Meet Abbey May and Nicole Ledoux: Writers

We had the good fortune of connecting with Abbey May and Nicole Ledoux and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Abbey and Nicole, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?

A quick pitch: Groovy Tuesdays is a laugh-out-loud queer musical series. It’s proof-of-concept (fancy name for a long pilot) shoots in summer 2021. Evolving since it’s inception in 2019, creators Abbey May and Nicole Ledoux have an entire first season up ther sleeves, filled with colorful musical numbers and of course, some gay humor.

Groovy Tuesdays’ success comes from 3 “C’s”– Collaboration, Communication and Celebration! We see collaboration as building a diverse community of voices. There’s a distinct difference between filling a quota of BIPOC/LGBTQ+ artists on set and being deliberate in considering what each artist brings to our story. We know success comes from having an array of voices in the room.

Communication is a branch of collaboration, both of us (Nicole and Abbey) had to learn how to funnel our humor into a mechanism of craft. There were many conversations of self doubt, sharing the workload, and killing our babies (i.e. cutting scenes and jokes). As we expand into a larger production company with Johnny Turner and Jack Merline (the two executive producers of Groovy Tuesdays) we are kneading out all those knots all over again. Learning how others best communicate is a sign of success!

More than anything, we are celebrating the making of what we love. It brings us joy every single moment of doing it, and when writers create work because they love it, success follows. We have watched Groovy Tuesdays gain traction because we simply don’t stop talking about it!

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

The stories we share are part of lifting queer women. LGBTQ+ women have been given Hollywood stories of drama and struggle. Their plots involve infidelity, secrecy, and shame. We asked our team, “what if being true to ourselves was as fun as we wanted it to be? Why do women of any sexual identity still have to succumb to being labelled for easier social digestion?” If the process of coming out is confusing and nuanced, why not give young women a way to see it in a way that doesn’t have to be scary and overly mature? With a script full of hilarious musical numbers and ridiculous queer humor, we hope to reach out to young queer women, arms stretched out, saying “Join us. You don’t have to do this alone.”

This is because we were lucky enough to not have to do it alone ourselves. Having each other is what brought us to where we are today… It started out with a tough break-up, a trip to Trader Joe’s, and the impulse to laugh through the tough moments of heartbreak and coming out.

Has it been easy? Yes. We think the hardest part is ahead of us: filming, editing, marketing, budgeting– We definitely need a team to help finish the arch of creation. There’s some relief in knowing that we love the “CO” part of collaboration, and having that under our belt gives us hope that the second half of creating this proof of concept won’t be as daunted as we expect it.

If there is anything the world should know about the work of Abbey May and Nicole Ledoux, it’s that we want to tell stories that are illustrated through stretched realities and delightful personalities (heck yeah, that rhymed!) By making stories that set difficult situations in colorful worlds, we can leave our viewers feeling triumphant by the end credits.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?

COVID-19 restrictions and challenges aside…

You MUST hit up some gay clubs. Hit up The Satellite for “GayAsstrology” night. If it’s your birthday month, you enter for free.

Looking for some snacks? Magpies is best for exceptional softserve, we love Homestate for breakfast tacos, and since you’re in LA, you might as well hit up the notorious Tatsu Ramen.

We love taking the trip up to Malibu, it’s worth the gorgeous drive up the coast, and you can spend the day in the gardens of the Getty Villa.

End your evenings back in the city by getting beer and vegan goodness at the Modern Times Dankness Dojo.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

We have to shout out Johnny Turner and Jack Merline. They’re our twins. Abbey and Johnny bartended together in Beverly Hills and Johnny always spoke of the production work he was doing, mentioning the success of his college chum, Jack. When Abbey and Nicole decided they were going to write Groovy Tuesdays, Johnny and Jack were brought on to actualize production goals and things fell into place. They have made an immeasurable impact on the growth of Groovy Tuesdays– both of them were the catalyst for us to really believe in ourselves.

We have to add that nothing would exist without the queer community we have. Nicole often brings up the memories of the conversations we would all have in our early twenties, seeing LGBTQ+ film and television and wondering why it never rang true for our community– a lot of queer cinema is desperate, dark, and difficult… why? We see so much queer joy in our lives, and that comes from the joyous community we have been gifted with.

Not to mention our music icons: Flight of the Conchords (bless Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement) and boss b*tch Rachel Bloom of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. These musically over-the-top universes are exactly what the inside of our minds look like…

Instagram: @groovytuesdays

Image Credits
Chris Wooden