Ryan Murphy Quotes For Producers, Writers & Directors

Ryan Murphy Quotes

Ryan Murphy is one of the few super-producers working in TV, along with the likes of Shonda Rimes and Greg Berlanti. His run of hit shows includes NIP/TUCK, GLEE, AMERICAN HORROR STORY, AMERICAN CRIME STORY, and FEUD.

On the feature film side, he’s written and directed RUNNING WITH SCISSORS and directed EAT, PRAY, LOVE.

In 2018, Ryan Murphy left his home at 20th Century Fox Television and signed a mega-deal with Netflix, reportedly worth $300 million over five years.

Here are 10 of the best Ryan Murphy quotes for producers, writers and directors…

10 Ryan Murphy Quotes for Producers, Writers and Directors

  1. “People have always made me feel like somehow being prolific is a bad thing, but I don’t want to apologise for it.”

  2. “I grew up in this house with broken dreams, and I remember thinking, ‘You know what? F*ck it. I would rather fail than be miserable. So I have applied that philosophy to my career. I’m not going to do anything unless I am afraid of it.”

  3. “I think people think I’m cynical and dark — it’s not true. I think the key to success in television is to do something that either nobody has tried to do or to reinvent a genre that has not worked or is dead.”

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  4. “With all of my work, it always takes a while for people to get it. It goes from, ‘What the hell is that?’ to ‘Oh, I like that.'” 

  5. “I don’t write regularly, particularly on the TV shows. I have to muse on something for a really long time. I’ll think what the episode is about for a week or two, and then it’ll just explode out of me.”

  6. “I remember being so devastated that [my first script] didn’t go. But just the other day I told a young writer who did a TV show that just got cancelled, “Listen, here’s a thing you won’t know at 30 that you will know at 45: Every failure or miss or moment where you’re like, “Why is my world ending?” leads you to your success.” I know it’s corny to say, but it’s almost like your path is predetermined. The failure of that script led to my first big break.” 

  7. “What I like to do is to figure myself out through those characters. Like, why did I do that? Or, what was I trying to do there? It’s cathartic, and I like to sort of give myself sometimes happy endings that I wish I had had. Like with Kurt’s dad on GLEE. Now I look at my father, and I feel like I’ve got to forgive him for some stuff.”
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  8. “As a showrunner, you can never be a maybe. When I do movies, there is a lot of “maybe” and “let’s investigate that.” But for TV, it has to be yes or no. I’m very black and white about what I like or don’t like, and I’ve always been that way.” 

  9. [on his commitment to hire women to direct at least half his shows] “I changed the dynamic of my company. The most important thing is that the culture has changed to be more about ideas and the exchange of ideas than ego. It’s interesting when women direct. The work is better. They ask more people to participate. I’ve been doing this a year and a half. It’s been a really good change in my life.”

  10. “After more than four or five years with a show, I think you have to move on or sort of train someone to see things like you see them. Tone is everything in TV. I would hand it off to somebody else, but I would stay involved. I also believe in bringing a lot of young people up and giving them their first breaks.”

 

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