Robert Carlock - Showrunner for 30 Rock & Emmy Award-Winning Writer & Producer

Colbert Cannon: Welcome to Season 10 of the HPScast. I’m your host, Colbert Cannon. If you’re new to the pod, HPS is a global investment firm. We manage approximately $110 billion in assets for a broad range of institutional and retail investors. That capital is invested across private credit and public credit strategies.

Each week, I sit down with key relationships to, partners of, and friends of the firm to learn from their experience, ask how that experience shapes their current roles, and give insights into HPS and how we operate. So with that, let’s bring in our guest. Our guest this week is an Emmy Award winning TV and movie writer and producer, and simply one of the funniest people I know.

After graduating from Harvard, he started writing for the Dana Carvey Show, before starting a five-year run as a writer on Saturday Night Live. He then worked on the show Friends, before partnering with Tina Fey to write and produce the stone-cold classic series 30 Rock. That partnership has continued with shows like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Mulligan, Girls5eva, and the list goes on and on.

This gentleman is as prolific as he is talented. So, without any further ado, I’m excited to welcome in this week’s HPScast guest, Rob Carlock, Hollywood writer and producer extraordinaire. Rob, welcome to the pod.

Rob Carlock: Colbert. I would like some more ado, actually.

Colbert Cannon: That’s the entirety of the ado. All right, Rob, I want to go all the way back. Where’d you grow up? Where are you from originally?

Rob Carlock: I am from suburban Boston, originally, which just gets you nothing in terms of writing about one’s childhood or experiences. It was a nice, cozy, leafy, suburban existence.

Colbert Cannon: Amazing. All right, so you go to Harvard. What’d you study undergrad, Rob?

Rob Carlock: I was a history and literature concentrator, not major. It has to be different at Harvard, of course. History/Literature is its own department over at Harvard, but it really means taking classes within those departments. So, I was history and literature  of England and France because I came into school with just this idea of the life of the mind, and I don’t know that it worked out for me really.

Colbert Cannon: What did you think you wanted to do? When did you settle on comedy?

Rob Carlock: That is a great question. You know, my father was an advertiser, my mother was a journalist. The idea of writing was always present.

I think, again, I went to school thinking I’ll just study what I want to, and as has happened for the 18 years leading up to that, the world will come to me. And, you know, I, I joined the Harvard Lampoon, which is the putative comedy magazine at Harvard and a bit of a breeding ground, although we tried to think of it as not pre-professional when I was there.

I guess. in the back of my mind was the idea, which was a new idea, that one could go to Harvard and then write for television.

I had an interview with one of the lesser consulting firms, and I remember the question, Colbert, was one of those – was it Enrico Fermi who came up with that stuff when they were making the nuclear bomb? Or like, how many piano tuners are there in Chicago? So, it has a gust kind of background. It was like – you’re helping a clothing company, and one of the stores isn’t selling any men’s pants. You know, it’s like, okay, well, I guess I would go to the store and see if there’s something wrong with the supply chain. Are they all the same color or whatever? And it just kept being like, no, you’re you’re not getting it. And the answer was like, they were all the same size.

Colbert Cannon: Yeah, that also seems fairly, fairly fundamental.

Rob Carlock: I felt like I, kind of, nailed it.

Colbert Cannon: Okay, so you start writing for The Lampoon. You catch the comedy bug. You get a job with Dana Carvey’s show right out of college. How did you find that opportunity? Tell us how that came about.

Rob Carlock: Well look, luck is timing plus preparation, right? So, I was writing for The Lampoon, which again was really pretty onanistic and all about amusing ourselves to the best of our ability and no one else, but, at the same time was starting to think, okay, I have friends who are at Saturday Night Live or in Los Angeles and doing well, and maybe this is something I should try to do. I don’t think it’s why my parents sent me to college exactly, but they were always very supportive.

I was starting to write outside of just my work for the magazine, writing spec scripts and all of it bad, but writing sketches. And then, kind of, the right combination of things happened. A friend of mine was with an agency called ICM, and a bunch of their young agents left in the middle of the night to start what today is William Morris Endeavor – the biggest agency, bigger than CAA now. They were five young guys with their office above a hamburger restaurant, and they were actually looking for clients. So, with this guy’s recommendation, I was able to get a good agent without having a job.

So, people actually read my material, and the other thing that I did was I had material. And it wasn’t all necessarily great, but Louis C. K. read my packet. He liked one of my sketches. They had five dollars left over in their writing budget, and I flew to New York.

Colbert Cannon: So, you mentioned Louis CK, it’s, it was a short-lived show. Dana Carvey, you only had, I think, seven episodes out, but why don’t you tell our listeners just a handful of the writers and performers in that?

Rob Carlock: Oh, it’s absurd. Robert Smigel, who did Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and ran Conan O’Brien’s show when it was on NBC when it first started. This guy Dino Stamatopoulos, who star burns on Community. The actors, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell – you’re pronouncing your first name wrong, I think, I think it’s Colbert, right?

Colbert Cannon: Stephen Colbert has been a total disaster for me, as you can imagine.

Rob Carlock: Sure, it doesn’t make any sense. Colbert Cannon! My office mate was Charlie Kaufman of Adaptation and an Oscar winner, et cetera et cetera. And I was very conscious at 22, or whatever I was, of – these people are really smart and funny and sharp, and I’m either going to learn a lot or I’m going to flame out and go to law school.

Colbert Cannon: Well, let’s talk about that learning a lot, because I always think first jobs are, sort of, formative. I mean, that’s an incredible room of people to walk into. What do you take away from that? What did you hold onto from that experience?

Rob Carlock: Well, one of the things I held onto – maybe the most salient lesson was – we did eight episodes, seven aired, they didn’t even air the eighth episode, it went away. We thought it was really funny. Robert stood his ground creatively with ABC. We were in between two very successful shows, Home Improvement and NYPD Blue, I think. I think we were watched by, like, 19 million people. A hit show on network today is watched by a small fraction of that. But we were failing, we were hammocking.

That was a good lesson. Okay, I’m in this industry, where I know intellectually there are no sure things. I just worked really hard with a lot of really funny people and tried to learn from them, and it was a blip, and it’s gone. But you know, I also got a couple things on the show and got to help produce them, and got to start to think, oh maybe I can do this, even among these trained improvisers who had training I didn’t have and trained performers and that can be intimidating, especially in a room.

You know, just going back a little bit, there are not a lot of things that in life that mimic being in a writer’s room. The lampoon can be a little bit like that of just the, kind of, natural competition of one upsmanship.

Colbert Cannon: So, it’s time to look for your next job. Saturday Night Live, you know, still looms large in the cultural consciousness. You spent five years working there. Tell me what that experience was like during a pretty glorious time for SNL.

Rob Carlock: It’s funny you say glorious time because, at the time, we were a punching bag You know, there’s always the Saturday Night Dead headline floating around. You know, the genius of what Lorne Michaels built is that he built a show before the internet that’s perfectly designed to be watched by people on Sunday morning and talked about. Another thing he does is – look, captain’s word is law, as he has a sign in his office that says that. You produce your own sketches and cuts between dress and air. So, if you’re up for that – and not everyone is up for taking that responsibility – it’s an incredible learning experience. And so, I also produced Weekend Update for a couple years, including the first year that Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon did it. And that was another step of like, okay, now I’ve got this ten minutes and this collaboration with a specific group of people where I can, within Lorne’s show,  make our own little thing, to his approval, which was another change from table-reads on Wednesday. You can be done for the rest of the week, which I didn’t love. I was always trying to find ways to be useful and feel like it was partly my show at the end of the day.

Colbert Cannon: Now, is that when you first met Tina or had you met her before?

Rob Carlock: That is when I first met Tina. So, she came in as a writer during my second year and was just, out of the gate, one of these people who just understood how to write for the show. She and Adam McKay just would have half the show, and I’d think, damn it, what are they doing differently? And it was a lot, it turns out.

Colbert Cannon: And what was it? I mean, you’re sitting there learning your craft as a 23-year-old. When you looked at somebody who was, you know, succeeding at the Wednesday table-read, what worked? How did you figure that out?

Rob Carlock: Look, they were both much better, coming from a performance background – Improviser, Second City, UCB – at writing for performance, writing for the host, which is always a huge thing. If the host wanted to do something, it was going to get on air and writing for the cast, and I came from a print background, so to speak.

And the people, the writers, I looked up to were like Jack Handy and Jim Downey, and Jim would write these really dense, current affairs, kind of, political pieces. And Jack Handy – you know, Deep Thoughts – would write these really weird, funny, unique, you’ve never seen it before pieces.

And Tina could write both of those thing, but she also wrote for the show better than I did. I think I started to learn that by the end. I think Weekend Update was part of that, thinking about, okay, how do I help Tina and Jimmy score? How are the jokes good? Who do we bring on? And this is just a little microcosm of any show.

Colbert Cannon: So, after five years, you decide to move to Friends and eventually the Joey spinoff before coming back to work with Tina, which we’ll get to. How about the transition from Saturday Night Live sketch comedy to scripted television? How was that for you evolutionarily?

Robert: Look, it was what I always wanted to do. I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to write for characters over years. And that opportunity, kind of, came up a little unexpectedly. I had written some, but they mostly read SNL things, Weekend Update jokes and sketches. And I think they were just looking for a joke guy in the room. And I went in thinking, okay, I want to learn how to write stories.

And I don’t know that Friends ever got the credit it deserves because it’s, everyone’s pretty, and the stories are light, and it never won the awards. But the people who ran that show were very fastidious, intelligent about just the craft and structure of storytelling.

It was a great training ground, and in terms of the transition, yeah, move out to LA or in a new town, you’re from the northeast, it seems like Mars, and, there were days where I thought, they’re speaking a different language, and they speak it very fluently and easily. And it was definitely a learning process.

Colbert Cannon: So, you had met Tina. You eventually then come back, and 30 Rock is the first project you worked on together. Tell me about going from Friends and colleagues who work well together to let’s create something awesome together. How did that actually all happen?

Rob Carlock: Well look, it’s her show. She wrote the pilot. It was her life. We had a lot of Venn Diagram overlap. The core of what you’re asking, I think, is like, is this going to work, right? We did our little ten-minute thing that was very contained. Weekend Update is going to be Weekend Update, and also, as Lorne says, the show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. It goes on because it’s 11:30. And some weeks are better than others, and that’s the case with any show.

it was a first for Tina. I’d been doing a few years of sitcom narrative stuff, never running a show. And, you know, she proved again that she can do anything. But the question was, okay, this is a different set of pressures. When you’re doing 22 episodes in a season, it turns into 7 days a week, and, I mean, her daughter is going to Brown next year, and I was just at a dinner over at their house the other week, and we were remembering that there were a couple times where she woke up in the morning as a toddler and came out, and I was there working with her mom in the living room at 6:00 in the morning.

I can’t say that was every week, but that’s intense, and that’s, kind of, what we knew we were in for to do that many shows, to do it single camera, which is just more production intensive, to do the kind of density of storytelling and jokes that we wanted to do to serve all of those actors. It was going to be different than doing Weekend Update. And the great thing is, for whatever reason, it worked.

Colbert Cannon: Tell me about your own personal career evolution through that. You start out, you’re a young writer, you then become a lead writer, suddenly you’re executive producing, show running over time. Just because you’re good at the beginning of your career doesn’t mean you’re good as an executive or a leader. Those are two different skill sets. How did you learn what you didn’t know to be effective in those new roles?

Rob Carlock: That’s a really good question. It was all so, kind of, on the fly. Look, there’s only so much difference. It’s only a difference of scale, a vast difference of scale, between producing a sketch or a pre-taped piece for Saturday Night Live and a show. The problems are the same. There are just a lot more of them. They’re multiplied.

So, I felt like I had seen a lot of things. I felt like, certainly having the partnership with Tina – who had to go act for 12 hours a day and then would come up to the writer’s room – to lean on and rely on, to get a bounce on, is this a good idea? Is this a blind alley or something worth pursuing was certainly incredibly helpful. But it was a real sea change, but we survived it mostly through just grinding through.

Colbert Cannon: Yeah, I can only imagine. In 30 Rock, you famously skewered your own network quite often. Talk to me about your relationship with NBC these days. How many notes did you get from corporate, and how did you navigate those waters?

Rob Carlock: At the end of our run, we were purchased, but at the beginning, when we started out, GE makes jet engines and stuff, and, and at one point, was just a solid investment. And look, they had this incredible run with what Jack Welch and his successors most probably thought of as a fun side project, which was the National Broadcasting Corporation and Universal, between Friends and Seinfeld and Cheers. And it worked, and it wasn’t causing them any problems.

So, I think we were the jester in the king’s court a little bit. They would show up and laugh, and I remember when Jeff Immelt took the job, and he came to visit Friends. So, it was still GE at the beginning of 30 Rock. And then they got sold to cable town. And by that time, it was just established that, part of the price of entry is that we’re going to make fun.

Colbert Cannon: That’s funny. I want to talk about your partnership with Tina, because you’ve continued working together. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which is also great. The movie, Whisky Tango Foxtrot. Partnerships and how people maintain those always interests me. How have you sustained your execution at a high level over time? How do you make that work for as long as you guys have?

Rob Carlock: I don’t know how conscious we are of it in terms of best practices. You know, we have a good social relationship, which helps. We seei each other with spouses and, Tina’s husband, Jeff Richmond, is an incredibly talented composer and does all our music. Our kids are friends. So, I think that actually really helps, to be reminded of each other’s humanity when, when you step out of what can be the stress of meeting these deadlines and, ratings numbers and notes and whatever else and dealing with actors. In terms of the work, again, it’s a question of communication, I think, and expectations. So, the key to it is not making assumptions and having open communication.

Colbert Cannon: That trust between partners. And also, I always think about knowing your role, knowing what, what each of you is good at and finding ways to complement each other is the only way for these things to work.

Rob Carlock: Yeah. Unfortunately, she’s good at everything. So, I don’t know what I’m doing.

Colbert Cannon: Yeah, exactly.

So, tell us about what’s next. What sort of things are you working on now, Rob? What’s got you excited for the future of your creative output?

Rob Carlock: This is maybe a larger conversation that you either do or don’t want to have. The industry is in a weird place right now. I mentioned earlier doing 22, 24 episodes with Friends, 30 Rock, and other shows. With the streaming model, that’s all changed. You do 8, 10, 12 episodes. And the way that that affects how you work and what kinds of things you do and the appetite for weirder things, which is shifting all over the place right now.

We’d had a six-month long strike that was really just a symptom of a larger thing that’s going on with the industry, which is figuring out how streaming actually makes money and serves creative output. Traditionally, of course, syndication was what kept the lights on, and a show like Friends does 250 episodes. It syndicates all over the world. It makes billions of dollars for Warner Brothers and for the creators. And it’s a tent pole for NBC to be able to charge higher ad rates, and to run reruns with higher ad rates, and to raise all the boats around it. All of that went away, basically.

Syndication is not gone-gone. I don’t pretend to be a businessman in any way, but there were five revenue streams. They replaced it with one that was just pure consumer-based subscription revenue. There are finite people on Earth, and more revenue streams, I think, is better. You tell me.

So, it does feel like we’re going back there, and what does that mean? What does that mean for the kinds of things we pitch, the kinds of places where we pitch? Are we still just doing 10, 12 episodes? Because one of the things that’s come out of that model and come out of the pay-up-front model, the cash on the barrel head model, which is, okay, we’ll buy the show, we’ll buy two seasons outright, and then maybe we’ll pick up more seasons, which is the streaming model. And you say, okay, great. Instead of doing a pilot and running the risk of doing zero more shows, we’ll do two seasons outright – 24, 26 shows over two years, and that sounds better. But what it’s meant is, if The Office did 200 episodes, if 30 Rock did 150 episodes, you’ll just never see that again because the network’s appetite for more episodes runs out faster when they’re paying up front. There is no, sort of, downstream revenue to be had.

So, this is a meandering way to say, it’s kind of, exciting to sort of figure out what do they want? And we’re on the verge of pitching some new stuff and some things we think are very much in our wheelhouse. A trend in comedy lately has been, kind of, half hours that are maybe very good but aren’t very funny. We like to do funny.

So, it feels like we’re shaking off the cobwebs of the strike and everything. Tina is running a room right now for a show called Four Seasons, which was based on a movie from the 1970s that some people may know but is an update. And we’re starting to put together other things in a chaotic landscape.

Colbert Cannon: Well, let me ask you, you mentioned the strike. One of the other questions I had about your industry is the impact of artificial intelligence on writing rooms. And there was obviously a large issue discussed in the most recent writer’s strike. This is topical. It just came up where the voice of AI Chat GPT used bore a striking resemblance to the actress, Scarlett Johansson, who they tried to get to do it.

I mean, this is all very real time. Look at your crystal ball for a second. Are you using artificial intelligence today. and how do you see it affecting Hollywood screenwriting?

Rob Carlock: We don’t use it except for fun. I remember reading early when Chat GPT first launched that someone had asked it to write a 30 Rock script, and it was gibberish. It had the characters, but it was gibberish. It was way too short to begin with, but it feels like it’s only going to get better. Humans have plateaued.

I wish I felt like the industry attitude were how do we and our writers-creators, collaborate with this technology. It feels more like Sam Altman is going behind closed doors and talking about how we’re all going to get replaced. And, you know, anything new that comes along that has that power, you want to harness it for human good.

I’m a believer that creative output from humans makes a difference, but that’s hard to quantify because human output can be terrible, Colbert. On some level, I don’t know – why shouldn’t it write the next Fast and Furious just to see it?

Colbert Cannon: You’re presupposing it didn’t write Fast and Furious 10.

Rob Carlock: Fari, fair.

Colbert Cannon: It’s interesting. I would recommend to listeners who didn’t check it out – we had Salim Ismail on a couple of weeks back, who is an AI futurist, and one of the points he made, if you compare it to the software coding industry, it’s not that AI is going to make software coders go away. It’s just that it’s going to make them way more efficient, and that you need, sort of, the AI whisperer type who can work with it. And I just wonder if that’s the evolution over time – does a 15-person writing room become an eight-person writing room and you just have some AI doing some of the basics that you would have had 22-year-old Rob Carlock working on back in the day?

Rob Carlock: Two things. One is 22-year-old Rob Carlock would not be wanting to enter this industry right now. Maybe in three years if this gets figured out. 22-year-old Rob Carlock might be taking the LSAT. But also, there are a lot of pressures right now that are making writing rooms smaller: shorter season orders, fewer episodes, doing all the writing up front, different economics.

I mean, one of the issues on the table in the strike was guaranteed minimums for writer rooms. And I’m afraid that that did get settled on, but I think the guaranteed minimum, is like, two. And I’m afraid, and I’m hearing anecdotally, that that’s what new creators are being budgeted for. Whereas traditionally, yeah, to do 22, 24 episodes, you need a dozen people because you’re going to break some of them, and you need to be able to split up into smaller groups and still be functional.

So, will AI hasten that? Probably. I don’t have a sense of the day to day use for it in a writer’s room because I’m certainly not going to have it write scripts. But boy, if someone could write that terrible first draft in three seconds, and I don’t have to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings, I don’t know, there’s something there.

But again, it does speak to the longevity of the industry and of the job, right? Setting aside AI, with smaller episode orders and shorter seasons and less guaranteed promotion because of those shorter seasons, younger writers are already being deprived of the, kind of, training that I got.

Colbert Cannon: Fascinating. Well, certainly tons going on. The silver lining in all of this is there’s an awful lot of really good television out there, much of it made by you, Rob. So, a lot to appreciate.

All right. So, before I get to the last segment of the pod, I do want to do a quick speed round of questions with you. I’m going to rattle off some quick questions. You give a quick answer. First thought, best thought.

You ready, Rob?

Rob Carlock Okay.

Colbert Cannon: You’ve had a long and busy week. What’s your cocktail of choice on a Friday evening?

Rob Carlock: A Hendricks Martini, up, twist, you know, perfect.

Colbert Cannon: If you had to live in one city other than New York, where would you live?

Rob Carlock: Somewhere in Europe. I’m torn. I mean, probably somewhere in Italy but maybe London.

Colbert Cannon: I love it. Favorite restaurant in New York city for a big fun dinner with friends?

Rob Carlock: I used to be good at this, Colbert. I used to be on top of the restaurant scene. Locanda Verde, maybe?

Colbert Cannon: Fair enough. All right. All-time favorite TV show – drama category.

Rob Carlock: Wire.

Colbert Cannon: That’s so good. All-time time favorite TV show – comedy, but caveat, you can’t have worked on it.

Rob Carlock: Okay. Simpsons.

Colbert Cannon: That’s so good. SNL performer who consistently made you laugh the hardest? Can’t be Tina.

Rob Carlock: Oh, good, thank you. Will Farrell.

Colbert Cannon: Who was your favorite SNL host during your time working on the show?

Rob Carlock: Oh, that’s a great one. I’m going to say Phil Hartman.

Colbert Cannon: All right. Best musical guest during your time on Saturday Night Live?

Rob Carlock: There are a bunch, but I’m going to go Radiohead. Early Radiohead.

Colbert Cannon: I know that performance. If you haven’t seen it, check that out on YouTube.

Now with that, I do want to move to the last segment of the pod, something we like to call “Best Ideas” where we offer up something that’s added value in our lives recently, “Best ideas” because we like to maximize exposure to those.

Rob, you’re my guest. I’m going to ask you to go first. What is your best idea?

Rob Carlock: I’m going to say get a little notebook and a little pen and just try to take it with you everywhere you go. And try to find things outside of the effluvium of work emails, outside of whatever you’re doing on social – try to find things in your everyday, in your adventures, that meet the very low bar of being written down in that notebook, and then keep the notebook. And maybe you’ll never read it. Maybe it’ll get thrown out by your heirs. Maybe, because it’ll be the only written record of the 21st century, you’ll be the Samuel Pepys of our time. And it’s something I’ve always done just because of what I do, and sometimes it makes me forget when I’m outside of a work context to take a notebook with me, but going back through them or reading something to the kids, or being reminded of something, of an incident – just that little bit of intentionality about the words you choose and what you’re writing down changes the way you look at your everyday.

Colbert Cannon: I think that is a fantastic recommendation, Rob. Thank you. Great idea. Okay.

So, for my best idea, as people know, I like to be inspired by the guest of the week. You know, I enjoy good TV shows, and obviously, our guest’s chosen career matches quite nicely with that. But as you heard today, Rob isn’t just a good writer and funny – he’s sharp, he’s well-read, and he’s a good conversationalist.

So, I started thinking about TV shows that weren’t just good but were also sort of interesting or educational in some way. And I landed on one of my favorite recent watches, a fantastic work of historical storytelling. My best idea this week is 2022’s Rogue Heroes SAS, the incredible series depicting the founding of the SAS, the original British Special Forces unit in North Africa during World War II.

The show is broadly historically accurate, and it tells a story of how a small group of British soldiers, initially without senior officers’ blessings, began to operate outside the chain of the command to fight the Axis in non-traditional ways, ultimately turning the tide of the war across Africa.

The cast is stacked. I mean, it’s a who’s who of British actors: Connor Swindells, Alfie Allen, Dominic West (speaking of The Wire, most notably). It’s an incredible story – fast moving, just six episodes. It’s very tight and truly entertaining watch. So, in honor of one of the great writers out there who I know appreciates a good understanding of history per his undergraduate concentration, what we recommend as my best idea this week, the remarkably good Rogue Heroes SAS.

Rob, any chance you’ve checked that out?

Rob Carlock: You know, I haven’t. I have read the book, though, that it’s based on, which is a great and quick read and only made me want to watch the show more.

Colbert Cannon: Fantastic. With that, Rob, it’s time to wrap up for the week. We very much appreciate you taking the time today. Look forward to watching your next show. Thank you so much for coming on.

Rob Carlock: You’re a great American.

Colbert Cannon: Thanks again to our guest, Rob Carlock. Check out our show notes to learn more about Rob and his award-winning work. There, you’ll also find a link to watch my best idea – the BBC tv series Rogue Heroes SAS, based on Ben Macintyre’s eponymous book adapted for television by Peaky Blinders’ creator Steven Knight.

This podcast was brought to you by AT WILL MEDIA with HPS Investment Partners. Please be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.