John Owen Lowe Makes a Name for Himself
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
John Owen Lowe loved every bit of his experience working as a writer on the series “9-1-1: Lone Star” — except the presence of one particular cast member was starting to wear on him.
“I was kind of losing my mind a little bit because I felt like I didn’t like the proximity in which I was working with my dad so much,” he says. “Not because of anything other than I wanted to branch out and do my own thing. And I would vent to my manager and agent on a weekly basis and tell them that I wanted to get out of my dad’s shadow and they would kind of just laugh at my misery.”
More from WWD
That dad is none other than Rob Lowe, and their father-son relationship has ultimately led to a new Netflix series called “Unstable,” which Lowe co-created with his father and on which he is both a writer and costar.
So how does one go from wanting to branch away from working with dad to writing a series based on their relationship in which they both star?
“I love that question and here’s why: because it’s an absolutely insane solve to a problem,” Lowe says over the phone from his office in Sherman Oaks, California. “Because in reality, it’s just making a problem so much worse. And I have a joke saying that I like to say where it’s like sometimes when you’re lost in a forest, the only way out is to go deeper into the forest. And the truth is that I really do want to differentiate myself and be my own person in an industry where my dad has made a name for himself. And it just so happens that my story to tell right now involves him. I can promise you that the next story I tell will not involve him.”
His conversations with his team while he was working on “9-1-1” eventually arrived at how universal the desire to get out from under your parents’ shadow is — even if your dad happens to be Rob Lowe — while also feeling a pull to be around them. Lowe ended up writing a treatment of an idea about his relationship with his dad and, soon “Unstable” was born.
Lowe, who is 27, originally had zero interest in joining the family business. In high school he interned in a stem cell biology research lab at UCSF and thought he would become a molecular genetic scientist, and went on to study science technology at Stanford. He had reservations about a life in the creative arts after seeing how “volatile” that life could be from growing up with his dad.
“I liked creative writing and I almost minored in it at school and at one point I thought, ‘I’d like to see what a writer’s room is like.’ Sort of dipping my toes into it and worked as a PA in a few different writers’ rooms,” Lowe says. “I got the coffees and I got the lunches and I fell in love with that writer’s process. My dad likes to joke that he was all sad because he thought I was going to be a doctor or a scientist, and I ended up acting.”
The reality of joining the industry these days is it squarely puts you in the “nepo baby” conversation, but Lowe doesn’t shy away from talking about it.
“The non-comedic take is that it’s a conversation that’s happening for a reason. I think it’s an important conversation. I think that it speaks to a certain level of self-awareness that I think people should have around opportunity and how others are just gifted it for no reason,” he says. “I didn’t do anything special to be born into the position I was born into. The nepo baby didn’t ask to be born as a nepo baby so they don’t necessarily need to apologize for it. But I also think it’s equally as important that they do need to recognize their privilege and the fact that they have doors open for them that others do not. That is really, really important to me because it is the foundation of having a grounded perspective in life. No one will ever be able to see eye-to-eye with you if you can’t sit there and tell them like, ‘Yes, I fully was born into privilege, and there’s nothing really I can say about that beyond I’m grateful for it and I would ideally like to be able to help platform others’ — but that first involves making a name for yourself.”
For his next act, Lowe is interested in exploring the wealth disparity that has been popularized by shows like “Succession” and films like “Triangle of Sadness.”
“That comedy of manners genre is really, really interesting to me. I think I’d like to keep poking fun at the elites and maybe find a unique way to tell a youthful story around that,” he says, “and maybe make fun of some of my friends and family members along the way.”
Best of WWD
