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T HE WEBB SCHOOL S webb.org
SPRING/SUMMER 2018 WEBB M AGA ZINE
news 22 &
notes
THE WEBB SCHOOLS
a half minutes with
Television Writer Tyler Bensinger ’80 B Y J E S S I C A R I C E ’12
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lumni who have watched Cold Case, Parenthood, The Good Wife, or recent fan-favorite, This Is Us, have likely seen some of Tyler Bensinger ’80s work. He has worked on 16 television shows during his 30-year career as a professional writer. Although the former Webb athlete earned a BA in English from Yale University and his MFA from University of California, Los Angeles, he credits the inspiration for his career and his love of English to his experience with two Webb teachers nearly four decades earlier. Here, Bensinger reflects on his career and the impact of his Webb experience.
Tyler Bensinger ’80 with This Is Us stars Susan Kelechi Watson and Sterling K. Brown.
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q&a How did you get into entertainment? When left Webb, went to ale and had no idea what I wanted to do. But became a projectionist for this film society at ale. That s how it all started. became a projectionist and started watching movies over and over. ou project a movie three times in a row each night, and then you reali e, “That s not an accident. They did that on purpose.” rom there, sort of new what I wanted to do. When applied to film school after graduation and went to A film school, wanted to be a director, not a writer. ut to become a director, you have to write something. No one is going to write anything for you. started writing scripts and then actually directed a movie, but it was really bad and wasn t very good at it. So learned how to write and just kept writing. How did you end up working in television? wor ed in features feature films for years, and then television too over everything and became the medium to be in. Everything good was happening in television and the feature business was drying up at the time, so made the transition to T . t was a better place to be, as it is now. There is just way more opportunity in television right now than there is in features. ve been luc y. thin ve wor ed on three of the best shows in the s Parenthood, The Good Wife, This Is Us . Do you think Webb had any impact on your career path? y education at Webb was better than my education at ale. And wor ed harder and learned more at Webb than
spoiler alert: Questions about This Is Us may contain key plot points. did at ale. had two teachers, namely a teacher named ohn eyes and a teacher named e ast, who were the whole inspiration for my writing career. They were two English teachers and they were remar ably great. thin they just really loved teaching and were so passionate about what they taught. t all started with that. There s nothing li e your first time reading a great boo , and it was really about understanding that literature is so much more than meets the eye. Webb was the start of it all. You worked most recently as a co-executive producer for the show This Is Us. What does the role of a co-executive producer involve? That title basically means you write episodes and you brea the episodes, meaning you come up with stories for the episodes in a room with nine other writers. ou come up with what the whole season is going to be. This Is Us has become one of the most successful broadcast TV shows in years. What do you think sets it apart? The writing and the acting. t s a beautifully acted show and it has one of the best casts ever. ou can t beat that. What was it like to be a part of the show for season two? ou now as a writer, you spend up to hours a day, every day in a writers room with nine other people, and it can get very emotionally fraught in there because people are telling their own personal stories and crying. t was a very intense show to wor on, and a lot of fun. ut mostly a very intense experience. With the content of the show, you re dealing with such big
tic et items of ac dying and dealing with the aftermath of all of these traumatic events. t s a show that really wants to tell an emotional truth, so it was a lot of wor . t was a lot of heavy lifting, because the showrunner, an ogelman, would not accept anything but the truth. You had to dig as deep as you could. How did you and your team approach Jack’s death? We new what it was going to be from the get go. So it was a real balancing act because the audience new he died right away, but you didn t want to fa e the audience out. thin they tried to deal with it as honestly as possible. ne of the great things about This Is Us is how emotionally raw it is. They don t hold bac . They peel bac all the layers, so it was really about exposing the raw nerve at the root of all that pain. t s pretty uni ue in that way, in that it doesn t hold bac at all. We just laid it all out there. What has been your favorite show to write for so far? The first season of Parenthood was probably my favorite, because was able to help set the tone for the entire series. What’s next for you? ight now am ta ing time o to pursue my other career, which is photography. Writers get hiatuses, so every hiatus go and ta e pictures. hotography is something that ve always been interested in. ve always been ta ing pictures, and it just came naturally for me. m hoping to get a photography boo published soon.
Bensinger resides in Los Angeles with his wife of 30 years, Sascha, who teaches law at Loyola Law School. His daughter, Emily, is a screenwriter and his son, Ethan, is earning a PhD in vision science from University of California, Berkeley. His brother, Kerry, graduated from Webb in 1978.