The FMC Spotlight: The Party

Like many heroines we know and love, Margaret Borchert, Tori Chancellor, and Geneva Willis were sick of waiting for their talents to be noticed. After over 15 years of combined experience in the entertainment industry and one pandemic, they decided to take matters into their own hands. Professional peers turned writing partners, Margaret and Geneva found their well-honed comedic voice uplifted all the more by Tori’s intrinsic developmental instincts. Chancellor encouraged the two creators to flesh out their Dungeons & Dragons sitcom pilot–a story that focuses not on the game itself, but on the people sitting around the table–into a web series they could self-produce, noting both the current pop-culture renaissance and growing passion for the fantasy-based roleplaying game.

The final result of their combined efforts was The Party, a scripted episodic comedy centering on an electric group of D&D obsessed friends. Individual journeys of emotional growth and self-discovery begin when a new player joins an established campaign under false pretenses, consequentially wreaking havoc on the players in-game and real lives. Led by an astounding fresh-faced cast, balanced by established guest stars, and full of easter-egg-style cameos, the show’s seven episodes are full of heart, witty banter and charisma you won’t need to roll for, leaving room for an audience they may not be as familiar with the niche IP as the majority of their viewers, but able to relate nonetheless.  

For The FMC’s inaugural spotlight series, the three female creatives spent some time talking, reminiscing and laughing about what they’ve learned from this years-long experience, their origins, and the stupidity required to find success.

Before we delve into The Party — First and foremost, how did you all meet?

Geneva: If we go by timeline: Tori and I met in college. I dropped a class so she could graduate in time.

Tori: Just for that reason. 

No way.

Tori: It worked out like that. Had Geneva not dropped the class, I would not have been able to take the final thing I needed to scrunch my degree into three years-so thank you so much. Then, when she was moving from Anaheim to LA for her first official Hollywood job, she asked if she could stay at my apartment for a week. At first, I was skeptical, but then I remembered what she did for me years prior in college and was like, “Yeah, I can do that.” [laughter]

Geneva: At that first job, Margaret and I had offices next door to each other, but it was a weird old building–over 100 years old–and the elevator didn't work.

Margaret: We met because the elevator didn't work. My offices were on the third floor and Geneva's were on the second. Because of the layout of this–I can't stress this enough–historic 100-year-old building with an official plaque that they can't do fuck all to anymore I had to walk through her offices to get to my offices. I was a production assistant at the time so I was going up and down the stairs all day to do runs and whatever else needed to get done. We became friends that way.

Geneva: I said, “She looks cool. I'm going to make her my friend.”

Margaret: When Geneva and I realized we both wanted to be TV writers, we started meeting after work on Wednesday nights and exchanging pages. It was a really useful way to keep ourselves accountable. You being a writer yourself know it's pretty easy to do anything except write.

Yes. [laughter] 

Margaret: Like it's so much easier to do anything else. Meeting weekly was a way to keep ourselves honest and accountable and to ensure we kept writing regularly. We would come with a couple of pages or an outline, give each other feedback, talk about it, and keep working. Eventually, Tori joined that. 

Tori: Did I adhere to that formula of coming with pages every week no matter what? No, I didn't. [laughter] But, I do love giving feedback. Now, I work in development. My job is reading scripts and scripts and scripts. The functional role I’ve always had in this trifecta was the “feedback person” for these guys. Especially after they formally cemented their partnership.

 Margaret: Long story short: my aunt hired a hitman to kill my uncle. And I was telling-

 Wait. What??

Margaret: Yes. I was telling Geneva this story and she was like, “Margaret, that's the plot of a TV show.” I couldn't see the forest for the trees on this one because I was too close to it. So, Geneva said, “We can do this together. Let's write it together.” After we wrote that pilot we realized it was super fun and easy to do because we had been helping each other with our scripts for so long that we knew each other’s styles. Additionally, it’s so nice to have a person who understands that when you get together at this time, it is writing time. We've gotten so much enjoyable work done together because of our writing partnership which, in a nutshell, brings us to the present day.

Wow. What a story in and of itself on all accounts. Eventually, those relationships led you here and gave the world The Party. How are you feeling now that the creative process is complete and all the episodes are streaming? 

Tori: Has anyone asked us how we're feeling? How do we feel?

Geneva: I still feel like we're running the marathon honestly. We’ve reached those last seven miles where you just have to stay focused and keep going because it's not over quite yet.

Tori: The seven miles have not only not ended, but they also keep getting extended. [laughter] 

Margaret: They're like, “Actually, we've decided to make the marathon just a little bit longer this year.”

 Geneva: They’ve turned it into a triathlon.

Tori: That's really what it is. I would think we're in the third leg of the triathlon. If you think about it, we wrote the whole series, which was an entire process to even reach our final seven episodes. Then we moved into production, which was two months. Next, we moved into post, which was also a very long arduous process. Finally, we’ve reached premiering and maintaining the project. Because this is an independent production, there is no company to do this part for us. We’ve done the premiere phase. Now, we're in the maintenance phase of keeping the conversation relevant. We're feeling overwhelmed but happy with where we are.

Margaret: I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we're all pretty fucking tired. Geneva and Tori have both been working full-time this entire process, so I've taken on the brunt of the weird day-to-day bullshit that comes with an independent production. That's a lot for each of us inevitably. Understandably, we're all really tired but we're also all very happy about where we're at as far as the process and the project go.

Walk me through what creating The Party was like. Briefly, how did this idea come about? When did you decide to produce it? What is the web series’ origin story?

Geneva: Flashback to Fall 2020…

Margaret: There’s no vaccine in sight. I haven’t touched another person in months.

[laughter]

Geneva: We were sitting at our desks having a Zoom writing session, as we often would during that time, when the recently released Dungeons & Dragons movie was announced with Chris Pine attached. As D&D players ourselves, our writing was immediately forgotten as we spiraled into questions like, “How are they going to do this?” “It's the Game Night people. What are they going to do?” “What is this going to look like?” That got us talking about what our take on it would be. We realized pretty quickly that we were more interested in the people who play more than the game itself. What formed was a sitcom.

Margaret: It felt like such a natural progression. D&D is such a personal experience. It is really about the people that you're playing with, the story that you're telling with your character, and your dice rolls. The appeal to us was the story of the people at the table rather than the campaign itself. That led so naturally to a sitcom because in sitcoms you need a conceit for why a group of people are getting together all the time. Dungeons & Dragons is the perfect excuse! So, Geneva and I wrote a half-hour sitcom pilot for a network. And it was

Tori: Even at the highest level of Hollywood, first drafts are never awesome. That’s a  great part of the process because it means there's so much growth to do. But, I remember reading the first draft of The Party and being like, “For a first draft this is well-formed and good, so it can only really get better from here.” Having now worked in development for about five and a half years cumulatively, it is still one of the most solid drafts/pilots I've ever read.

Margaret: Tori read every iteration of that pilot. It was written so quickly. We turned it around in two months while we were both working full-time. Once it was finished, we were like, “Cool. Now we have another sample. Great.” and put it away not knowing what else to do with it. 

Tori: We have the chat logs of me broaching the subject of independent production. I felt like if they wanted to make something themselves, The Party would be the one to do because it is so accessible. It already has built-in IP, so you have a guaranteed audience. So many independent productions may not get the glory they deserve because they just don't have this premade hype. The Party seemed like an easy slam dunk in terms of how many eyes would be able to see it.

Margaret: It was also a relatively filmable project because it's a sitcom. There are not a lot of locations. It’s not super complicated. You're not doing tons of VFX work. Etc. In January 2022, my job was ending. I found out that my boss was moving and I was not going to be able to go with her. I had a weird moment of like, “Okay, I have like three more months at this job and then I have to figure out what I want to do next.” I went back to what Tori had said about a possible independent production and considered it. In the end, all three of us were tired of waiting for someone to give us permission to make something and tired of sitting behind a desk waiting to be noticed. We had been working long enough to see that the old way of getting into a writers’ room–the classic ladder of writers PA to script coordinator or showrunner’s assistant to writing an episode–no longer exists or is broken. We were all dealing with trying to figure out how to get into the positions we want to be in and realized that making something of our own was a viable option for both being noticed and having something to send people to showcase what we can do on a tight budget and letting them imagine what we could potentially do with way more money. Once that initial decision had been made, the obvious way to go was web series. But, I had to do so much research about the legality of what we were doing because Dungeons and Dragons is a property that we don't own. It's owned by Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Technically, we fall under the fan content policy where you're allowed to produce things that use the Dungeons and Dragons IP, you can't put it behind a paywall. That naturally pointed us to YouTube as the platform because it could be free.

Tori: Free content for the people.

Geneva: That decided, we had to next consider things like, “What are our resources?” How many episodes are needed to shape the arc of the season that we're going to write?” 

Margaret: Yeah. We had to figure out what our budget would be to contact potential investors and people who would be interested in coming on board to help us accomplish this. Once that was done, we started writing.  We had settled on seven episodes of about 10 to 12 minutes each.

Geneva: The second week of June 2022 we had a writer's retreat where we wrote an episode a day.

Tori: There were so many more drafts to come, but it was really fun to sit down all together for like eight hours a day–like a job–and write out these episodes.

Margaret: From there, it spiraled out of control. We hired a team. We did a table read and wrote second, third, and probably even fourth drafts. We went into production in September. Principal photography was 13 days of shooting, and then we did two pick-up weekends, so 17 days in total.

Geneva: We shot 90 pages in 17 days, which is insane by any standards. 

Margaret: Yeah, we were dumb as Hell.

How much of the original pilot was the seven episodes?

 Margaret: The first two. We rewrote it so that it was better formatted for a web series. We also had to rework some things just because of budgetary limits. When we originally were doing this, it was like, “Oh, this would be a $2 million sitcom episode.” But the story that we portray in the first two episodes of the web series is pretty close to the original pilot.

One of the things I found really interesting was the number of women at The Party’s party. When I think D&D, I think of Stranger Things, Eddie Munson, Hellfire Club (aka: a boys’ world). You’re all women who play. Is the gender breakdown found on screen similar to your experience or were you making a deliberate point?

Tori: I think people were surprised. There were YouTube comments that said, “No one's party looks like this.”

Geneva: Ours does.

Tori: I don't know who they’re playing with. But our home game is multiple people of color, all women, one man, mostly gay, one straight–thank you for being the token straight friend, Geneva. It is shocking that what is so normal to me still isn't the norm, so I'm happy people get to see this representation 

Margaret: Most of the people we know who play look like us: are queer, are women. I do like to joke that I'm friends with literally two straight cis men. But Dungeons & Dragons has always been for everyone. In this D&D renaissance that we're seeing right now, it's becoming much more accessible to people of color and queer people. We did strive to represent how we experience D&D, and how I think a lot of people experience D&D. There's still this perception, like you're saying, that it’s Bros in basements, but I don't think that's true anymore.

When you were creating these characters, are there any in The Party that you most identify with?

Geneva: When you're creating characters, all of your characters have a little bit of you in them, some get more than others. [laughter] Viola got a lot of me because, in our circle of friends, I'm still learning. I’m the newest to my D&D journey. I've gained a lot from playing at your table, Margaret, but I vividly remember going through a similar experience as she does. I am not like her in all the ways she's portrayed in the series. In real life, I never set out to deceive my party. But, we drew inspiration from what I experienced in my first campaign in terms of getting the lay of the land, learning the rules, and bonding with people that you've never met before who have been playing together.

Margaret: Absolutely.  Each of us exists, at least a little bit, in each of the characters. Viola has Geneva's new experience with Dungeons & Dragons and I think a lot of Geneva's interests as far as theater, literature, and an academic drive which I had less of, but Viola also has my privileged upbringing. The idea of, “Oh, this pajama set is loungewear and it's mulberry silk.” is more inspired by me, (My parents are not frackers. I do want to say that.) [laughter] There's a lot of me in Ecstasy and DM. Tori can be found the most in Jean. When you write you pull from your own experiences and emotions. For instance, DM’s arc of having an ex who very abruptly and painfully left her Dungeons & Dragons game and broke up with her was pulled from my life. Her growth of not wanting to get close to people because you're afraid to lose her players was something that I did go through as well.

Oh, no. I’m sorry. We touched on this briefly, Tori, when you spoke about how long you've worked in development: between the three of you you have over fifteen years of experience in the entertainment industry, but this is your first time taking the reins. What part of the process did you find easiest or most enjoyable? 

Tori: I'm going to answer for Geneva. I'm not gonna answer for me. [laughter] Would you say the post because you have such a good grasp of it?

Geneva: I loved all the pieces in different ways. I think writing was fun for us because that was our Summer camp experience. It was very nebulous all in all. I would say post was when I felt the most enjoyment because at that point we were done and I felt in such good hands with Benni, our editor

Margaret: Shout out to Michael “Benni” Pierce, our editor.

Geneva: In production, there's what you put on the page, what you film, and what you cut together. From each iteration, it changes and it evolves. So that whole time I was wondering, “What's the final form of this Pokemon going to be? Once I could see we had a product we could be proud of and that people were going to resonate with, I felt ok.

Tori: We would sing Benni's praises all day if you'd let us. It was great having a fourth writer in essence. He came in for this process and was like, “This is my past and my vision.” Then, he did a lot of innovative work for us.

Margaret: This was my first time directing for film. Prior, I did have a history of directing theater. Figuring out camera angles was not a part that I loved that much, but I loved being able to talk to the actors about character moments and growth, walking through their motivations, how we got there, and the stories behind things because that harkened back to my theater direction days. Being able to have that kind of relationship with the actors was fun for me. I enjoyed it a lot.‘

What did you find most challenging?

Tori: Probably production.

Margaret: Yeah. Production. There's a joke that we have among ourselves. It's basically: we were so stupid, but only stupid people would do what we did.

Tori: And go out and find success. Had we known the breadth of what was going to happen, I can't confidently say we would have embarked upon this. 

Geneva: When we started we had an idea of the scope of the project. But, as we kept researching and talking to people, we realized the scope needed to get bigger. I think that was good for us because we all are people who want to know all the details ahead of time. That drive kept us going because, as Tori said, if we knew what we were getting into, I don't know if we would have said yes. But, because we were inching our way out on that cliff, we kept walking.

Tori: Exactly. We didn't know any better. The mantra of this project has been: stupid people get shit done.

No, it's true! It's true.

Tori: When you’re in the ocean you have to sink or swim, so we better fucking swim.

Margaret: We swam, but it was a long process. Production was challenging. We did it on such a tight budget and such a tight timeline that every single second counted. There were some long and tiring days.

Geneva: You couldn't put it away and come back the next day. You had to nail it that day. You had to do it again and again and again.

Margaret: I am still incredibly proud of what we ended up with. Our crew was spectacular. Our cast was phenomenal. We did luck out as far as that goes.

Tori: Absolutely!

The Party has been bouncing around in your heads in various formats for over three years. Now that you are swimming, if you could go back and talk to your 2020 selves about what that original idea has become, what would you say?

Tori: You have very intuitive questions.

Thank you.

Margaret: What would I say to 2020 Margaret? 

Geneva: Start napping now. [laughter] 

Margaret: I would genuinely be like, “If you're going to film this in 2022, you need to start doing production prep right now.” If we had had more lead-up time that would have been great. I would also then be like, “You think you're going to be able to film this in 17 days? You're wrong. You should schedule more time.” [laughter]

Tori: At that point, as someone who wasn't on the inside but was trying to make a hypothesis of what could be possible, if I could go back in time, I'd tell myself, “Don't doubt yourself because your instincts are correct. You will find success here.” As women we can be taught to doubt ourselves and squash anything risky, so we don't want to go out on a limb. But, I knew there would be so many people looking for this kind of content. I was so keenly aware of Dungeons & Dragons actual plays and the number of people they had tuning in weekly and the followers they have on social media. Why couldn't we be one of the first people to introduce a new level of content within the media?

Geneva: I would just generally tell myself, “You are good enough. Do it. Don't doubt it. Schedule 25 days for filming.” [laughter]

It all comes back to that filming schedule.

Margaret: You can do it. It's going to be great. Also, you will want to be able to sleep. 

Let's spread it out a little bit. You talked to me about how you landed on YouTube as the host platform for The Party. But, now that the episodes are out, what would you say are the pros and cons of the website?

Margaret: That’s another really good question.

Oh, thanks.

Geneva: One of the benefits we did not anticipate is that YouTube is a creator-first platform. They want to share information with you. The amount of analytics and metrics we've been privy to has been enlightening for us to see. We have more access to who our audience is than some showrunners do.

Margaret: Oh, all showrunners. It’s been really helpful and really interesting. Another of the pros is that you have a global audience available to you. if we were to put The Party up behind a paywall of some sort, or on any kind of streaming service, you’re automatically limited to whoever their subscribers are.YouTube had the benefit of being free for everyone, so there's nothing stopping people from seeing it. Additionally, the algorithm fucking worked in our favor in a way I was not anticipating. It pushed our episodes out to people and is part of the reason why we found success. I don't know if we would have found as much if we were behind a paywall.

Tori: A con would be, and this isn't so much a YouTube issue as a perception issue, because YouTube is most often used for a lower grade of content, people discredit how much work we put into our project. The quality is not what they're used to getting on this platform. I could kind of suss in the comments that people think we filmed this last week and put it up. As we have been talking about, that's not the case. This has been 16 months in the making. 

Margaret: Because so much content on YouTube is filmed on a week-to-week basis-with vloggers and content creators and even some web series-there's a very understandable misconception, but a misconception nevertheless, that we were also filming week to week. There were comments like, “Oh, you should change this in the future,” or “I don't like where this is going. Do this instead.” People are always going to have opinions about things but it was filmed. We weren't changing it.

I can't imagine anybody doing that for something on Netflix or AppleTV. 

Margaret: Yeah, exactly. There were times when I'll admit it felt a little bit condescending that people thought we were little fans putting out their little web series without the acknowledgment of us being industry professionals.

Geneva: It’s good because we know what we're doing.

Margaret: We put a lot of time and effort into it over the past three years. That’s probably the one con and, again, I’m not sure if it even qualifies as a con because it’s down to simply educating our audience. Other than that, YouTube has been a great platform for us.

Tori: We didn't see the benefits before launching. We decided YouTube would be our hosting site without really considering other options, but it worked in our favor. 

It's also a good platform for you guys as independent creators. I know we touched on how this process is not over because you have to do all the work yourself and you can't pass it on to somebody else. You're now in the marketing, press, and promotion leg of this quest. Have you found it difficult to switch into a more analytical side of your brain?

Margaret: I would say no.

Geneva: We’re very analytical people, which informs our creativity. 

Margaret: As we mentioned, we did go into this process partially because Tori thought this product was marketable and had a built-in audience. That played into how we could potentially do this. I don't like social media because I don't understand it. It scares me. But, the marketing for The Party hasn't been harder than any other aspect of it.

Tori:  It’s maybe easier because the wall you have to overcome in marketing is knowing your audience. We know who our audience is. That question was answered for us. This is probably an easier marketing experience than many people have.

Geneva: We've gotten to microdose creativity into our marketing.

Tori: I have spearheaded our marketing and at no point have I been like, “This is horrible. I hate this.” Geneva is exactly right. You're injecting little bits of creativity into it. I wish more creatives were involved in their marketing because who knows the product better than the creator? 

Margaret: Exactly. That's very true. A disappointing part of the industry is that marketing is handed off to people who are not deeply involved in the product.

Geneva: They may care about it as part of their job, but may not understand why the audience particularly resonates with it.

Margaret: We are so deep in it, both as the creators of the project and as Dungeons & Dragons players ourselves, that we understand what our viewers want and are looking for.

I've never thought of that before but it’s so true. 

Margaret: Additionally, we lucked out with the cast. They have been so on board with the marketing process and have helped tremendously, especially on TikTok. We were also very fortunate that a lot of people who worked on this project were excited to help us market it. They were on the ground floor retweeting tweets, liking Instagram posts, and posting stories.    

Tori: Everything's cyclical, right? People were excited because we took the time to hire people that were invested. You needed to have those people on board to forward.

I'm all for independent projects. I think we're so used to the big productions that we forget the pros that come with the small ones.

Tori: Oh, like complete control. Are you kidding me? It’s easy to get jaded in an industry in which hundreds of people get to touch your art in a way that maybe by the end it doesn't even look like what you started with. This is the freest you're ever going to be in your life in terms of creativity, so enjoy it and savor it.

Geneva: We got to control our introduction to the creative community. We didn’t get hired to work on someone else's project. We didn’t sell something we weren't excited about. The Party is our baby and that's the thing people are going to associate with us now.

For anyone that is not only a fan of The Party, but is also feeling inspired, what advice would you give other creators looking to implement what you have accomplished?

Margaret: You need more time than you think. I know I keep saying that, but you do. You need more time.

Geneva: Hire people smarter than you who are willing to share information and teach you along the way and aren't going to judge you if you don't know something.

Tori: Be confident in your ideas, but at the same time research, research, research. Back up your ideas with analytics. 

That’s all great advice. Throughout this process, you’ve all been very vocal about your love for D&D. What is your favorite character you’ve created? 

Geneva: I'm so intrigued to hear this. [laughter]

Tori: It's funny. My favorite character is not my longest-running character. For a one-shot–which is when you decide to meet up for one or a few sessions instead of a long campaign–I once created a Wild Magic sorcerer named Algernonwho I love. As a hobby he was a drag queen and his mainline profession was a ferret breeder. [laughter] Specifically, for toupees and mustaches. He was highly flamboyant. I would love to have him back in some capacity.

Margaret: I was the DM for that five-shot. It was very interesting. My favorite character is in a long-running home game that I play with our costuming team. My character’s name is Posie. She was created for a two or three-shot but it turned into a three-year-long campaign. I want to specify that because people are going to be like, “Are you fucking crazy?” I pitched Posie to the DM by saying, “I want to play a Cleric/Warlock. Here's the thing though, I don't want to multiclass. I would like to be the child of two gods who are going through a very contentious divorce. The class I play depends on who has custody.” So, I flip a coin every long rest that dictates who has custody and what magic powers I have. Posie is genuinely a nightmare of a person, but I love her very much. I have two different character sheets. It is a nightmare. But it is also really fun.

Geneva: I haven't played with her in a minute, but I think Mariel is going to turn out to be my favorite. She is a water genasi bard who I pitched to Margaret as “The Little Mermaid on Spring break.” It’s a fun time for me because in real life I’m a very type A Person.

Tori: This girl is loose. [laughter]

Geneva: She’s very concerned with hydration and moisturization. It's very fun to play somebody who's like, “Let's go have an adventure! Who cares about the consequences?”

Margaret: And she may be a little stupid. [laughter]

That all sounds so fun! Finally, speaking of characters, this is The Female Main Character, so what FMC archetype do you relate to the most?

Geneva: I’m always a sucker for a reluctant hero who steps up to get shit done. But, then when it's all over retreats back to ordinary life with the people they love. I realized I just described Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games.

My brain went straight to Alina Starkov from Shadow & Bone.

Margaret: I always relate to the anti-heroes. Growing up queer, especially in the 90s and early 2000s, a lot of the representation was queer-coded villains. As a young viewer, you relate to them and then you feel weird about relating to them. That's always been a character type that I've always been drawn to. People with moral ambiguity who are doing good things for not great reasons or vice versa. It's always an interesting archetype that I love. Many people in my life will tell you I can be abrasive. It's not something that I'm necessarily ashamed of as long as it gets things done. [laughter]

Tori: It’s not a main character role, but it is deeply important to me. I love the funny best friend. You need someone there to inject goofiness. I'm not goofy all the time. I'm deeply uncannily serious on occasion. But I love someone who is there to make things light. I said it’s not a main character archetype, but in the 2020s, we're kind of subverting that trope and pushing that person into the spotlight. They're not the sidekick anymore. They're becoming their own person.

The Party is now streaming on YouTube.