of.” For example, my creative journey thus far been despite the pandemic, despite the strikes, and despite the overall contraction of shows and writing opportunities. And those are just the highlights. I was just talking to a pair of showrunners the other day who’ve been working since the 90s, and we were comparing stories about coming up and building careers in two incredibly different ecosystems, and the word that kept coming up again and again was persistence. Though it was heartening to hear them recognize the unique challenges writers and creatives are facing today, making it (whatever that means) in Hollywood has never been a smooth road, and the people who do are more often than not those who are incredibly persistent. I’m in the middle of pitching a series, so the last several months have been a chorus of “no”s, and my persistence has never been stronger.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a screenwriter and playwright, though occasionally I’ll wander into prose. Most of my writing falls into the category of “grounded genre,” so sci-fi and fantasy that feels tethered to our reality in some way. Though funnily enough, several of the projects I’m most proud of are the complete opposite. For example, I was hired to write a Christmas movie a few years ago, which was a really fun challenge precisely because it was so different than anything else I’d written before. It was exciting to tackle a completely new genre, especially one with such specific and beloved conventions. I’m also always enormously proud of the plays I write for both Shotz and Playground-LA, two theater companies that frequently give me a platform to explore the wackier side of my creativity and don’t shy away when I write plays about sentient pigs and alien abductions.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
There are so many people who’ve helped me along the way –– teachers, mentors, friends, family, and a slew of writers whose work has inspired me in one way or another. If I had to single one out, I’d choose my dad, who was my first storyteller. Instead of reading books to lull me to sleep, he’d make up elaborate stories with even more elaborate cliffhangers that always left me begging to know what happens next. As a tactic for getting me to go to bed, it was terribly unsuccessful. But as a means of instilling a deep love of stories and world-building, I’ve had no better teacher. Plus, he’s a huge nerd, so my love of all things sci-fi and fantasy owes a great debt to my early years spent watching Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Xena: Warrior Princess together.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachelharner/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelaharner/
