Write On with 'We Are Lady Parts' Creator Nida Manzoor

06/21/22 • 28 min

Created, written, and directed by Nida Manzoor, We Are Lady Parts follows a British punk rock band consisting entirely of Muslim women as they strive for musical success. Manzoor discusses the pressure of feeling like she was representing an entire community and how she ultimately decided to write from her own experience: "I'd had a few meetings as a new writer where I was sort of being asked to write about the suffering of being a Muslim woman or to portray it as being a victim, [which] didn't reflect my experience or the women I knew, and so I found that frustrating. I was like, all right, if I was going to examine this aspect of my identity, how would I do it? ... The frustration pushed me into developing something which is my dream show to make." Manzoor goes on to describe her connection to the story itself and how that ties into her creative roots: "I grew up in a very creative household old - a very musical household - which is why the show is sort of about a band, so I think music was my first passion. But then after doing a degree in politics, I realized very quickly I didn't want to have anything to do with politics; I wanted to be a filmmaker... and, you know, Lady Parts was really my first foray into writing and directing something that was really kind of myself and true to the kind of work I wanted to make." We Are Lady Parts is now streaming on Peacock. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes! Now available on Google Podcasts!

Previous Episode

Write On with 'Maid' Creator & Showrunner Molly Smith Metzler

Inspired by Stephanie Land's memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, Netflix's Maid follows Alex (Margaret Qualley), a young mother who escapes an abusive relationship and gets a job cleaning houses in order to provide for her daughter. Showrunner Molly Smith Metzler recalls the moment she knew she had to adapt the memoir for TV: "[John Wells] handed me the book, and I went home, and I read it that weekend, and I was like, 'Oh, no, I have to do this.' I say 'Oh, no' because I knew it was going to be very hard. It's an incredible memoir, but not a natural fit for television... I knew it was going to be hard to adapt, but I also couldn't picture anyone else doing it." Metzler goes on to speak on the importance of taking notes and moving on to what's next: "You get all these notes because something is exciting to people, and then what can happen is you just spend all of your time rewriting it... My big advice is when you have the thing that finally gets read and people get excited, don't spend two years rewriting it; write the next thing because you can't rewrite things for different people. You just lose your sense of self, and you'll lose your mind, so always be thinking about the next thing; always be writing the next thing."

Maid is currently streaming on Netflix.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes! Now available on Google Podcasts!

Next Episode

Write On with 'Spiderhead' Co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick

Based on George Saunders' short story Escape from Spiderhead, the Netflix adaptation follows inmates at a state-of-the-art penitentiary who volunteer as medical subjects to shorten their sentences. Paul Wernick describes the moment he and co-writer Rhett Reese were introduced to Saunders' story: "Jeremy Steckler was the executive [at The New Yorker] at the time. He put it in front of us when it first was printed about ten years ago, and we fell in love with it. We said, 'We're doing it. We have to write this.' We were so passionate about it... George had laid out what was the makings of a movie, but we had to expand it out." When asked what advice he would give to his younger writer self, Reese muses, "I feel like a part of what you need to tap into is that naive, ignorant optimism where you just go, 'Look, the odds are against me, and they're against anyone, and I'm going to go write what I want to write... and commit to it with both halves of my brain, and do as great a job as I can, and then keep doing that over and over until I break through." Spiderhead is now streaming on Netflix.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes! Now available on Google Podcasts!