Faith can be hard to attain when you’re working in the entertainment industry. On the one hand, it’s all there is to work off of, whether you’re a nobody or a long-established player trying to keep in the mix. But with AI on the rise and jobs continuing to remain scarce, one starts to wonder what’s even worth believing in. The answer? Yourself.
During the latest episode of “What No One Tells You,” television director Jennifer Getzinger discussed her leap from script supervisor to director and how it only came about because of her own tenacity. For year, Getzinger worked as a script supervisor on shows like “Strangers with Candy,” “The Sopranos,” and “Sex and the City.” Later, “Mad Men” creator and showrunner Matthew Weiner brought Getzinger onto the project as script supervisor for the pilot, which was shot in New York. Though the show was picked up to series and Getzinger invited to be a part of it, she found out it would require a bit of a sacrifice on her part.
“The creator Matt Weiner said to me, ‘Well we’re going to go shoot the show in Los Angeles and I want my core team to come with me,’” she said. “As a script supervisor, he wanted me to move to Los Angeles.”
Getzinger was “open” to the idea of moving across the country, but only if Weiner would allow her to direct an episode of the show. It was a huge ask, but based on Weiner’s value of her and her own desire to move to the next stage of her career, she saw an opportunity and took it.
“He said to me, ‘Look I believe in you, I know you’re moving towards this, I know you’re ready to do this, but I can’t promise you anything. All I can tell you is if you don’t come, it will never happen,’” Getzinger told IndieWire’s Future of Filmmaking. “That was what made me move to Los Angeles.”
Sadly, Getzinger did not get to direct on the first season of “Mad Men,” but when the show was renewed for a second season, her moment finally came.
“The producer called me and said, ‘You know good news, we’re going to get to do this again, bad news is we need a new script supervisor because you’re going to be directing,’” said Getzinger. “So that was my first shot at professional directing.”
Getzinger would go on to direct not only for “Mad Men,” but on “Orange is the New Black,” “Westworld,” and most recently on the hit HBO series “The Penguin.”
Watch a clip from her episode of “What No One Tells You” below.
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