Screenwriter Heyward talks “Gilmore Girls,” entertainment as activism and why the writers’ room of “Girls” is like one big sleepover.

by Joanna Demkiewicz

This is pure speculation, but I like to think that Lena Dunham timed the release of Not That Kind of Girl with her “Girls” fans in mind. After six months of withdrawal (Season 3 of “Girls” ended in March 2014; Dunham’s book was released in September), we were finally able to crawl in bed with Lena again – this time via hardcover. Even though the HBO hit and Dunham’s bestseller are separate projects, they share one important gem – Lena’s fearless voice.

I spoke with “Girls” story editor and writer Sarah Heyward about nailing Lena’s voice and why being in the writers’ room is “almost like being on ‘Survivor.’” Heyward earned her spot in the writers’ room by having fiction writing experience and a lifelong love affair with TV. In fact, she began as an assistant to the show’s staff when “Girls” Executive Producer Jenni Konner asked her to print out a story she had written while attending the Iowa Writers Workshop; Dunham read the story, and two weeks later Heyward was hired as a writer. That’s my kind of Cinderella story.

Season 4 of “Girls” airs this Sunday, January 11 on HBO. Don’t worry, there are no spoilers ahead, but there is talk of bad dates, weird sex and feminism. Just call it an appetizer to the real thing.

Joanna Demkiewicz: Season 3 left off with Hannah [Horvath]’s acceptance into the Iowa Writers Workshop. How much of Hannah’s experience there is based on your own experience as a Workshop alum?

Sarah Heyward: Well, first of all, I can’t talk about any specific plotlines or offer any spoilers.

JD: Totally.

SH: I can talk about my experience, and I’ll try not to give anything away. I would say, the idea of her going there wasn’t necessarily related to the fact that I had gone there, other than that there are only so many paths a professional writer can take. From day one everyone was talking about, ‘In the future, what’s a possibility for Hannah? Oh, she could go to grad school at some point.’ And then it happened to intersect very well that I had gone there, and I would talk about it all the time because I loved my experience there. So, it just seemed like a natural fit. It’s also the only writing program that some people have heard of, not even a lot of people [laughs]. I was definitely excited to inject the season with my own experiences. I wrote a giant document of everything I loved about the Writers Workshop and about Iowa City, and the other writers and I would refer to it all the time to make sure that things stayed accurate to how it really works at the Workshop. I also really wanted to put in fun little details that I had the inside perspective on.

JD: I’m from Iowa, originally. And then I went to school in Missouri, and now I live in Minneapolis. So, essentially I’m just treading the vertical Midwest line. I’ve met people who have never set foot in a ‘fly-over’ state, and I’ve been called ‘exotic’ because of that, which is interesting. But I wrote this question bracing for that perspective, because I think when Midwesterners are portrayed in media, it’s often not a fair representation. I’m wondering what we can expect from Season 4 of ‘Girls’ comedy- and portrayal-wise due to this new Midwest location?

SH: I’d actually say we do little to no poking fun at Midwesterners. It’s so much more about Hannah being – not really the ‘odd one out,’ but it’s much more Writers Workshop-specific and much less ‘city girl in the Midwest,’ because Hannah is originally from Michigan. She’s not a New Yorker, you know, born-and-raised. In my mind, it didn’t even occur to me to play up the part of her interacting with crazy Midwesterners. I didn’t even think about that when I was in the Midwest, other than the fact that it was different than where I’m from. I’m from New York. I really loved living in Iowa, [and] from my end at least, there was no desire to make it look like an unappealing place. It was more like, ‘How would it be unappealing – possibly – for Hannah?’

JD: Location also lends to a lot of creative inspiration. I’ve always wondered what types of conversations happen in the Writers Workshop because of that fact that people come from all over. I just wonder, what was it like for someone from a different space to suddenly be sitting in a classroom surrounded by cornfields?

SH: I think it’s different for everyone. Definitely some of the writers in my program while I was there were very inspired by where we were. And you started getting a lot of stories that took place in cornfields or in like, you know, a prairie town. I don’t think the content of what I was writing was necessarily influenced by living in Iowa City, but the calm that I felt there, and – for lack of a better word – the smallness of the social life and the choices we had on a day-to-day basis…it was like living in a little town. That, in a weird way, was very comforting to me, and it let me be really free with my writing. We also just had a lot of time to write, so it was nice to be in this bucolic atmosphere, writing away in your house. It’s also so much more affordable than New York. For me, it was like, ‘I’m living in a bigger space than I’ll probably live in for a really long time.’

JD: I watched a video of you where you explained the writing room of ‘Girls’ as having no hierarchy. I’m wondering if you can describe the writing room dynamic and the energy in that space using silly metaphors?

SH: It’s like lying on a really comfortable bed surrounded by snacks and staying up all night talking.

JD: Awesome. So like a sleepover.

SH: It’s sort of like a sleepover, but there are grown men there, and it takes place during lunchtime.

JD: Was that still true when writing Season 4? Has everyone become more comfortable with one another?

SH: Yeah, the group has been pretty consistent for a couple years, and it’s pretty little – there are like six of us. And we all know each other really well. I think the other people in the writers’ room know way more about me than people I would call my best friends. Just because the amount of hours we sit there talking; it’s almost like being on ‘Survivor’ or something, we’re not using our phones, we don’t have computers in front of us, we’re just in the room chatting with each other.

JD: In an interview I read, you described how in the writers’ room, you told the story of losing your virginity to Judd Apatow and other near-strangers.

SH: Yeah, that was the first season that I was telling them that, and they were strangers back then [laughs]. It’s like what people watch happen on ‘Sex and the City,’ where people talked about stuff that hadn’t really been talked about on TV – that opened so many doors. Now as a culture, I think, we talk more openly about sex, about women and sex, and that translates naturally into the writers’ room. Everyone’s comfortable talking about it, and then, of course, on the show, we’re always trying to present something really honest.

JD: I also read that while writing Seasons 1 and 2, you [the writers] weren’t hearing viewer feedback because the shows had yet to air. Is that true?

SH: Yeah, certainly by the time the first season aired, we had already started writing the second season. So we started writing the second season with zero viewer feedback.

JD: And then Season 3 was a different story, because opinions about ‘Girls’ were and are very polarized. How do you riff off of viewer feedback, whether the feedback is in the show’s favor or completely against it?

SH: I think we’re all really interested in it. It’s definitely something we all discuss in the room all the time, and something that Lena really cares about. We were just partway through writing Season 2 when everything broke about the lack of diversity, and we openly and quickly tried to address it. All criticism and any feedback from anyone watching the show is important to all of us. I think it’s the stuff that makes the most sense to us or feels like something we overlooked that we would incorporate into the show. It’s definitely part of the discretion, but Lena’s voice is the most important part of the show, like that’s what the show is, so it’s just a matter of how we can match up what people want and what the valid concerns and criticisms are while maintaining the integrity of her voice.

JD: Piggybacking off of that a little bit, what do you think is the biggest misunderstanding about ‘Girls,’ and to further that, about women in their 20s today?

SH: Well, I think the misunderstanding about ‘Girls’ is that the show is trying to represent everyone. It’s showing a very specific experience that hopefully people can see echoes of [in] their experience or enjoy watching even if it doesn’t resemble their experience. At this point, that’s not so much an issue anymore, but for the first couple seasons, that’s what we were hearing. We want it to be realistic, we want it to be inclusive, we want the show to be accessible to everyone who wants to watch it, but at the same time, I don’t think Lena ever set out to represent the entire world.

And then, the misunderstanding of girls in their 20s… It’s interesting to me how many people from older generations are shocked at some of the stuff on ‘Girls’ that, even if it wasn’t in my experience, it doesn’t feel so crazy to me. The first couple seasons especially, parents of friends would come up to me and be so shocked at the sex. Like, ‘Is that what sex is like?’ And I wouldn’t even quite know what they meant, you know, to ask a follow-up question. Because we’re representing all different kinds of sex, and I don’t even know what they’re pointing to as so horrifying, which maybe to them is even more horrifying, that I don’t know what is upsetting them. Other than showing a very naked, literally and figuratively, depiction of sex among young people and any people, I’m not sure how inaccurate it is to what people are doing today.

JD: Going back a little – you originally began as a fiction writer. And I read that you find that to be a novelty, because most people introduce themselves as screenwriters, and the fiction-writer pool is smaller. How does your fiction writing knowledge apply to creating these ‘real-life’ experiences?

SH: In my case, it’s helped me a ton, especially writing for a show like ‘Girls,’ where, you know, it’s HBO, we have freedom, we don’t have to follow a structure for each episode, we don’t have to hit hard jokes or punchlines – there’s a lot of wiggle-room. So, for that kind of writing, having a fiction background has been great. I feel like I have a deep understanding of character, setting a theme – things that I could focus on in a short story. On ‘Girls’ I feel like I can play around with language, and it’s not quite a comedy, not quite a drama. The type of short stories I was writing are very similar in tone to ‘Girls.’ In general, I do think – in terms of Hollywood – having a background in anything interesting – it doesn’t even have to be writing-related – is a novelty if you’re also trying to be a screenwriter. Anything, at this point, as TV is changing so much, I feel like the people writing these TV shows want writers from all different backgrounds who are going to bring a new perspective to it. It’s less focused on finding a hard comedy writer who knows exactly how to write an episode of ‘Frasier.’

JD: And when you say TV is changing so much, what do you mean by that?

SH: Just with the influx of all the cable models, you know, all these other channels that never had original programming before, like FX or AMC. They’re doing all this new stuff. And on top of that, you have Netflix and Amazon developing their own series…obviously web series and everything on the Internet. I don’t think TV as we know it is going to exist in this way for much longer. Certainly the model of sitting down at 8 pm to watch a show is already gone. Because of that, I think there are all these different ways to create TV, and it’s opening doors for people who wouldn’t necessarily fit in the old slot of how to write a TV show.

JD: There are more options, so we demand more options. I do miss the anticipation of waiting until 7 pm, like, ‘Ok, my show’s about to come on.’ I even miss sitting calmly through commercials. Like commercials were not just something to fast-forward through. Now we just wait for our show to be uploaded to Hulu.

SH: Yeah, and I also have crazy childhood memories of commercials that meant something to me [laughs]. If I were to see the commercials of my childhood right now, I would have as nostalgic a feeling [as] if I saw a picture book from when I was little. Which, I mean, I don’t think it’s a big loss, but it’s funny. It’s the same way like, ‘Kids today,’ [laughs] ‘Kids today don’t know what a landline is.’

JD: I’m working with someone right now – side story here – who was asked out on a date. He gave her his number, and she texted him, but it said the text failed or something. She was all bummed, like, ‘Oh, he gave me a fake number,’ but she ended up calling him and shortly found out that he has a landline, and that’s why she couldn’t text him. It didn’t work out, though, because he tried to pay for their date with pennies…

SH: This is like straight out of ‘Girls!’ I’m just warning you right now…if this story ends up on television [laughs]. I mean, I don’t think I can legally use it now that this has happened, but I’m definitely storing it away in my head for future use.

JD: [Laughs] Oh, I’m so excited. You know, to go back to ‘Girls’ – and it wasn’t my intention to only discuss ‘Girls’ with you – but what percentage of the show would you say is art, what percentage is entertainment, and what percentage is activism?

SH: Very good question… Ideally, equal among the three. The problem is, the activism in ‘Girls’ is happening pretty naturally. It’s not like ‘Law & Order,’ where they’re like, ‘Ok, the Ray Rice story is in the headlines, so let’s write an episode about it.’ We don’t generally sit down like, ‘Let’s do a date-rape episode.’ It’s more like what serves the story, and Lena is so talented and creative and knows a million people and her brain is working a mile-a-minute, that the stuff that ends up in the story usually knits together nicely with the zeitgeist and what’s happening in the world and the issues that we care about. And Lena especially, because she’s an activist and a feminist and, again, it’s her voice. That comes through almost effortlessly – it’s hard to say, ‘Oh, it’s 33 percent that.’ It’s all just part of Lena. She is equally all three of those things, so in that sense, I guess it’s equal.

JD: And I would agree, as a viewer, it does come off naturally, like, ‘Wow, nobody has said it in that way that honestly before,’ and that’s impactful.

SH: I find Lena’s existence to be a feminist act itself. I feel that way about Mindy Kaling. I feel that way about all these women who are changing what it means to be the lead of a TV show or be on the cover of Vogue. That, in itself, is changing things, so I feel very proud to be even remotely connected to that.

JD: Going back to the show written in Lena’s voice. You, and others, are contributing to that voice. Are there some exercises or – how do you get yourself into that headspace of writing from that vantage point?

SH: The first season was more of a struggle. I remember turning in scenes where I thought that I had nailed it, but my bosses being like, ‘No, no, no, Shoshana doesn’t talk like this, Hannah doesn’t talk like this.’ Now, I know the characters so well, it’s less about capturing Lena’s voice and more about capturing the voices of the characters she created, [which are] like an extension of her voice. At this point, I find it very easy, because I feel like I know these people. In terms of Lena – she trusts us enough that at this point, everyone writes the shows they want to write, keeping with the story and characters we have planned, and then Lena does a pass-over or a cleanup to make sure things are phrased the way she wants them. So everything gets that polish at the end by her, but at this point, everyone is capable of capturing it on their own.

JD: On to social media – your Twitter presence is like a little chocolate bar that I hide in my purse, because when I’m on Twitter, everything is so bad and serious. I’m being a bit dramatic here, but I follow a lot of news organizations, and sometimes I just need a little sugar rush – as in something really goofy and unexpected. What’s your writing process like in general, and what is your writing process like for Twitter?

SH: In general, if I have to write something I do what we call a ‘vomit draft.’ This is for screenwriting; for fiction it’s different. For fiction, I would write stories the night before I had to turn them in, and I would have a crazy 24-hour experience of writing them. Now, for screenwriting, I do a ‘vomit draft,’ where I just get the structure down, because that matters more, even on a show like ‘Girls.’ You do have to have the scenes in the right order and make sure everything is tight that way. Then, I go back and, in my mind, perfect every line of dialogue. Obviously it never gets perfect, but that’s what I’m trying to do. For Twitter – same perfectionism, which saddens me, because I don’t Tweet that often, because I’m a little too picky about what I put out there. Generally, Twitter is so much more like, I’m not necessarily stoned, but they’re like stonerish thoughts. Some little gem that I think in my head – of course the ones I think are great always get like zero favs – but that’s what I generally do with Twitter. Once in awhile, I’ll make a joke on Twitter but I want to put it into something else I’m writing, and I don’t know if that’s cheating or not. But Twitter’s definitely more of just my brain coming out into the world.

JD: So, what’s on your bedstand right now?

SH: My three best girlfriends from Iowa from my program – it’s the only time in my life I’ve been in a tight little group of girls – met me when I went [to Iowa City] for Lena’s book tour, because one of them, Jenny Zhang, who’s a poet, opened for Lena, which was awesome. So while I was holed up in a hotel room with these girls, I made them write me a list of every book written by a woman that I should read. So I have a huge stack. I just read the Elena Ferrante book My Brilliant Friend. She’s this Italian writer, and it’s translated to English, and no one knows who she is – like, it’s irrelevant to the book – but no one knows if she’s even a woman. She’s kind of a mysterious figure. The book is about two female best friends from age four on, and there are three books in the series, [and] I just finished the first one. It was really good. And then I have a bunch of contemporary fiction written by women, and I also have a bunch of weird paperbacks from the ‘60s that my mom sends me – stuff that she liked when she was a teenager or when she was a ‘tween. But mostly, right now I’m on a tear of fiction written by women. Surprise, surprise.

JD: Very cool. You must have a giant bedstand.

SH: I live in a studio, and these are piled on a table near the kitchen. It’s the only way I’ll get myself to read them, basically sitting in front of me. Otherwise, there’s too much other stuff to look at, like US Weeklys and my cell phone.

JD: You mentioned Mindy Kaling earlier. What are your favorite TV shows right now?

SH: I watch a lot of different stuff. I’m watching everything from ‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ to – my mom really got me into ‘The Missing,’ it’s an eight-episode run, and it’s about an English family and their child goes missing. Anything dark like that I’m totally into. I also re-watch stuff. Last year I re-watched ‘Sex and the City’ like twice in a row from start to finish. When I’m stuck in my childhood bedroom, which has a TV but no cable, just a DVD player, and I want to watch something before bed, but the only DVDs left in that bedroom are like ‘Party of Five’ Season 1. So I started watching that, and now I’ve watched the whole series of ‘Party of Five’ again. And I watch one episode of ‘Gilmore Girls’ every day. So now, I think I’m on my 14th viewing of the entire series.

JD: Oh my God.

SH: I’ve been doing one a day since my first year at Iowa, which was in 2007 [laughs].

JD: That’s actually amazing. So, no matter what, you just fit it into your day?

SH: I mean, if I’m away for a month, I come home and catch up while I’m unpacking. But at this point, I know it so well, I can leave it on and walk my dog or take a shower. I don’t have to pay attention, but I definitely don’t ever skip.

JD: I mean, I’ve watched ‘Sex and the City’ multiple times, and watching it again and again is useful. You notice things you didn’t notice when you were watching it at 12 years old, you know?

SH: Oh, yeah, it’s like re-reading a master novel or something; I think it’s just as important to re-watch TV shows.

JD: So, I was going to ask you to name the top five TV shows of the ‘90s –

SH: Oh my God.

JD: – because I think you’re kind of into that.

SH: Yeah, I am. Ok, well, that’s really hard. Comedies or dramas?

JD: Oh… Just do what feels good to you.

SH: I’ll just name a bunch of things I love. ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Friends’ – ‘Seinfeld’ was like my family’s religion growing up. I have a thing where if I meet someone new, like a potential boyfriend, I’m like, ‘Do they speak “Seinfeld”?’ They don’t have to have seen them all or know as much as I do, but they have to understand. I was really into – these are like late ‘90s, early 2000s – ‘Dawson’s Creek’ and ‘The OC.’ I actually didn’t like ‘Gilmore Girls’ when it was on and I was a teenager. TV for me is a coziness – being at home with your friends or your parents. I have vivid memories throughout my childhood and teen years of being on a sleepover or out at a party and wishing I was home watching ‘20/20’ with my parents. I had really cheesy taste in shows, like ‘Full House’ and anything on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel. And anything with a child my age, because I wanted to be a child star.

JD: When did you no longer want to be a child star?

SH: Really late [laughs]. I didn’t want to be a writer at all, but everyone always told me I would be one. Since I was like three or four, I was told I would be a writer. I wanted to be an actress, and when I was applying to college, I remember the teachers at my school encouraging me to present myself as a writer on my college application…and I just became one. It was like, I went to school, and suddenly that’s what I was doing. So, I let go of the child star thing late, but I do think it’s not that big of a leap for me to be like, ‘Oh, now I’m writing for TV, and I’ve gotten to be in a room with some of the child stars I worshipped when I was little.’ Even though I wasn’t a child star, I found myself drawn to this entertainment world. Sometimes I see Soleil Moon Frye, who played Punky Brewster, buying a newspaper near where I’m getting coffee, and I wish I could go back in time and high-five my 8-year-old self.

JD: Well, you could write a story about it. So, what projects do you have upcoming?

SH: I wrote a movie last year for this [production] company Good Universe, and it’s about female friendship and hateship. In my free time from ‘Girls,’ I generally try to write a movie or – this year, I wrote a pilot of my own just to have it. That was interesting for me to work on a TV project that wasn’t ‘Girls.’ My dream is to find a beloved childhood book that has not been made into a movie, and write a movie of it; that’s what I want to do. I also really want to write a female stoner comedy. Those are the things that are cooking right now, but we’re starting ‘Girls’ [Season 5] really soon, so I have to get a move on.

JD: Can we expect to see the movie you wrote for Good Universe any time soon?

SH: I have no idea. The way the movie world works is that I probably will never know. I turned it in, and I did the revision for them, so I don’t know what will happen next. It definitely was a wonderful experience, because I was working with a wonderful female executive, and one of the other producers was HelloGiggles, the website; they had input. It was a great team of women working together.