Madras to Malibu: Screenwriter Vidhya Iyer’s rise in Hollywood

(May 27, 2022) When she was a student in Madras, Vidhya Iyer simply could not have imagined that her passion would take her all the way to Hollywood one day. Screenwriter Vidhya Iyer is second to few when it comes to spinning a good tale, but there is great inspiration in her real-life story, too. Currently writing on Season 4 of Hulu’s Solar Opposites, Vidhya’s portfolio also includes Disney Junior’s American-Indian series Mira, Royal Detective and Apple TV’s Little Voice. It’s an impressive list but Vidhya likes to dabble in more ‘serious writing’ as well and has written short films like Kanya and written and directed another one called Jean.

Vidhya Iyer

Early life

Born to Raji, a doctor and Ram, a businessman, Vidhya was brought up in Nigeria until the age of 12. She would travel often to Chennai, her city of origin, before finally moving there to study at DAV Public School. She discovered her passion for writing around this time and took to journaling her thoughts. “I also began writing short stories that evolved into the chapters of a novel,” Vidhya recounts, in an interview with Global Indian. As she watched the sitcoms of the time on TV, including Friends, Malcolm in the Middle and Happy Endings, she “thought it would be fun to write jokes but it never seemed like a serious career then.” Not until she graduated from college, at least.

Her family, South Indian and conservative, insisted that Vidhya do engineering when she expressed her desire to study writing. Eventually, she went onto study computer engineering and also helped her brother run a franchise of an Italian restaurant.

The road to writing

Attending regular counselling sessions helped Vidhya immensely when she had to make a major career decision. Despite many people around her telling her that she would be wasting her time trying to make it as a writer, she was determined to make it work. “But I now empathise with them because what I did was frightening for them and we also had no connections in this industry. I’m from a different culture and race, and it’s a very competitive and unstable industry where millions of people from America also want to try their luck, apart from the foreigners. I was fortunate enough to not be the breadwinner in the family and hence, could take the risk,” weighs in Vidhya, who persevered despite facing a volley of obstacles.

After managing to convince her parents, she boarded a flight to LA for a fellowship at the prestigious AFI Conservatory. Her family has, over the last two or three years, come to terms with what their daughter does for a living and take pride in her success as she works with companies like Disney and Netflix Animation.

Unlike other fields, there are no placement programs in her industry.  “We build connections and get jobs through relationships, internships, and meeting new people. Networking is a big part of the writing industry,” she reveals.

Writing for TV

Vidhya’s first gig as a writer was for the path-breaking, animated children’s series Mira, Royal Detective, the first Disney Junior show with a South Asian protagonist. “The show has a culture consultant to make sure that things are authentic to Indian culture and that was my favourite part about working on the show. It’s primarily inspired by the Rajasthan region. It’s a series where I could see myself in the characters. The entire cast was South Asian and the dance moves were choreographed by a South Asian too,” she smiles.

Vidhya’s other hit is Hulu’s Solar Opposites, a whacky show about an alien family that crash lands on Earth. The show is co-created by Justin Roiland , who’s also the co-creator of the popular series Rick and Morty. “What’s really fun about it is that they don’t make aliens a big deal on the show. As much as they are aliens, they are very human, as evidenced by their love for one another. I haven’t gotten to interact with the team as much as I would have in person as this happened during the pandemic,” she shares.

Indian representation in Hollywood

With Indian-origin actors like Simone Ashley and Charithra Chandran (of Bridgerton fame) garnering worldwide attention recently and with Vidhya being one of the very few Indian screenwriters in Hollywood, how does she deal with the pressure of representing her homeland? “India’s such a vast country – I’m unfamiliar with all of its cultures and specifications. I can speak about the life of a Tamil Hindu, but not about the life of a Tamil Muslim. Similarly, I can’t speak about the life of someone from Bihar or Kashmir because their culture is different. So, it’s not fair for a single person to represent the culture, let alone someone who’s the star of a show. I believe it’s the responsibility of the show’s creators. It should not fall on any single person to be the mouthpiece for 1.5 billion people,” she says.

Beyond TV

Apart from writing rib-tickling scripts for TV shows, Vidhya has also written short films. She co-wrote Kanya with her friend Apoorva Satish. “It’s a fascinating exploration of a young girl getting her first period. I’m so used to writing dialogue-heavy comedies that writing something with very little dialogue and a lot of visuals was intriguing,” she says.

Having worked with Academy award-winning Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment, she has also bagged the Alfred P Sloan Foundation award. That’s not all – this skilled creator is also a CAPE Fellow (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) and her short film Raksha won the Best Short Film award at the Delhi International Short Film Festival.

Her current projects include an animated family comedy with 20th Animation and an action-comedy film. “I enjoy South Indian masala movies and I’d like to create my own fusion versions,” she adds.

While at writing school, Vidhya heard guest lectures from celebrities like Martin Scorsese, Shane Black and Jason Bateman. She isn’t one to be star struck but one celebrity she would love to meet, she says, is Rajinikanth. The Tamilian enjoys commercial mass movies from Kollywood. “Nelson Dilipkumar, the director of Beast and Doctor, is one of my favourite writers and filmmakers. What I like about Indian film comedy is that it allows the characters to be very silly. It’s not cerebral comedy and yet, it’s very funny. In Hollywood, I love shows like Psych and shows where the actors elevate what’s on the page. Even if you write the funniest thing on a script, if the actors don’t say it a certain way or bring their own flair to it, it won’t be as good as it’s supposed to,” says Vidhya, who would love to meet Brooklyn 99 star Andy Samberg and the cast from the series Superstore.

Interestingly, she’s also been an assistant on a Steven Spielberg film. “I worked as an assistant on the Apple show Amazing Stories, but didn’t get to meet or interact with Spielberg. It was my first industry job, but not as a writer. I just want to make good content and work with good people. I’m here doing something I enjoy and I just want to keep doing it,” she signs off.

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