Gail Mancuso–who won last year’s Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series Emmy Award on the basis of the “Arrested” episode of Modern Family–has landed at her first official commercial production house roost, joining TWC Films for exclusive worldwide representation in spots and branded content.
The Emmy win marked just the second time that a woman has won the honor for comedy directing, the first being Betty Thomas back in 1993 for the “Peter’s Sake” episode of Dream On.
Mancuso now has two career directorial Emmy nominations, the initial one coming in 2011 for the “Slow Down Your Neighbors” episode of Modern Family. Earlier this year, Mancuso became a first-time DGA Award nominee for the Modern Family episode titled “My Hero.”
Mancuso broke into primetime series directing with Roseanne for which she went on to helm numerous episodes. Her directorial credits over the years include such shows as Friends, Dharma and Greg, Gilmore Girls and 30 Rock. For the latter she won a Gracie Award in 2008 for Outstanding Director of an Entertainment Series or Special.
At press time, Mancuso had embarked on a TV pilot for TBS, Your Family Or Mine, a show based on a popular Israeli series centering on a married couple who shuttle back and forth from one spouse’s family to the other’s. Mancuso and TBS have teamed on original comedy before with her serving as director and an executive producer on Ground Floor, a series which has just been picked up for a second season.
Ad roots
Mancuso said she feels that by joining TWC, her career has “come full circle,” noting that one of her first jobs in Hollywood was at boutique commercial production house The Mort Libov Company featuring director Dick Darley. Mancuso served as a jack of all trades there, hiring the crews, working on scripts and taking commercials through postproduction.
From there, Mancuso moved on to sitcoms as a script supervisor, then an assistant director before settling into the director’s chair. Once established in episodic television, Mancuso made directorial forays into the ad arena. In fact, she first worked with TWC several years ago directing webisodes introducing Breyer’s Smooth and Dreamy ice cream for media and marketing services agency Mindshare. For the “Dreamy”-themed web fare, new live action featuring Jane Krakowski (30 Rock) was meshed into classic movies such as Gone With The Wind and King Kong. Mancuso noted that her positive experience working on that job with TWC, the company’s production expertise, family-like atmosphere and strong body of work figured heavily in her decision to now formally join the production house.
The director’s ad experience also spans other collaborations with Mindshare in recent years, including: several episodes of the Suave/Sprint digital series In The Motherhood starring Chelsea Handler, Jenny McCarthy and Leah Remini; and Skin Season, a series of digital shorts for Vaseline featuring Sarah Chalke of Scrubs and Roseanne fame. Mancuso and Chalke go back many years. In fact, Mancuso directed Chalke’s audition for Roseanne.
Mancuso’s big career break as a director was on Roseanne. She was working on the show as an assistant director when its staff director had to leave for another project. Mancuso recalled asking Roseanne if she could direct the upcoming episode. In typical Roseanne fashion, the series star repled, “Well go ahead.” The next season Mancuso was hired as a full-time director and wound up helming more than 50 episodes of the show.
“I owe a lot to Roseanne,” affirmed Mancuso. “She believed in me and ended up hiring me for the next two seasons.”
From the Roseanne series on, Mancuso has formed strong working relationships with the actors she directs. “Relationships with actors are important and they cross over to anything you’re shooting. I’ve experienced that in the advertising work I’ve done. I’m a filmmaker. I love to tell stories. And this [diversifying into advertising] is an extension of that.”
Mancuso added, “I’ve enjoyed the experiences I’ve had so far in advertising and I find it invigorating to engage with creatives from agencies–smart people bouncing ideas off each other and processing all of it into work that’s worth watching. I love that.”
