Listen: Inside the Writers Room with BoJack Horseman

On January 14, we sat down with BoJack Horseman creator and showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg and writers Elijah Aron, Minhal Baig, Joanna Calo, Rachel Kaplan, Peter Knight, Shauna McGarry, Mehar Sethi, Jonny Sun, Alison Tafel and moderator Adam Conover (Adam Ruins Everything) for a discussion about crafting stories through the Netflix Original adult animated comedy’s six seasons and developing the show’s unique and memorable characters. Listen to the hilarious and insightful discussion below!

About the Panelists

Elijah Aron has written for a lot of shows including Drawn Together, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Better Off Ted, Raising Hope, Son of Zorn, Life in Pieces, BoJack Horseman and Undone. He is nominated for a Writers Guild Award in Animation for BoJack Horseman for the episode “A Horse Walks Into A Rehab.”

Minhal Baig is a writer/director. Her feature-length film, Hala, about a Pakistani-American teenager that uncovers a secret that threatens to unravel her family, premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was released on Apple TV. She is currently a co-producer on The Magic Order and previously served as a story editor on Bojack Horseman (Netflix) and staff writer on Ramy (Hulu). In 2017, she was chosen to participate in Ryan Murphy's Half Foundation Directing Mentorship. Her screenplay for Hala landed on The Black List, the annual list of most-liked, un-produced screenplays in 2016.

Raphael Bob-Waksberg was the creator and executive producer of BoJack Horseman.

Joanna Calo is a writer who lives in west Los Angeles with her husband and baby. She wrote on seasons two through seven of BoJack Horseman, several other comedies, and has a feature in development at Freeform. She likes watching television by herself, she loves that baby, and she had to google both “sample writer bios” & “how many seasons of BoJack are there" in order to turn this in. 

Rachel Kaplan wrote on Season 6 of BoJack. Prior to that, she served as the Writers PA and Writers Assistant. Rachel also sings in a jazz band and is obsessed with musical theater, but in a cool way. She wrote some music for BoJack, including “I Will Always Think Of You” in Season 4.

Peter A. Knight was a BoJack Horseman early adopter, joining the staff in season one. He has been a WGA member since 1995 and has some colorful Ryan Gosling anecdotes which he will withhold until there is a Breaker High panel. He’s been taking the metro more and working on the forthcoming Fairfax for Amazon streaming.

Shauna McGarry grew up in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, and graduated from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts. Since writing on BoJack Horseman, she currently serves as Co-Ep for the CW's new show, Katy Keene. Other TV writing credits include Tuca & Bertie, Craig of the Creek, Jeff and Some Aliens, Bajillion Dollar Properties, Take My Wife, Anger Management, South of Nowhere and 24. Shauna is a board member at the non-profit micro-cinema and media school, Echo Park Film Center, where she has taught for 14 years. A recent experimental film, It Could Be Anything, was commissioned by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. A comedic storyteller, Shauna's stories have been featured on various stage and radio shows, most recently at The Moth MainStage. She co-hosted and produced two long-running LIVE shows in Los Angeles: Radio Picture Show, a storytelling show and I Present Two, a showcase of short films and art. Her solo show, L.A. Homebody, ran at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, having premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival where it received the Encore Award, and is now being developed as an original pilot for FX. Shauna lives in Glassell Park, Los Angeles, with Graham and Rose, a person and a dog respectively.

Mehar Sethi is a TV writer from Bakersfield, CA. Some of his credits include BoJack Horseman, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Rick and Morty, The Mick, Undone, Robot Chicken, Another Period, Archer and The Ballad of Hugo Sanchez. Last year he created and produced a pilot for Amazon called We Play Everything that did not go to series. He has had failed pilot scripts at HBO, NBC, Fox and YouTube. 

Jonny Sun is the author and illustrator of everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too and the illustrator of the New York Times Bestseller Gmorning, Gnight! by Lin-Manuel Miranda. In addition to serving as a writer on the sixth and final season of the hit Netflix series BoJack Horseman, he is also currently writing the screenplay for the upcoming animated film Paper Lanterns and is at work on three new books with Harper Perennial. His work has appeared in McSweeney's and The New Yorker. Tweeting as @jonnysun, he was named one of TIME Magazine’s “25 Most Influential People on the Internet of 2017.” As a doctoral candidate at MIT, an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, and a creative researcher at the Harvard metaLAB, he studies social media, virtual place, and online community. In 2019, Sun was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 and also delivered his first-ever TED Talk, “You Are Not Alone In Your Loneliness.” The talk has since garnered over 2.5 million views. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Elissa.

Alison Tafel just finished her third season writing on Netflix’s Emmy-nominated series, BoJack Horseman, serving as Executive Story Editor in the show’s final season. Additionally, she's a Colorado-born comedy writer who has trained and performed with Second City Chicago, Upright Citizens Brigade Los Angeles, Improv Olympic Chicago and The Groundlings. In 2016, she was one of six writers selected from 1100 applications to attend the NBC LATE NIGHT COMEDY WRITERS WORKSHOP in New York, and she is currently a finalist for the 2019 HUMANITAS NEW VOICES AWARD for her pilot A Little Much. Alison resides in North Hollywood with her civilian husband, Zach, and their two cats Story and Typo. 
Her manager is Brendan Bragg at Haven Entertainment.