What a chance Lifetime took on me. I was producing “Devious Maids” for the network, with Marc Cherry, and we were staffing up our directors. Nina Lederman, then senior VP of scripted programming, casually turned to me and said, “You know you have to direct one.” And I quickly replied, “Sure.”

The minute the word came out of my mouth, I wanted to put it back. I immediately accepted and then immediately regretted it. I was thinking, “Why did I say yes? I’m not ready! Oh, my God, this is nerve-wracking!”

Nina didn’t even ask me — she told me I was going to direct an episode. Today, I’m so happy she did, because sometimes you just need a kick in the pants to be pushed in the right direction and take that leap of faith in yourself. That’s really what started my directing career.

Propelled in a New Direction

Even though I’d directed two short films, getting your first episodic TV job is intimidating. TV’s a beast, and it’s a beast for the director. Typically, you’re coming on to somebody else’s show, you’re delivering creative for someone else.

But I was with family. I was directing for Marc Cherry, whom I’d worked with for almost a decade. I knew his tone. I knew what he would want. I didn’t really have the verbiage back then about lenses and camera choreography. However, my great friend and mentor David Warren was with me, to hold my hand and tell me, ‘Don’t do this, do that.’ I would run all my ideas by him and he’d offer me feedback. It was the best experience I could have had in TV episodic because I was in my own backyard.

I had such a great appreciation for being given a chance and being set up to succeed. I knew it was a bite of the apple that not many women were given. So, I savored it, I appreciated it, I used it, and I prepared for it. And I felt an immense amount of gratitude because you wouldn’t get those opportunities outside of Lifetime.

Directing one episode of TV was an important rung on the directing ladder that I had to grab onto. Today, I’ve climbed every rung: I went from short films, to episodic, to multicams, to one hour, to half-hour, to feature. All the things that happened in my directing career happened because once you’ve done it, you’ve done it. People who hire can no longer say, “Well, she’s never done it before so I can’t hire her.” So often you don’t get the job because you don’t have that body of work to prove you can do the job. It’s the chicken or the egg — and you’ve got to start somewhere.

I remember the landscape of TV at that time, and the landscape of just female directors in general. It was very hard for somebody who didn’t have an episodic resume to go into a show for someone like Marc Cherry and direct. That just didn’t happen. It’s becoming more common now, particularly with the new generation of female showrunners, but even those women came up through the ranks through somebody pulling them up.

This is the whole Lifetime for Women movement. It isn’t just about movies or TV shows for women. It’s about creating: putting women in the creator’s seat and behind the camera.

Paying It Forward With Inclusive Hiring

Directing for Lifetime changed the trajectory of my professional life. I realize it wouldn’t have happened for me without the support of a woman like Nina. I think if a man was in that position, they wouldn’t have championed me that way. They wouldn’t have even blinked. They would have gotten Tom, Dick and Harry — their usual directors — and then finished their TV show. I was lucky she was in that position at that moment.

It’s about paying it forward. The thing I love the most about producing and directing is creating jobs. Now that I’m finally in the hiring seat, I consciously hire with women, and Latinas specifically, in mind. On a recent TV production, I wanted a female director of photography. The studio sent me Tom, Dick and Harry, so I asked, “Hey, are there any female DPs? I’d like a female DP.” And they go, “Oh, yeah, we have those.”

They’re not consciously refusing to hire women. They’re not out to get us. They’ve worked with Tom, Dick and Harry for the last 20 years. That’s who’s first and foremost in their minds. And so, we have to get other people in their minds. We have to get them excited about a different talent pool. That’s my secret agenda: consciously hiring women and people of color instead of unconsciously crewing up.
I’m so proud to be part of the legacy of Lifetime because they were doing it when it wasn’t cachet and trendy. They stood for female representation before it was a mandate from boards everywhere. They were reflective on their executives and higher-ups and gatekeepers. They were doing the work long before people were required to do it, or were inspired to do it, or began jumping on the bandwagon. And they did it not for the press or the press release. They really did it because that’s what they were building.

That’s the essence and the DNA that they wanted to build the channel on.

They’ve benefited from being the beacon of representation as well, because when you tap from different talent pools, you become innovative. Innovation only stems from diversity. So, in their programming, their relationships, everything they’ve built, they benefit from each and every day, because, as I said, they’ve dipped into a talent pool nobody else was drawing from. That led to different stories being told from different perspectives.

And, in today’s content marketplace, where you have to be so loud to break through, they’re differentiators. They stand apart. People know who they are as a brand. They’ve done such a good job.

To be part of that legacy, to be part of that movement before it was even a movement, it’s just magical.