Today we’d like to introduce you to Robyn Paris.
Hi Robyn, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in North Carolina, climbing trees, building forts and rambling unchecked through the forests. My two brothers and I rarely wore shoes in the summer. We had so much freedom to play, ride our bikes, and hang with neighbors. I spent a lot of time alone in the woods with my imagination back then. It shaped me into the director and writer I am today. On the weekends, I’d organize backyard neighborhood talent shows, sell tickets, hand out flyers and sell refreshments. I’d go door to door selling roller-skating performances for 1 penny. I’d coordinate kids to perform comedy sketches when my parents’ friends got together. I was a dramatic child – I liked to wear costumes and wigs at unusual occasions; I brought accompanying music on a boom box to play when I gave a book report or class presentation. In elementary school, I’d fabricate crimes and then offer my detective services. People called me precocious and yes, a bit strange. I scared a few kids at my ghost story themed birthday parties. To me, it was all play…and comedy. I loved comedy. I spent hours watching and re-watching my favorite comedies like 9 to 5 with Dolly Parton, Airplane, reruns of Three’s Company, Overboard with Goldie Hawn. Anything with Goldie Hawn, I loved. There weren’t many female-driven comedies back then – maybe that’s why I watched 9 to 5 so often. It was a great movie about female empowerment and strength.
In high school and college, I took theatre classes and performed in plays. The first time I directed was at N.C. Governor’s School for Drama – a resident summer program for the performing arts and academics. I remember the thrill of taking a mundane scene and infusing comedy and inuendo – of having control over how the scene took shape. It was empowering. After college at Duke where I studied pre-med and public policy studies, I worked as a management consultant for a few years, trying to meet external societal expectations. I’m thankful that I gave that up and pursued the arts – the lure of entertainment was calling my name and I couldn’t say good-night to the playful me that thrived as a child.
Improv ultimately saved me from the mundanity of my day job. I joined Washington, DC’s only professional improv troupe – Precipice – and then moved to Chicago to study at Second City and Improv Olympic. Once in LA, I continued studying improv at The Groundings and IO West, landing spots on house teams at each. Improv led me to sketch, which led me to screenwriting. After a few years, I received my MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA where I wrote dozens of features and TV pilots.
A highlight at UCLA was winning the Samuel Goldwyn Screenwriting award for my feature script about a family raising a schizophrenic son. I based the script on my experience with my younger brother Greg’s mental illness. It was a soul-wrenching script to write, but ultimately, it connected with people who are struggling or have family members struggling with debilitating mental illnesses.
Ironically, it was my first acting job in LA in the cult film, The Room that led me to directing. After moving to LA, I responded to a casting call in Backstage West and subsequently landed the role of “Michelle” in Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 cult masterpiece, The Room. The unintendedly hilarious trainwreck of a movie became a global cult phenomenon, spawned a best-selling book and the Oscar-nominated movie, The Disaster Artist.
Before James Franco optioned The Disaster Artist book, I had an idea for a fictionalized, scripted mockumentary web series that would follow the actors from The Room as they struggled to escape being known as actors in “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.” I recruited the original Room actors, wrote my 10-episode series, Kickstarted money to fund it, shot it in 2015 and it hit the festival circuit in 2016 with the 1st three episodes of The Room Actors: Where Are They Now? Since then, I’ve completed and released a total of 8 episodes with two more “in the can” and being edited now. Together, the series is as long as a feature film – it was my first directing credit and I was thrilled that it was well-received. It premiered at Raindance in London, then screened at dozens of film festivals, like HollyShorts and HBO’s ITVFest, before launching in partnership with Funny or Die and accumulating over 1M views.
Since then, I directed/wrote/starred in another dramedy short, Fruitless, about an awkward woman desperate to join the clique of young moms that meets outside her bedroom window. The Room Actors was a fun broad comedy but with Fruitless, I leaned into my love of Alexander Payne films and tried to explore a darker, more subtle and dry brand of wit. Fruitless is just beginning its 2021 festival run.
Alright, 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?
I have had so many rejections – probably thousands – I can’t even count them! When I read articles about people who struggle for two, three, five years before they have success, I’m like, what – that’s nothing! I’ve been in Hollywood for over 20 years and worked as an actress, writer and now director – and I’m still pushing the boulder up that hill.
Most of the obstacles I’ve overcome boil down to resilience, determination and patience. Death by a thousand cuts is how most people fail in Hollywood. There is so much rejection – daily – that it’s imperative to steel yourself against it and develop some kind of system – whether it be a meditative practice, self-affirmations, religious beliefs or the love of friends and family – to overcome the heartbreak of “no’s” you will hear regularly. Maintaining a steadfast sense of dignity and purpose to your life and not allowing the bumps in the road to slow you down or stop you in your tracks is vital.
Imposter syndrome is something I struggle with. When I get big opportunities, I pinch myself and worry that someone will figure out I shouldn’t be there. Maintaining an unwavering belief in myself takes effort and practice.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As a director, I’m inspired to tell comic stories about awkward outsiders struggling to fit into a society that has rejected them. I love underdogs, fish-out-of-water and odd man out stories. The Room Actors fits into the “awkward outsider” category – it’s broad comedy, but it’s also a heartfelt story of former actors trying to regain dignity after the world has unfairly deemed them talentless.
In my work, I lean into my improv background to generate organic performances that are bitingly funny and truthful. I try to use satire as a tool to open minds and hearts – it’s difficult to harden your heart when you’re laughing so much you’re crying.
Filmmaking teams are stronger when their leaders are empowering, which is why I aspire to make talent and crew feel seen and trusted. Problems on set are inevitable so when they arise, I’m weirdly relieved – because then I know which issue I need to address that day. As Vanilla Ice famously said, “If there’s a problem – Yo, I’ll solve it.” I love Escape Rooms so I try to look at issues on set as if they are puzzles to be solved. I also find that obstacles can be gifts in disguise.
The pandemic has been good to me in terms of writing. I have two new features scripts with writing partners – one is White Zinfandel, a script about 4 diverse 40-something women who drink a skunked bottle of White Zin and are transported back to 1993 and their senior year of high school. And Dude From Scratch, a reverse Weird Science script, where two brilliant female scientists create the perfect man in a laboratory. I’m also attached to direct two comedy feature films that I didn’t write and I pray come to fruition! I’m working on proof-of-concepts now for several TV pilots I wrote and also developing a noire web series set in the world of Burlesque in the 1940s.
This year, I plan to direct several comedic shorts: Public Nuisance (written by my writing partner, Shanee Edwards), follows misbehaving women living on the frontier in 19th century America; Garage Sale (also written by Shanee) explores a young boy’s relationship with the ornery ghost of his dead grandfather; and my script, Mother of the Groom, which is about the reluctant backseat role the mother of the groom must accept. I was inspired to create Mother of the Groom after a recent screening of my short, Fruitless, at the Sunscreen Film Festival. Outside the theatre, I was approached by a woman who tearfully explained how much my short meant to her. She described an experience she had at her son’s wedding as the mother of the groom, feeling like an outsider and how she’s been on the outside of her son’s life ever since. We both ended up in tears and I decided to make her story the subject of my newest short. It’s incredible when your work touches people and you realize that we can share humanity, fears, worries and joy with others through film.
I’m honored to have been selected as a 2021 fellow for the Blackmagic Collective’s “Future Director of Studio Features” diversity initiative. The program offers mentoring for up-and-coming women-identifying directors through meetings and training sessions with high-level Hollywood “champions,” studio executives, producers and A-list directors. While the path to directing for me has been winding – with acting leading to screenwriting then to directing, my work as a director feels like finally coming home.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
The professors I had at the MFA Screenwriting program at UCLA were excellent mentors. Not only did they teach me how to effectively tell a story in 90 minutes or less, but they supported me and made me believe I could succeed in Hollywood. My comedy teacher Fred Rubin jumps to mind specifically. At graduation, he approached my parents (who were still smarting at the fact that I hadn’t gone to law or med school) and told them that I was on his shortlist of students he knew would succeed. I still think about that when things get hard and I wonder if I should give up. I don’t want to let Fred down!
When it came time to make the web series I had written, The Room Actors: Where Are They Now?, I had no idea where to begin. I turned to my writer’s group (all fellow UCLA MFA screenwriters), who became producers, editors and ADs on the project. They were the funniest and most ethical group I could have worked with. I was so lucky that they genuinely wanted to see the project succeed and bent over backward to help make it happen. My DP, Jeanne Tyson, another UCLA MFA grad, was incredible. She’s so talented but also gracious and understanding of the fact that I was a first-time director. A lot of the credit for the show looking great goes to Jeanne and the rest of my writing group – Hunter Phillips, Brian Fagan, Dan Alvarado, Shanee Edwards and Byron Trent. From recruiting actors to toiling over the edit with me, they were supportive through and through. Another advocate was the late John Sweet, a UCLA screenwriting professor, who unfortunately passed away several years ago.
My family members have also been cheerleaders. My husband and I met in college so we’ve been together forever and he’s seen me through it all. And now my two kids are also big advocates. They appeared as actors in my series and cheer me on whenever I get a win. When The Disaster Artist came out, my son was in middle school and we both endured a lot of “oh hai Jack’s mom” comments at pick-up. But ultimately, we all have a sense of humor about it. My brother Greg is hilarious so we often brainstorm ideas together for my scripts or he’ll pitch me jokes.
My parents weren’t initially on board with my moving to LA for “the industry,” but over the years, they’ve come to support my choices. When I was young, they encouraged independence, strength and resilience. And they laughed at my jokes, no matter how bad they were. That’s probably one of the biggest gifts you can give as a parent: uplift a child’s joy. “Never yuck anyone’s yum,” as my 13 year old daughter would say. That’s probably why I felt confident enough to leave North Carolina to forge a filmmaking career – and why I still find so much healing in comedy.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.robynparis.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robynoparis/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialRobynParis
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/robynoparis
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RobynParis16
- Other: https://www.theroommockumentary.com
Image Credits
Dan Alvarado, Jeanne Tyson, Ludovica Isidori, HollyWeb, ITVFest
