Meet Marja-Lewis Ryan | Writer/Director/Producer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Marja-Lewis Ryan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Marja-Lewis, do you disagree with some advice that is more or less universally accepted?
I have been a writer/director/producer for over a decade and the one thing I hear over and over is about picking a track. You must make movies OR TV OR Theater but I have found deep worth in doing lot of kinds of story telling. I bang on the piano and bake cakes too because the creative process has a sort of structure that defies form. I have learned so much from each of the areas I work in.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I started acting when I was a kid. I went to NYU for theater where I studied at The Atlantic Theater COmpany’s acting school. I wanted to be an actor but all the while, I was writing.

I wrote my monologues to get into that school. I wrote scenes for scene study class. I think what I was doing was solving a problem — there weren’t many voices that sounded like mine. I was taught in school to make my own work if I wanted to showcase my skills. That was my north star.

I moved out to LA with my best friends from college and raised about $2500 to put up a play for a few nights in Hollywood. A new friend of mine, Samantha Housman, who was slinging pizzas at the time, came to see it and encouraged me to write a movie. I raised $250K and made an indie with the same friends I moved out here with. I am great at raising money. It seems scary at first but it’s a huge part of being an artist in the beginning. I asked everyone I’d ever met for $5 grand. I knew some wealthy people from childhood and I cold called them. They were so inspired by the tenacity that they’d recommend more people. Me and my college buddies wrote emails to the general inboxes of huge distributors and got the attention of MTV/Logo who agreed to give us 40K in finishing funds if they could own the TV rights. We were pumped! That movie came out in 2010.

The thing that successful people told me was that when that movie is coming out I had to have the next project ready to go. I went back to the thing I loved. I produced my own plays in 2007, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2024. The one in 2014 – a drama called One In The Chamber — changed my life.

It was the first thing I’d ever directed. Prior to this, I’d only ever written, produced and acted. David Mamet, a very successful playwright and the founder of The Atlantic where I had studied, came to the show and asked me to direct one of his. I directed Felicity Huffman in the LA premier of The Anarchist in 2015. I moved in off-broadway the following year.

That 2014 play also got me my first movie contract. And I sold my first TV show in 2016 to HBO. My biggest gig came in 2018 when I got the job running The L Word for Showtime. I was under an overall there through 2023. Since then, I’ve sold an animated show to Disney, and I have features at New Line and Village Roadshow including the hot title, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun with Elizabeth Banks producing.

I think the hardest part is just doing it again. And again. And again. And I have a hard time remembering that no one is coming to save me. I have to just keep putting in the work. Every time. No one cares about what I’ve done as much as they care about what I’m about to do. So I just have to keep making stuff. Any time any one has ever offered me something it’s because they are literally, in that moment, seeing something that I’ve made from scratch. It’s the only thing that I’ve ever found really works. I have fantasies of someone offering me lots of money to sit and write in a the woods. That has not happened (yet).

I think the luckiest thing going for me is my timing. I benefited from all the women who came before me and the changing world. I benefited from streaming and from being a voice for my own queer community from the jump. That’s what I hope to be known for. For carrying the torch for my community. For trying to put us in the driver’s seat as much as possible.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I just had friends in town and I can tell you I did absolutely nothing with them! I work ALL THE TIME. That’s the hardest part of the gig. I don’t really get time off. I have to carve it out for myself and that balance is hard when I work a freelance job.

That said, I have spots I’m always at. I write at Highly Likely in West Adams and The Line Hotel in Koreatown and The Shay in Culver City. Hotels are such great places to write. Excellent people watching and no one bothers me or my little dog.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Theater has been my lifeline so many times. When I was a kid I got a job working at a local regional theater. Shout out to — The Ritz Theater in Haddon Township, New Jersey. I ushered and designed props and made photo copies of scripts for actors in their plays. Anything to be close to the smell of that place. I knew I belonged there. Later, after I’d graduated college and I moved out to LA and a friend from college recommended I join Theater Of Note in Hollywood. Same thing — I ran the light board and produced plays for new writers. The community and sense of self that I found in that place allowed me to launch a career in the city.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marjalewisryan/?hl=en

Other: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm2903680/