Elle USA - 11.2019

TV

t feels like campaign season comes earlier each year, probably because of climate

change,” jokes Megan Amram, a producer and writer for The Good Place. We’re at

Zankou Chicken, a popular Middle Eastern eatery in L.A., which happens to be a

block away from a giant picture of Amram’s face on a “beautiful new billboard,” advertis-

ing the second season of her digital short series, An Emmy for Megan. The reason for the

second season—and the “For Your Consideration” campaign—is in the title. She didn’t

win an Emmy the first time around. In fact, this season she wasn’t even nominated in an

acting category, though her costar Patton Oswalt and the show itself are up for awards.

The whole exercise illustrates Amram’s silly and hyperspecific style of comedy.

She’s built a solid reputation (and a routinely viral Twitter presence) as a writer for two

of the most clever sitcoms in recent memory, first Parks and Recreation and now The

Good Place, where her multilayered humor thrives and sharp viewers look forward to

her food puns (think restaurants with names like “Knish From a Rose” and “Penne for

Your Thoughts”). Wrapping The Good Place, whose fourth and final season premiered

on September 26, was “very sincerely extremely emotional,” Amram says. “I feel like I

just cried at work for two weeks.”

But now she wants more than all that. She wants...an Emmy. She is both kidding

and not. She really does want an Emmy, but she also thinks it’s funny to parody the

self-seriousness of awards campaigns, like when Melissa Leo glammed up and took out

Meet the women

who are rewriting the

rules of TV land.

By Molly Lambert

All Hail

the Queens

of the

Small Screen

I

full-page ads in the trades, asking voters to consider her

decidedly unglam turn in 2010’s The Fighter. By the time

this magazine hits stands, we will know whether Am-

ram’s approach worked (the Emmys air on September

22), but for now, she is making shirts to give away that

say “Team Megan” and “Team Patton” and also trying to

figure out how to rent an Imax screen, “because I think

that’s how you should watch An Emmy for Megan, in real

high-def on 70-millimeter film,” she says with a laugh.

In the first episode of AEFM’s second season, Am-

ram flashes back to a scene in which she’s murdered by

actor D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place) before returning

as a ghost, while celebrity friends like Westworld’s Shan-

non Woodward talk about how weird she became after

defeating mortality.

If Amram loses the Emmy for “Outstanding Short

Form Comedy or Drama Series” to one of her compet-

itors—like her friend Ryan O’Connell’s Special, or Abbi

Jacobson and Ilana Glazer’s web show Hack Into Broad

City—she will most likely be back. “A lot of people have

been asking if I’ll do a third season if I lose. And I was

saying no, because it’s so much work and effort, but

now I feel like I’ve gone too far, and I’m going to have

to do it until I win.” She’ll have to top her own death

and resurrection.

A native of Portland, Oregon, Amram attended Har-

vard to study psychology. But she also wanted to write

for The Simpsons and had heard that several writers

for The Harvard Lampoon had gone on to work on the

show. At Harvard, she was never given entry into the

Lampoon old boys’ club, but she did end up writing

on two seasons of The Simpsons, fulfilling a childhood

dream of creating dialogue for Bart.

“In the almost 10 years that I’ve been writing for

television, I’ve seen the demographics of [writers’]

rooms change so much—for the better—in terms of

diversity,” Amram says. “I’ve worked with writers who

think of me as maybe an exceptional woman who can

hang with the guys and who is funny.” But the funniest

people she’s known have been women. “There just hav-

en’t always been these opportunities for them,” she says.

Amram’s mixture of absurdity and sheer earnest-

ness stems from her background in musical theater.

She loves the overdone aesthetic of stage makeup—

the line where pretty and done up becomes greasy

and crazed. “Every time I’m getting myself ready for

something normal, I have to tone down the blue eye

shadow that goes up to the top of my eyebrows,” she

says. Recently, she guest-starred on a Cats-themed

episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which required a lot

of face makeup, a process that took hours. “I was the

Grizabella-esque cat—the sad, dirty, dying one, which

feels very on-brand for me,” she says. Amram is well

aware that her style might not be for everyone. “The

TV shows I’ve gotten to write for, and hopefully some-

day will make, will probably all be weird and niche and

mean a lot to the people who love them but might not

be huge crowd-pleasers, and that’s great—that’s what

I want my career to be,” she says. But she still wants an

Emmy. “A lot of people ask, ‘Do you really want this,

or is it all a huge joke?’ And I’m like, ‘It is a joke, but I

do want to win.’”

MEGAN AMRAM

KNOWN FOR: PARKS AND RECREATION

AND THE GOOD PLACE

AMRAM: GREG DOHERTY/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES;

THE GOOD PLACE

AND

PARKS AND RECREATION

: COLLEEN HAYES/NBC/GETTY IMAGES; BLACK: JEREMY FREEMAN/TBS;

FULL FRONTAL

:

DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS/GETTY IMAGES;

A BLACK LADY SKETCH SHOW

: ANNE MARIE FOX/HBO; ROBINSON: ROBBY KLEIN/CONTOUR/GETTY IMAGES;

ATLANTA

: GUY D’ALEMA/FX;

WHAT WE DO IN

THE SHADOWS

: RUSS MARTIN/FX;

MAN SEEKING WOMAN

: MICHAEL GIBSON/FXX; HARRISON: ALEX SCHAEFER;

BIG MOUTH

: COURTESY OF NETFLIX;

SHRILL

: ALLYSON RIGGS/HULU.

122