#82: Mika Watkins, Screenwriter

This week my guest is Mika Watkins, a screenwriter for television and film, whose career is already on a really exciting trajectory.

She’s been part of the writers rooms for Black Mirror and the Amazon series Hanna and has written episodes for Sky’s Lucky Man and BBC1 period drama Troy: Fall of a City. She also created, showran and executive produced the 10-part sci-fi Origin for Leftbank and YouTube Premium.  

Mika is currently writing a range of her own projects including Love Story, a Tokyo-set rom-com for Eleven Films, Joketsu, a series about a 16th century female samurai for Sister Pictures and Amazon and Yakuza for FX, which is being produced by Fargo & Legion’s Noah Hawley. 

Mika is also currently writing on Guillermo del Toro’s Netflix horror anthology series, 10 After Midnight, and has just wrapped directing a short film that she also wrote for Film4.

So there’s plenty to talk about! We go deep into Mika’s writing practice, how she generates ideas and at what stage she actually starts writing. We talk about her experience in writers rooms, as well as what it was like show-running Origin and why she recently turned her hand to directing, but why her heart we always be with writing.

Mika’s incredibly intelligent and eloquent and that definitely came across in our chat, it was a real treat to have her on the podcast and to be able to interrogate how and why she writes.