Pitches That Slayed

Hear pitches from the WGAE members who sold their work and made it to air.

Join WGAE members Hannah Bos & Paul Thureen, Terence Nance and Gabriel Sherman to hear the actual pitches that made it to air. Co-moderated by members Lara Shapiro & Adam Wiesen.

Hannah Bos & Paul Thureen are a writing duo who are the creators and executive producers of HBO’s

Peabody Award-winning, critically acclaimed comedy series SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE, starring Bridget Everett, currently airing its third season. Hannah and Paul received a Humanitas Prize nomination for the

SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE pilot and the first two seasons received nominations from the GLAAD Media Awards, Critics Choice Awards, Gotham Awards, Spirit Awards, TCA & HCA Awards, Dorian TV Awards, and was honored by AFI amongst their Television Programs of the Year in 2022. Hannah and Paul received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for “Best First Screenplay” for their feature DRIVEWAYS (dir. Andrew Ahn) which premiered at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival (North American premiere at Tribeca Film Festival). Together they have also written for HBO’s HIGH MAINTENANCE and Amazon’s MOZART IN THE JUNGLE. Along with Oliver Butler, Hannah and Paul were founders/co-Artistic Directors of The Debate Society, a multiple-Obie award winning theater company.

Terence Nance is an Artist, Musician, and Filmmaker born in Dallas, Texas in what was then referred to as the State-Thomas community. Nance wrote, directed, scored, and starred in his first feature film, AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically in 2013.

In 2014, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow. In the summer of 2018, Terence’s Peabody award-winning television series RANDOM ACTS OF FLYNESS debuted on HBO to great critical acclaim and was renewed for a second season by the network. The New York Times hailed the show as “a striking dream vision of race” and “hypnotic, transporting and un-categorizable” adding that “it’s trying to disrupt and re-disrupt your perceptions so that, finally, you can see.”

In the fall of 2018, it was announced that Nance was tapped to write, produce and direct SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY, starring Lebron James. The film premiered in theaters and on HBOMAX this summer. In 2020 Terence released his first EP, THINGS I NEVER HAD under the name Terence Etc. He also partnered with filmmakers Jenn Nkiru, Bradford Young, Nanette Nelms and Mishka Brown to form The Ummah Chroma Creative Partners – a directors collective and production company. This team released KILLING IN THY NAME in collaboration with Rage Against The Machine in January of 2021. Nance is currently at work on healing, curiosity, and interdimensionality, while making season II of RANDOM ACTS OF FLYNESS and preparing to release his debut album VORTEX.

Gabriel Sherman is an award-winning screenwriter and journalist. His original feature screenplay THE APPRENTICE, directed by Ali Abassi and starring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong and Maria Bakalova, premiered in competition at the 2024 Cannes International Film Festival.

Sherman’s other credits include Showtime’s Golden Globe and WGA nominated limited series THE LOUDEST VOICE. The series was based on Sherman’s New York Times best-selling book The Loudest Voice in the Room about the late Fox News C.E.O Roger Ailes. Sherman was also a writer and producer on the ABC drama ALASKA DAILY starring Hilary Swank.

Sherman is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and has appeared regularly as a political commentator on MSNBC. He lives in New York with his wife, son and daughter plus their dog and cat.

Lara Shapiro’s work as a writer includes the FX drama THE AMERICANS, the EPIX spy drama BERLIN STATION and the YouTube Premium drama IMPULSE.

Pilots in development include STICKY FINGERS, a dramedy for Bad Robot and Warner Bros, THE DISTRICT for Richard Plepler and Apple TV+, and QUIET REBEL for Jessica Chastain, Alexandra Milchan and Sony TV.

Lara comes from a directing background, having directed studio financed feature films, episodic TV, numerous global commercial campaigns and award-winning shorts before transitioning to writing features and TV full time.

Adam Wiesen is a writer and producer in New York City, known for TALES (BET) and EAST NEW YORK (CBS). He and his partner are currently in development at NBCUniversal.