Showrunning Through the Pandemic
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
1 p.m. EDT

Join Jeff Locker FR'88 for a conversation with Freeform's Cruel Summer showrunner Tia Napolitano FR'01. This 30-minute segment will give you an inside look into producing television during the pandemic; how Tia found her voice; and how Cruel Summer's story resonates with what’s affecting young people today, and bigger societal themes at play in the story. 

About our speakers

Writer, actor and media host Jeff Locker FR’88 attended SYA as a junior from Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter, N.H.). A Yale East Asian Studies major, he spent his junior college year abroad at Beijing Foreign Language Normal University and at the Taiwan Normal University, where he later moved and began his career as a television and radio host, and later, an actor and author. He has produced award-winning and nominated stage works including The Forgotten Place and Sweet, She. Host credits include the red carpet of The 75th Golden Globe Awards (STX/Tencent), China’s Huading Awards and Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards, Fear Challenge (the Chinese Fear Factor). Acting credits include television’s Marvel’s Agent Carter, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, feature film Stasis, David Henry Hwang’s play Chinglish, and in self-penned short films A Good Man, Scars, To Be Saved, and the award-winning The Forgotten Place.

Writer, producer and showrunner Tia Napolitano FR’01 attended SYA as a junior from Brooks School (North Andover, Mass.) She is the executive producer and showrunner of Freeform’s critically acclaimed and award-winning drama Cruel Summer, the biggest series debut in Freeform’s history. Where will Tia and the team take the story next? We will have to wait for its highly anticipated second season, which is currently in the writing stage, to find out where the storyline takes us. Tia began her media career working on several Shonda Rimes hits with credits including Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and Station 19, as well as NBC’s Council of Dads. Her earlier work includes freelance reporting for The Newburyport Daily News and assisting for The Montel Williams Show.  She has a bachelor’s in English and journalism from NYU.