Chatting With … Selina Fillinger ’16

At just 28, Selina Fillinger became one of the youngest woman playwrights in Broadway history. Her 2022 show, POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, received three Tony nominations and has since been produced in theaters across the U.S. and internationally.  

Raised in Eugene, Ore., Fillinger ’16 came to Northwestern to pursue acting, but a playwriting class with theater professor of instruction Laura Schellhardt ’97 changed her trajectory. While at Northwestern, Fillinger won the national Judith Barlow Prize and was twice selected for the University’s Agnes Nixon Playwriting Festival. During her senior year, Fillinger worked with Northlight Theater in Skokie, Ill., which staged Faceless, her play about a Chicago-area woman who is recruited to the Islamic State group, in 2017. Fillinger’s other plays include The Armor Plays: Cinched and Strapped, The Collapse and Something Clean. 

In addition to writing for the third season of Apple TV+’s The Morning Show, Fillinger has developed shows with AMC, Hulu and a feature with Killer Films. 

Now back in Oregon after several years in Los Angeles, Fillinger sat down with Northwestern Magazine to discuss her artistry, career hurdles, creative process and more. 

Did you always want to be an artist?  

Yes. Art was ubiquitous in my household. Everyone in my family is a visual artist. We would have card-making nights, and my mom and I would draw together. But for a long time my brain didn’t conceive of art as a career. And when I got old enough to know that some people do go into it as a career, I had a lot of fear, because I wanted financial security, and it felt like such a gamble. I always knew I was going to make art. I just wasn’t sure if I was going to do it professionally.  

Was there a moment when you realized you could make a living as an artist? 

Yes, in my first professional production [Faceless]. But I never expected any of it to be easy. I thought, “Alright, I’m going to graduate, and then I’m going to have three jobs, and I’m going to make this work.” I did not expect anyone to give me opportunities right away. But then I had such a big opportunity right out of the gate. … I got my production Faceless at Northlight while I was still an undergrad, and at the same time Sideshow Theatre Company commissioned me for their reading series. … That made me suddenly see a path to making art professionally.  

How do you come up with ideas for your creative projects?  

It’s so elusive when I try to talk about it. I think I often sound very mystical.  

A lot of my ideas used to feel more directly ripped from specific headlines. I still get some inspiration from the news, but … now I get ideas more often from having my ear to the ground to hear a collective conversation. I pay attention to what is brewing in the culture.  

There are core human issues that show up in a million different ways, and that’s what I’m paying attention to — conversations that I overhear, family dynamics. It could be anything. I have a strong sensation that the stories are floating around in some invisible net over our heads, and really the process is getting quiet enough that you can hear the one that’s supposed to come through. It very much feels like it comes from outside of me and then, if I’m lucky, moves through me, as opposed to something I’m pulling out of my core. Honestly, it is a very spiritual experience. 

How do you get quiet enough to hear those ideas come through?  

That is the question. I try to set boundaries around when I look at emails. I try to carve out uninterrupted work time and pile all my meetings on one day so that I have a day when I don’t have any meetings, and then I can just be lost in my own thoughts. 

I do a lot of writing in my head as I’m walking, or I do outlining on a notepad. I try to fill myself up with the story, so by the time I sit down at the computer, everything is ready to go, and it just comes out. 

And if the words are not flowing, then I exercise, volunteer, get outside of myself somehow and do something else so that I’m not just hitting my head against the keyboard.   

Which Northwestern professors changed your life or made an impact? 

Many, but Laura Schellhardt in particular. … I remember sitting down and having a conversation with her before I took her Intro to Playwriting class. I almost burst into tears and said, “I don’t know if I’m in the right major. I think maybe I should be a political science major.” And I remember her saying, “Politics are theater and theater is politics. … I think you’re in just the right place.”  

What’s your favorite part of playwriting?  

That early moment when the idea comes to you and everything about it is intoxicating and you haven’t told anyone yet. So no one has stomped on any dreams, and you’ve received no notes, and nobody is waiting on it. It feels like having a secret lover. It often happens when I am working diligently on some project that everybody is waiting on, and then this sexy idea shows up, and I’m ready to abscond to Paris immediately. And you’re supposed to be working on the thing for which you have the pressing deadline, but instead you’re doing research and outlining and doing all sorts of other nonsense for this new idea. 

Any specific hurdles that you faced along the way? 

So many. Early on I was very attached to the idea of a final product being not just perfect but being everything that I had imagined it would be. And my entire career has been a long process of learning to release control and shift my love to the process as much as to the product. It’s probably the hardest lesson, and I’m constantly working on it.  

What was your experience writing for season three of The Morning Show?  

Amazing. I am used to being surrounded by actors or directors, but I had never experienced a writerly community before. So that was really sweet. I learned a lot.  

I felt very lucky because The Morning Show is a big hit with amazing actors and a following. Working on it was … an opportunity to learn how a writer’s room works — and on a show that I know is going be seen by so many people.  

Have you had any “pinch me” moments? 

Honestly, being able to find financial stability as a writer is absolutely a “pinch me” thing. I feel so lucky that I can support myself through my writing. It just means I get to do it more.   

What’s next for you?  

I’m adapting my play Something Clean into a feature film that I will direct, and I’m developing an original idea with HBO. And then I just always have a few new play ideas floating around.