Pop Culturalist Chats with Life Sentence’s Erin Cardillo and Richard Keith

Erin Cardillo and Richard Keith are the creative masterminds behind The CW’s Life Sentence, a dramedy about a young woman, Stella (Lucy Hale), who discovers her terminal cancer has been cured and must learn to live with all the choices she made when she thought she was dying. It’s the pair’s second show for the network—the first being Significant Mother back when The CW went by WB. And with each project, the duo has proven they know how to craft characters and storylines that resonate with audiences, and in 2013, they were recognized at the New York Television Festival. Pop Culturalist sat down with Erin and Richard to learn more about Life Sentence, how this partnership was formed, and how they transitioned from acting to writing.

PC: Tell us about Life Sentence and how the premise for the show came to fruition.
Erin: We all know what happens When Harry Met Sally, but we wanted to do a show about what happened When Harry Married Sally. When they got the happily ever after they so desperately wanted only to find out it’s just as much work (if not more) to stay in love as it is to fall in love. While we were working on our last show (Significant Mother), we both had gotten married (to different people) and we were living with that story every day which we thought was a story worth telling—a candid look at the first years of marriage. But lots of shows had done that so we needed our twist. So, we started thinking of ideas of how to explore this in a way that hadn’t been done before. And while we were musing on that, a new genre of film came into being: the “romantic cancer dramedy” (The Fault in Our Stars, Me Earl and the Dying Girl). Rich had even written one before they got so popular (it never got made) where the hero couple gets married at the end, knowing that she’s going to die…And we both thought…what if she didn’t die? What if two people got married with the best of intentions, thinking their happily ever after would only be six-to-eight months tops, only to find out she’s not dying after all…sure, they promised each other forever, but that wasn’t really that big of a commitment for either of them at the time…but now it is. Now that their forever is going to be a whole lot longer than either of them expected, can they make it work? Can they fall in love with each other again every single day just like they did when they first met?

PC: Walk us from the initial pitch to development. Has a lot changed during the process?
Richard: Yes. For starters, the original pitch for this was as a cable/streaming half hour, more in the tone of Casual. It was going to be more dark, more raw and more realistic. We met with Warner Brothers to pitch that show and they were interested, but they felt like the cable space was crowded with dark comedies and they thought this idea might have a better shot on broadcast TV (as a half hour single-camera comedy)…so when we started thinking of it in those terms—a less serialized half hour—we realized that the love story wouldn’t be enough to sustain the show. We had to broaden her world. So we pitched them the idea of her entire family hiding their problems from her because they were trying to protect her. In addition to being a show about getting to know her husband, she’d also be getting to know her family for the first time. WB was super excited about the dysfunctional family element, and once we’d agreed on that concept for the show, they steered us towards working with Bill Lawrence and suddenly we were developing the show out with a much lighter tone as a broadcast half hour with one of the kings of broadcast comedy (it was pretty darn cool).

But then, while when we were out pitching the show, we (and Bill) wondered if this show might be a fit for CW as an hour dramedy. At that point, we had started thinking of it as more of a female-lead-driven show and we knew Lucy Hale was interested, so we tweaked the pitch a bit with that in mind and sold the show in the room. In that pitch, we talked more about the romantic elements of the show and a sort of magical stylized quality, using VO to see the world through our main character’s eyes. None of that was in the original pitch, so it certainly took a turn. After that, we started breaking the pilot story…originally we wanted to tell the story at a much slower pace. Our plan was to have the fact that Stella was cured of cancer be the end of the pilot…the mom would leave the dad in episode two, Wes would be the only one to find out about her bisexual relationship with another woman in episode three and then face the dilemma of whether or not to tell his wife who he’d just promised not to lie to any more, even if it was to protect her…etc. But we were quickly disabused of that notion. There is a theory in broadcast TV (where the audience is much more fickle than cable/streaming) that you should pack the pilot with all the story you can muster because you never know if you’re going to get a second episode. You have to earn episode two with episode one. Don’t hold back for a season that may never come, so…suddenly Stella was cured in the teaser and the story we had planned to stretch out for the whole season was all being told in the pilot. So yeah, breaking episode two and the rest of the season was a lot harder than we thought it would have been when we first conceived of this idea.

Photo Credit: The CW

PC: How did this creative partnership form?
Erin: We met in acting class when we both first moved to L.A. back in 2002. At the time we were both pursuing careers as actors and were only writing on the side for fun. Over the years, writing became more of a passion for us individually. We worked on our own and with other partners and would often read and note each other’s work. Then, in 2010 Rich had an idea for a TV pilot he thought we should write together. We worked on that script on and off for a year, while doing other things, and when we finally finished it we showed it to our then-respective managers who were like: “Who is this person you’re working with? Are you a team now? What are we supposed to do with this?” At the time, we didn’t know we had to make all those decisions, nor did we want to. We just had a project we were passionate about and figured that we’d see where it went. Cut to: 2013 when a second project we did together won the New York Television Festival and we got signed as a team by our agent. So in some ways, she’s sort of responsible for the partnership sticking. Thank you, Susie! We love you.

PC: What should fans expect from the rest of season one of Life Sentences and are any of the storylines based on personal experiences?
Erin and Richard: We joke that season one is a “Will they or Wes they?” story, meaning will Stella stick out her marriage to Wes even though they were not planning to have it last forever, or will her eye be drawn away from him by Dr. Will Grant who becomes her de facto work husband? But that actually isn’t the story! Yes, there are two men in her life and Stella is grappling with that, but her journey over season one is actually one of self-discovery. Who does she want to be? Who is she meant to be? How does she see her future? What does she owe her family, who sacrificed everything to get her to where she is today (alive)? The question of what she wants to do with her life is something she’s literally never thought since she was fifteen, because she never thought she’d have a future, so it was too awful to imagine what a future would look like. So this is the big question for her in the first season and we explore that in several different ways throughout the season. In a lot of ways this story is personal to us, because we both very clearly remember our 20s and how the people we dated often defined where we thought our lives were heading at the time. Not that we defined ourselves by who were dating, but we often got so caught up in whether or not this person fit into our vision for the future, that it was difficult to see things clearly/to know what we really wanted our futures to look like independent of our respective love stories. There are also a bunch of family stories this season that are personal to not only us, but to Bill, and to our staff, in varying degrees. Everything you’ll see comes from a kernel of truth. Unless you see something you don’t like. Then that bit was a lie.

PC: What is the biggest challenge of being both actors and writers?
Erin: The biggest challenge for me is that I had to let go of acting when I started selling shows. I never meant to quit acting (I still love it and hope to do it again), but showrunning is as full of a full time a job as you can get, so it’s impossible for me to do both at the same time. Maybe if I was in my own show, but I tried it once in a very small dose on Significant Mother and I was not a fan of wearing two hats. It was too weird for me. When I’m acting I like to fully immerse myself in the character and I just can’t do that when I wrote the words I’m saying and I’m also focused on the big picture. I applaud the people who can, but I am not that person.

Richard: I agree with what Erin said…except by the time “I let go of acting,” it had sort of let go of me. I worked a ton in my late teens and early 20’s but by the time we started writing together I’d already started to shift my focus into the direction of writing, directing and producing, so partnering with Erin just felt like a natural progression of that. I’d definitely love to act again, but it would probably also be on something of our own creation AFTER we get a little more showrunning experience under our belts…because honestly right now it’s barely possible to run a show and be a husband/father…if I was also trying to act in one of our shows I think it might kill me.

Photo Credit: The CW

PC: When did you realize you wanted to pursue a career in entertainment?
Erin: I was three when I asked my mother to take me to see a Broadway show. She had no idea how I knew what Broadway was (and neither do I), but I asked and she took me to see Peter Pan. Apparently, from the moment I sat down in the theatre, I was entranced and came home saying, “I want to do that.” Not sure if I meant “fly” or “act,” but my mom says I meant “act” and I don’t remember ever wanting to do anything else. Expect write, but that came later.

Richard: I’ve always loved movies and TV—the chance to escape to a world more magical, more interesting than your own. But I never really thought of it as something I could do for a living. Until I saw Dawson’s Creek. Suddenly there was this story about a kid who wanted to be a filmmaker, populated with little known actors who were making a career for themselves, and it was shot in my home state and written by a guy from North Carolina. Suddenly the thing I did to escape reality started to seem like it could actually be my reality. In some ways you could say my journey to having a show on The CW started by being inspired by one (back in the day when it was The WB). Though if young me had known how hard it would be, how long it would take to get here, I don’t know if he’d have signed up for it. But I’m glad that little fool had no idea. Because blind optimism counts for A LOT. Especially on the rough days.

PC: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Erin: Back in that acting class where Rich and I met, we used to have industry guests come in to speak to us about the business. A producer named Mickey Liddell came in one night and told us a story about how he’d done every job in the business before falling into producing, unexpectedly. He said what he learned from that was to “go where you are lead.” This stuck with me because it was around this time that I was struggling with pursuing writing and how that would affect my acting career, and as a result neither career path was flourishing. After that class is when I remember letting go and allowing the universe to lead me. Magically, things started happening after that that really felt like God’s hand. Side note: I’m not a religious person—I’m half Catholic and half Jewish, and generally very cynical, but the key for me there was to stop resisting and start embracing the opportunities that were presenting themselves. I always go back to that phrase when I start trying to control things too much, or assigning too much meaning to the results of any one project and it helps me trust in my path. Or, at least, makes the moment feel a bit more pleasant.

Richard: That’s great advice. I wish I’d heard that or you’d bothered to share it with me! But it’s very true. Acting always felt like an uphill battle for me, while I saw friends and peers like Taylor Kitsch and Chace Crawford just explode like it was meant to be. For me that didn’t happen until after I switched to writing (and Erin and I started writing together) and I realized the exact lesson Erin was just handed like a damn gift…For me my best piece of advice was seeing Spike Lee talk at Appalachian State University when I was still in high school in Boone, NC. After he spoke I went up and asked him for any advice he could give and he said “get on a set as soon as you can and never leave. Learn everything. Be able to do every job there, so that when you get to run a set, you know what everyone does, you know what you’re asking of them, and you know how to treat them with respect and make sure they’re being as fulfilled by working there as you are.” It was really great advice. I probably should have taken it. (Joking aside, I actually have done just about every job on set from being a production assistant to operating a boom to editing my own shorts in post. It’s invaluable to understand all aspects of filmmaking.)

Pop Culturalist Speed Round

PC: Guilty pleasure TV show?
Erin: The Bachelor/Bachelorette

Richard: Any reality show with food or travel in it. Or both.

PC: Guilty pleasure movie?
Erin: Can’t Hardly Wait

Richard: Notting Hill. But I also love Can’t Hardly Wait. That’s the movie where I fell in love with the band Dire Straits.

PC: Favorite book?
Erin: Big Little Lies

Richard: The Princess Bride

PC: Favorite social media platform?
Erin: Instagram

Richard: Instagram for personal stuff, Twitter for shameless self-promotion…

PC: A band or artist that fans would be surprised to learn is on your playlist?
Erin: Mozart (I’ve been listening a lot a home lately, mostly because I’m trying to make my one-year-old smarter)

Richard: Erin is so pretentious. I’ve been listening to the Pope read audio books for the same reason. Also, I really love Taylor Swift. I got to meet her once. It was awesome. I tell everyone I can about it.

PC: Favorite play or musical?
Erin: Into the Woods

Richard: Tie between The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Pillowman

PC: Last person you texted?
Erin: Rich

Richard: Erin

PC: Hidden talent?
Erin: Drawing a still life without looking at the paper.

Richard: Downhill Skiing. I grew up snow ski racing and have the skin tight spandex suit to prove it. Sometimes I still put it on to scare my wife.

Catch Life Sentence every Friday at 9/8c, and make sure to follow Erin (Twitter/Instagram) and Richard (Twitter/Instagram).