“Most people who try to become writers in Hollywood do not get a job writing for five or ten years,” screenwriter Nick Hurwitz PO ’12 explained. “If you talk to the average person in Hollywood, a working screenwriter, most people do not get their first paid job until a year in.”
It’s well known that finding a job in the entertainment industry can be harsh and volatile. Four Pomona College alumni — Luca Rojas PO ’12, Nick Hurwitz PO ’12, Steph Saxton PO ’12 and Nelson Cole PO ’16 — would be hard-pressed to disagree.
On Thursday, Feb. 7, the four alumni gathered for “Humanities Futures: Hollywood Edition,” a panel hosted by the Pomona College Humanities Studio. Having majored in either English or media studies at Pomona, each alum spoke about their path to their current career in Hollywood.
The panel is part of the Humanities Toolkit series, a collection of practical talks and workshops that “try to help folks imagine humanities work outside of the context of the campus,” according to Humanities Studio Director Kevin Dettmar. “So, what does the humanities look like when it goes out into the world?”
For these panelists, it looks like Hollywood.
“[The entertainment industry] was the goal for me,” said Saxton, who serves as vice president of content scheduling & prioritization at Hulu. “I didn’t know what within the entertainment industry, but I just knew it.”
Coming out of college, Saxton reached out to more than 20 people working in the entertainment industry she had found on LinkedIn. She got a response back from a business affairs agent at talent agency William Morris Endeavor (WME) and ended up pushing a cart in the company’s mailroom.
Rojas later landed a job at the same mailroom as Saxton.
“I heard from a mom’s friend’s friend that actually the way to crack into the entertainment industry was to work in an agency mailroom,” Rojas said. “I didn’t realize this until coming in here today that my first job, partially the reason I got the job at WME, is because of another panelist on this panel, Steph.”
Saxton and Rojas began at the bottom of the ladder and slowly worked their way up. Similar can be said for Hurwitz and Cole, who started as a production assistant and publicity intern, respectively.
“One of the very weird things about Hollywood is that no one cares about where you went to college,” Hurwitz said. “No one cares.”
“There’s so many jobs that might be comfortable, but you need to take [an uncomfortable] job sometimes,” said Cole.
So, many of them took jobs that weren’t exactly comfortable and went from there.
After pushing carts in WME’s mailroom, Saxton became the assistant to WME’s co-CEO. Later, she transferred to management — first at Legendary Entertainment and then at Disney and Hulu.
The other alumni’s career paths were a bit less linear.
“One of the very weird things about Hollywood is that no one cares about where you went to college,” Hurwitz said. “No one cares.”
Rojas’ mailroom job allowed him to jump into some writers’ rooms, first as an assistant and later as a contributing writer. After a pilot he worked on didn’t get picked up, Rojas left the entertainment industry momentarily.
“NBC, in their infinite wisdom, did not pick [the pilot] up, which kind of disillusioned me from the entertainment industry for a bit,” Rojas said. “That prompted me to toss all my things into a car and drive back to New York.”
After four years working at a marketing agency, Rojas came back to Hollywood, first reading scripts for The Black List, a writer-centric platform for storytelling, before being hired to work on the Netflix series “Wednesday.”
Hurwitz, on the other hand, moved between personal assistant jobs before eventually becoming a showrunner’s assistant. After freelance writing a couple of episodes and being offered positions at shows that got abruptly canceled, he finally landed a role as a screenwriter at a TV show.
Cole began as an intern script reader and later began screenwriting while enrolled in an MFA program near Hollywood. After the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, he started teaching part-time and then decided to pivot toward a career in education.
Despite the menial tasks, the disillusionment, the cancellations and the career pivots, each alum seemed happy in their current career.
“They all sounded like they really enjoyed what they were doing,” audience member Adelina Grotenhuis PO ’28 said.
The alumni testified to the occasionally brutal nature of trying to make it in the entertainment industry, which has become increasingly volatile in recent years, leaving many Hollywood workers unemployed.
“It requires a tremendous, almost irrational, degree of optimism and perseverance,” Rojas said. “Having a tremendous rational faith you are going to persist and come out victorious, while at the same time having a sobering awareness of the brutal realities of your day-to-day existence and maintaining both these mindsets at the same time — I would describe that as being quintessential for survival in a career.”
As to why they keep going despite the instability and setbacks, Saxton shared some insight.
“This industry keeps you on your toes,” Saxton said. “You’re always getting laid off, your shows are always getting canceled, you’re gonna have to find a new job every couple years. But we keep doing it because we love it.”