Married to the Biz

WORDS by Bec Doyle

Carolyn Stotesbery-Levens and Philip Levens sat with us for a few minutes and wound up talking for hours, about the joys and anguish of working with your spouse, living through a pandemic, and what it’s like to pitch television shows during lockdown. They’re both funny, caring and tough as nails, and are bringing a new level of exciting, sexy, and original drama to television.

Carolyn and Philip met nearly three years ago at a backyard party in Hollywood and a whirlwind romance ensued: engaged, married, and working together within twelve months. With Carolyn’s background as an actress on shows such as Agent X and Castle and Phillip having just finished a project for Legendary, both partners realized it was time to work together. “If you have the same simpatico mindset about the world, it makes things seamless,” Phillip says. The duo have maintained an effortless balance: one project morphed into several, currently in the pipeline.

“We play to each other’s strengths,” Phillip says. “Having a female voice adds to the dimensionality of the project, with Carolyn often voicing the female characters and their perspectives. “She says anything that’s dirty or scandalous in a pitch,” Phillip jokes. “Somehow it sounds less offensive coming from her.” They both have a wicked sense of humor as well as unparalleled taste, which makes discussing their newest projects in development a real treat.

Photo by @gregglevittphotography

On the heels of pitch season, the lively couple were faced with working together, remodeling a house while living in a rental, and raising an 11 year old son and 13 year old daughter during a global pandemic and lockdown. “For me it’s created a very intimate experience,” Carolyn says. After an initial adjustment period, they realized things were not going to ease up, and suddenly virtual pitch meetings started popping up. “We’ll work ten hours a day up till the pitch, then once it’s done we’ll take a breath,” Carolyn explains. Philip adding, that one of the best tools they’ve discovered during the pandemic has been division of labor. “We’re great at handing off the baton to each other.”

The duo gave M. Citizen Mag the scoop on a few of their upcoming projects including Menace of Venice. Inspired by the true story of Dan Duchaine, the world’s first biohacker, doper of the Olympics and the man who brought PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs) to the American mainstream. The series follows his incredible rise and fall in the 80’s. And by the sounds of it, it’s going to be one hell of a ride. “He was an eccentric genius,” Carolyn says. “Imagine Andy Kaufman meets Albert Einstein, only a drug dealer being chased by the FBI, DEA and even the CIA.” He discovered Whey protein powder and created the Ketogenic Diet while he was in jail, writing by hand, because they wouldn’t give him a typewriter.”

As a new, post-corona streaming era of entertainment approaches, the age of boiler plate network TV is going the way of satelite dishes and landlines, opening the door for original, out of the box ideas that never would have sold in the past. “You hear we’re in the ‘Golden Age of Television’, but it’s because there is this Renaissance where we’re suddenly allowed to tell stories that aren’t just doctor, cop and lawyer shows,” Phillip explains. “Executives have heard it all, so they know what is original,” Carolyn says, saying this new landscape has freed them up to do shows they really want to do. “Streaming is finding audiences for narratives that television ran away from in the past.”

Hollywood is all about the relationships you build, and Phillip credits his 20 plus years in the industry writing and producing shows like Smallville and Ascension as the key to forging the relationships with executives and producers that they are pitching to during the pandemic. He adds this unconventional way of virtual pitching may not serve newcomers, who have yet to forge these relationships. The good news, he adds, is that now, more than ever, they are looking for original stories: “They want to see stories from different people, and different parts of the world. The potential for storytelling now is infinite.” If your dream is to write and produce,” Philip’s advice is to “look for stories that are personal and that you connect to, because in Hollywood, passion sells.”

Carolyn Stotesbery-Levens & Philip Levens

Photo by Greg Levitt @greglevittphotography