Alumni Spotlight: Bridget Bedard’s Lifelong Learning
Bedard with actress Anna Kendrick on the set of Love Life
When her manager asked if she’d be interested in writing for a television show, Bridget Bedard’s response was “I don’t own a television.” At the time, Bedard was focused on pursuing writing and directing feature films. She had never even heard of AMC being anything other than a classic movie channel. But, she thought, “you’re crazy if you don’t at least try.”
She met with the showrunner, Matt Weiner, and was hired to write on the first season of Mad Men, which premiered in 2007. From there, Bedard has had a career writing and show-running critically acclaimed television shows. It was a career she hadn’t imagined for herself, but one she loves—and it came about all because she saw an opportunity to learn something new.
Bedard, a Utah native, went to the University of Utah knowing she wanted to pursue something creative, but didn’t exactly know what. “I thought I might write, I thought I might paint,” she said, “but, for some reason… I was very intimidated by the art program.” Instead, she opted to take a beginning film class, taught by Professor Emeritus Brian Patrick.
“It really just opened my eyes to the whole world of cinema,” said Bedard. She spent her time at the U taking time to learn film. “I will never ever get the chance to sit and watch a four-hour movie now!” She bought her own Super 8 camera, took screenwriting courses from Bill Siska, and even dove into Italian film.
Bedard with writer Ali Liebegott on the set of Transparent
Bedard values the time she was able to take exploring. Even if she’s not watching Italian films or making films on Super 8, those years have proved their worth. “A college education isn't just about your career, it's about your growth as a human,” said Bedard. “It's about expanding your mind. It's about learning how to think critically. It's about living on your own, making new friends. I think the college experience, while maybe not for everyone, is a very valuable one.”
After graduating from the U, Bedard moved to LA, doing what she was “supposed” to do. She worked as a PA and a script reader (her claim to fame—she read and passed the award-winning Reservoir Dogs (1992) up to executives), trying to figure what she wanted to do and how she’d do it. “I was lost, like a lot of people,” she said.
Bedard eventually realized that what she really needed was time to work on her craft—and for her, that meant graduate school. Bedard got into her first choice, NYU (it was, she recalls thinking, where Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch went!), and jumped right in. “I had no other way to just stop the clock and work on [filmmaking] for a while,” she said. “I was able to take out loans. I was able to just take a pause in my life and focus exclusively on learning my craft. That was really, really important to me. And it actually changed everything.”
Bedard knows that graduate school isn’t for everyone. “It’s so personal for everyone. I didn’t have a family. It was just me… everyone just has to weigh what’s best for them.” But, she says, there are definitely advantages. “Being around other people who want to make films and share your enthusiasm… you cannot replace that. That's very cool. That’s a plug for going and getting your degree in the thing that you love.”
Bedard with producer Dan Magnante and show creator Sam Boyd on Love Life in New York City
Bedard’s thesis film, “Baby,” was accepted into the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, which kickstarted her post-MFA career. “All of the sudden I was talking to people I wouldn’t have been speaking to before that,” she said. “I got a manager—who is still my manager to this day—off of that film.”
However, what happened next is what Bedard jokingly calls “the pain years.” She had sold “Baby,” and wrote it as a feature film and sold that too. But every time it seemed like something was about to take off, it fell through. “It was just kind of an almost, almost, almost situation, it felt like, year after year.”
In the meantime, Bedard was teaching adjunct, but, “finally it was another curve in the road where I said ‘I cannot keep living like this, I need a better job.’” So, she took a tenure-track teaching job at a university.
It was one month into that teaching job that she got the call about Mad Men, and took the leap into the world of television. “I got the leave of absence,” Bedard said. “I did Mad Men. I went back and taught another year because it coincided with the strike— the 2008 writers strike. I still had a day job while I was doing Mad Men. All of this to say, it took a very long time to kind of build the road that allowed me to finally not have a day job.” She quit teaching and took up TV writing full-time in 2009 for the television series Men of a Certain Age, which starred Ray Romano, Scott Bakula, and Andre Braugher.
Bedard is very realistic about how difficult it can be to enter the industry, especially if you’re less financially flexible, a woman or gender-nonconforming person, or have personal goals—like having a family or caregiving—that may take priority.
“I think this business is really hard. I think it requires a lot of hours, a lot of sacrifice,” she said. “There’s no right path and there's no shame in prioritizing.” For her part, Bedard says, “I felt pretty tortured for a long time because I really wanted a family and looking back, there was no time for me to really make that happen.”
Bedard on the set of Love Life with her son
When Bedard did become a mother, she was also running a show for the first time. “He's this amazing miracle in my life,” she said of her son. But, “it was like the best and worst year of my life. It was so hard.”
Now, Bedard uses her position as show runner to make writers rooms more accessible for other parents and caregivers. “If someone has a child or a baby or they have a parent they're taking care of, I always make sure everyone knows there's space for that and we'll figure it out. It’s really just about open communication and letting me know.”
Bedard has worked on multiple shows where personal identity is a key component—including Transparent and Ramy—and she says communication is important there, too, especially as a show runner. “Inclusivity comes from the top. It's about which writers you hire and assembling a room with voices that represent the experience that you are trying to portray. It’s about coming into a situation and being willing to say, ‘I don't know what I don't know.’”
Bedard with an Osama bin Laden look-a-like and Ramy Youssef on the set of Ramy
Saying “I don’t know” leads to learning. Bedard says she’s learned a lot in writing rooms, and her lifelong learning perspective has enabled her to succeed in writing. “Everything is really down to character and structure. If you know how to put a story together, it can be adapted to any genre,” she said. “When you're writing, you're just writing the human universal experience.”
Bedard encourages current students to adopt a lifelong learning perspective as well. “If a door opens, go through it,” she says. “If you're in a learning mindset as opposed to a goal-oriented [one], you're just going to have a better experience and you're going to have more success because you're going to find your strengths and the world will respond to who you are… If you're being authentic and truthful and just continue in your path, then hopefully you'll catch a break and you'll catch your moment.”
Bedard recently sold a show to Peacock, and just finished running a writer’s room for an untitled hockey/drama series at Netflix. In the meantime, if anyone should be interested in her work, she encourages them to watch Love Life. “It is the unsung little gem that I’m very, very proud of.”
written by Merritt Mecham