Growing up, I didn't just watch 'The Cosby Show.' I watched 'Growing Pains' and 'Family Ties,' too.
A lot of time, my inspiration comes from pain: growing pains, hunger pains, or money pains.
I never really imagined a show about a sponge going past our first season. I thought maybe we'd have a cult following, and we'd be gone after one season.
I do think it's important for black writers to show that we too can make it into the mainstream. Growing up, I didn't just watch The Cosby Show, I watched Growing Pains and Family Ties too. We can tell those stories too.
Any show in its first season goes through multiple changes. There is little or no difference to changing the cast on a talk show.
The first season of a show's always a rollercoaster because nobody knows what they're doing. You gotta rush through the season trying to figure out: What is this show? And who are these characters?
Journalists told me that a talk show wouldn't work. Some told me I was going to get canceled before my first season was up.
Especially while television I think is going through some growing pains or is in need of - I think current comedy is a bit, uh, not happening, you know?
I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of lifes wisdom.
I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of life's wisdom.
I get emails from students at programs all over the country who want to transfer to Iowa, and in most cases their frustrations have absolutely nothing to do with the programs they're attending. They have to do with the growing pains that they're undergoing as writers and with the growing pains that our own genre is constantly undergoing.
Digital content is it's own industry that is going through it's own growing pains as with any other industry.
With a first season, you never really know how viewers or the network are going to react to a show.
The first season of a show is kind of like an extended pilot. You're only really on the map if it goes a second season.
I always knew that 'Growing Pains' was not going to go on forever. I remember thinking, 'I'm going to enjoy every moment of this.'
I always knew that 'Growing Pains' was not going to go on forever. I remember thinking, 'I'm going to enjoy every moment of this.