“The thing I always wanted to do was remember that what it means to be a writer is very big,” says Cord Jefferson, who lists writers like Joan Didion and James Baldwin as influences. “A lot of writers limit themselves. I’m a sports journalist or a novelist. I want to look at writing like a toolbox. You can use a toolbox to build a coffee table or a rocking chair or a house. These skills are applicable to different things.”

For many years, Cord Jefferson was a journalist before he got into film and television. “I was proud to be a journalist, but I knew I wanted to maybe write a book one day or write a movie one day. I think a bigger, catch-all term is storyteller. If you are a person who is interested in writing novels, you can probably write a pretty good article, or an interesting screenplay.”

“The connective thread between these things is that you know how to capture an audience’s attention and bring them from the beginning to the end. Once you figure out how to do that, it’s more about what medium to apply that skillset to as opposed to, how can I do that thing? To me, that was always what I sought out when I came to writing.”

Jefferson’s journalistic background taught him to ask the question “why now?” which he brought to other mediums. “Why should this be on the cover of the newspaper? Every time I approached a tv or movie, I asked why should this be in the world right now? I don’t think people often ask themselves that. Why is this a cool story for 2024? What’s the relevance and timeliness of a story? I think that helps it break through the clutter.”

Jefferson’s move to script work is envious to say the least. He’s got credits on Master of None, The Good Place, Watchmen, and Station Eleven. Now, his new film American Fiction is the topic of many Oscar debates. The plot reads, “A novelist who's fed up with the establishment profiting from "Black" entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.”

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