When I was going to get ready to take 'Dietland' up, I have to say I was surprised to find that I felt like maybe we wouldn't find a home for it because it's unlike anything else that I've done.
— Marti Noxon
When you're allowed to tell stories with ambiguity and darkness and things that are still unresolved, that's the dream scenario as opposed to having to fit into a more procedural mode or something a little more conventional. That's not what's working on TV right now.
I had been anorexic for about five years. And I was really sick. I probably weighed about 70 pounds.
I know a lot about words. I get paid to write stories, so I get to talk with people about the meaning behind words all day.
I think the science around mental illness is always evolving. There's always new kinds of thinking.
I'm so excited to be part of the environment that David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Marcy Ross have built at Skydance.
It's funny: I've joked that 'Sharp Objects,' 'To the Bone,' and 'Dietland' are my self-harm trilogy, and each one is a different side of that triangle, with 'Dietland' really about fighting back.
I've grown and changed, and I'm still making television and movies that I feel really proud of.
Like everbody, I'm addicted to 'The Handmaid's Tale.'
I encourage people and their different points of view.
My dad had made a documentary called 'The Dream Factory' about MGM, and my whole life, I just wanted to be inside it. And there I was.
I digested this value system that told me there was no one for me unless I reached a certain type of perfection. And as you get older, you realize that ideal is constantly changing.
Sometimes when I'm reading a script, I can't quite believe that this is going on television alongside cereal commercials.
The reason I fell in love with Buffy was because of the ambiguity, because she was a superhero and a hot mess. I hadn't seen anything like her on TV - ever.
So many of the indie movies that get made are not about topics that touch millions and millions of people.
It's interesting because the first batch of really struggling with control and escape and all that happened when I was nearing adolescence, and the second one came with the onset of early menopause.
It all starts with a very solid, well-executed script, where the story is very clear and everybody is rowing in the same direction. That's always good; that's a constant.
On 'Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce,' we have a mandate to hire as many women as possible, but particularly on a show that is about women and about progressive issues like that.
'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' not only applies to the deeply personal subject matter of 'To the Bone' but to simply getting a film about people with eating disorders made. Without the brilliant Julie Lynn, Bonnie Curtis, and Karina Miller producing, there's no way this project would be coming to fruition.
The problem with generalizations and judgments, the words we hurl as insults, is that they deny our humanity and our stories.
I really understand that we have to be sensitive to people's feelings and to their sensitivities, but you also can't be muzzled to tell a story.
I realized all the writing I love lives in the gray area.
If you made a movie of 'Sharp Objects,' chances are that it would be a smaller film, but as a TV show, it can reach a lot of people.
There are certain shows or people that I would love to work with. One of the greatest things about our business is that if you get to fan out on people you might actually get to meet.
Of all the mental illnesses, anorexia has the highest morbidity rate. It's serious.
There's a brain chemistry - the floatiness and the disassociation and all the things that came with starving - I became addicted to.
I'm pretty proud of my pie crust. I think I've finally learned how to manhandle it just enough.
There's this idea that Hollywood sells over and over again: 'If I just looked more like this, I'd be accepted.'
For me, the interesting thing about anorexia is that you show your wound. There's no hiding it. So my anger and sense of disappointment, all the stuff I was out of touch with, became this visible rebuke to my parents.
Seeing Donald Trump run for and then win the presidency only enhanced my commitment to helping people free themselves from ridiculous body standards and disordered eating so they can use their gifts for more fulfilling things, like being of service and enjoying this beautiful world.
That went on for a long time: telling various tales from my experience being anorexic and bulimic, and having people say, 'You've got to write this; you are a writer,' and me not knowing how to approach the material.
The status quo is never happy when things become a meritocracy.
I don't like characters who are either good or bad. I just don't experience that in life, so my writing hasn't evolved that way.
I always joke that I'm a feminist with a boob job.
Around 10, I got chubby. I knew I'd crossed a line when the only pants that fit were from the 'Junior Plenty' line at JC Penny. My parents had split up, my mom was going through a dark time, and my brother and I were getting bullied in our new neighborhood. Life was big and unsafe.
When every word is parsed for ill intention, regardless of who is speaking or why, we become so afraid we'll offend that we stop trying to communicate with people we don't understand.
I've been looking for a versatile and writer-driven home that could help me bring more complex, exciting, and potentially murderous characters to television - and the team at Skydance is the ideal partner for that.
You can't ever create defensively. You just have to create the next thing that really speaks to you.
Ever since I worked on 'Buffy', it's always helped me to find a genre container for something, and I was like, 'Oh, this is where the movie melodrama has gone to. It's gone to YA.'
I'll be honest: I had a real deep-seated fear that 'Buffy' was going to be my peak. It was such a beautiful experience. It was such a fully realized show.
I did, of course, do research about what the current state of affairs is in terms of the eating disorder community and who's being affected, and I was surprised to see that - something that was - way back when I was in the thick of it, it was typified as a fairly white, middle-class girl problem. And if it was, it really isn't anymore.
I'm lucky to be alive. It's a blessing to tell my story, you know.
There's no shape or body type that makes you more happy or more lovable. It's the body you're comfortable in that makes you happier and more lovable. I look around and see how women and men of all types find the love and the life they want.
Being an aging woman in Hollywood is no picnic.
The bane of every TV writer's existence is the likability note.
I think many people expend a tremendous amount of energy on self-loathing and self-flagellation as well as getting caught in a vicious cycle of dieting and gaining the weight back.
If there's a theme to where I'm at in my life, it's that 'warts and all' is actually my superpower. Just like you, I'm messed up and I'm capable. I'm this and that.
I can't be interesting, controversial, and the writer I'd like to be if I need everybody to like me and think I'm doing the right thing, because those two things, in my experience, never go hand in hand.
