Kelly Oxford is the latest personality known for her Twitter feed (@kellyoxford) and blog to get a TV deal. NBC will pick up her “single-camera ensemble comedy,” written by Oxford, that will be about a divorcing couple and an overbearing sister.
Since CBS cancelled “$#*! My Dad Says,” there’s been skepticism on the possibility of giving someone who has attracted a large Twitter following a chance to write for TV. After Oxford felt this automatic pessimism for being covered as the next Twitter feed turned TV green light, she wrote an hilarious and honest “Open Letter to the Internet,” on her Tumblr, which proves how in the future amazing TV writers will naturally just get Twitter as well:
In Feb of 2010 I wrote a spec pilot, a screenplay, to get an agent… it got me an agent and then that convinced me I could sell it, and I did- to CBS (after I sat in on 4 network meetings, pitching it on ativan, while holding in stress diarrhea.) This year I hustled and pitched like an asshole and left my kids with my family so I could meet with execs all over LA and this project came to fruition. I also wrote an entire book (not half a book.) Yes, I tweet, but I’m a writer who pounds the pavement and rents cars and drives all over LA with all of her stupid ideas who also happens to tweet.
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Read her full post to really understand how she got pigeonholed by the media into the next Twitter-feed-turned-TV-show, and then how she responded by explaining what should be obvious: just because she’s an emerging writer that hasn’t had anything on TV yet and has also been blogging since the 90s and amassed a few hundred thousand Twitter followers, doesn’t mean a Twitter feed was turned into a show. TV fans should start to follow her in the case that her show does succeed, fans will benefit from having a new, honest, Kurt Sutter-like Twitter enthusiast available to listen and respond to feedback.