Canada’s Showrunner of the Year, Anthony Q. Farrell, on Paving the Way for BIPOC Writers and How a WGA Strike Could Play Out in Canada
If you’re an aspiring TV writer in Canada, it’s quite possible your script is in Anthony Q. Farrell’s slush pile. The Canadian showrunner is always reading projects and helping new writers get their start, and now that he’s got a few weeks of downtime before his summer projects fire up, he’s finally sitting down to read them.
“I feel like I’m in a Zen place right now,” he tells Variety. “But I think the summer’s going to be bananas.”
Farrell, who got his start writing for Greg Daniels on “The Office,” has helmed shows like “The Parker Andersons/Amelia Parker” and “Overlord and the Underwoods.” Slowly but surely, he has become one of Canada’s most prominent showrunners and an industry leader in telling authentic and diverse stories on screen. To do that, he’s spent countless hours fostering BIPOC talent behind the scenes in writers rooms and through initiatives like the BIPOC TV & Film Showrunner Bootcamp, which he ran with Jinder Oujla-Chalmers in 2021.
The boot camp helped more than 100 writers learn the ins and outs of running a project. Along with teaching the basics of writing, production and post, Farrell had other showrunners of color open up about their experiences with executives and decision-makers. He says he wanted to highlight how it’s sometimes necessary to teach cultural heritage before even getting to the art.
“That’s very commonplace for a lot of showrunners of color,” he says. “The fact is, most of the time you’re dealing with white executives and a lot of the time they’re very open and love hearing about this stuff, but the real situation we’re in is sometimes they just need to be educated to understand why certain characters are doing certain things. That’s not something I think is common with white showrunners.”
That leadership is one of the reasons the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) named Farrell its 2022 Showrunner of the Year. Although there was no boot camp last year, the creative hopes to bring it back for another session, as soon as he can find “five Saturdays in a row.” In the meantime, his Bell Media series “Shelved,” a comedy set in a library in Toronto’s multicultural Parkdale neighborhood, wraps its inaugural, eight-episode season later this month on CTV.
The series came about after Bell Media reached out to Farrell to see what he was working on, and he sent over a script and the show bible. “Shelved” went into development in 2020, was greenlit in January 2022, and filmed last summer. Currently, Farrell is awaiting word on a potential Season 2.
It’s the second show under Farrell’s leadership to debut this year. The creative also took over showrunning duties from Shebli Zarghami on “Run the Burbs” in its second season. The CBC comedy, which is loosely based on the life of Andrew Phung (“Kim’s Convenience”), finished airing Season 2 at the end of March, on the same day CBC confirmed Season 3.
Farrell reveals he won’t return to the series since he has three shows currently in development with broadcasters: an action drama, a live-action comedy, and an animated kids’ series. However, he believes in “Burbs” and its potential, and did everything he could to make it work with his schedule and help the series survive TV’s dreaded sophomore slump.
“There is a lot of potential and opportunity for the show to really grow and explore representation in a way you can’t do on any other show,” he explains. “I don’t know of any show in the world with a Vietnamese dad and an Indian mom. So there’s an opportunity and an obligation to explore those cultural stories on a show like that.”
Of course, all of Farrell’s projects could come to a screeching halt depending on what happens with the potential WGA strike south of the border.
Farrell belongs to both the WGA and the Writers’ Guild of Canada, where he serves on the Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility subcommittee. The WGC has openly supported the WGA during negotiations and plans to advise members not to work on WGA-jurisdiction shows in the event of a strike.
“I do think if there is a strike, a few more shows will probably try and come to Canada to do stuff here instead of the States,” he says. “The way this will work is if they are companies that already do business in Canada — that’s fine. [But] if they’re coming to Canada for the first time now because of the strike, we’re not going to take that work. That’s how I understand it, but I can’t speak for the council.”
He says that as a member of both guilds he sees a lot of similarities in the issues at stake. He notes jobs for writers in Canada are down in general and there are fewer opportunities and smaller rooms, despite some of the larger streaming services setting up shop there.
Farrell feels as though some American producers may be looking at the Canadian system as a potential model, but in reality, Canadian writers will in fact benefit from any waves created by the potential strike. In the meantime, he highlights the importance of fighting for writers’ rights everywhere.
“Even though there’s more diversity and inclusivity, percentage-wise there are fewer jobs overall and the rooms are getting smaller,” he says. “We’re [trying] to get to a place where we can make a living wage and do what we love doing and make a living doing it. That’s the hope and goal for everybody.”
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
