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Thuc Nguyen is a screenwriter and producer based in Los Angeles!! She has worked in New York and Hollywood with big names like Jerry Bruckheimer and Warner Brothers Television, and her screenplays have been in The Sundance Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festivals! She is also the recipient of this year’s Center for Cultural Innovation’s California Fund for Artists and Cultural Practitioners Award. Keep reading to find out more about what makes Thuc an Amazing Asian in the Arts!
Name: Thuc Nguyen
Heritage: Vietnamese-American
Hometown: Waldorf, MD/Kinston, NC
Current City: Los Angeles, CA and moving to New Orleans, LA
Current Project: Magazine stories for The Daily Beast and other outlets
What are some of your favorite credits/projects?
Rory Kennedy’s “Last Days in Vietnam,” which was nominated for an Academy Award
Any advice for young people getting into the arts?
Decide what you want and then go after the resources to get it done. Be ready for a long road of tenacity.
How did you get your start?
By accident. I had no intention of living in Los Angeles or being part of the “entertainment industry.” I was on a hiatus from working in advertising in New York City and worked in a night club in LA. There I met members of the LA “gay mafia” who had a friend looking for help on a television show he created. I became an assistant for a writers’ room and on set. Right time, right place for something I didn’t know I could do. I soon found out I could write 85-plus page screenplays and kept going from there. I took screenwriting classes after that!
What have you found is the biggest challenge in your career?
Funding for Women of Color isn’t that easy to come by. There are a lot of hurdles to access for Women of Color or as it’s called “exclusion by unfamiliarity.” With #StartWith8Hollywood we’ll try to eliminate that by making the white status quo more familiar with WOC creators.
What skills did you find to be the most helpful in your career?
Diplomacy has really come in handy and the ability to say no. You only have so much time in the day and in your life. People need to understand boundaries and how to approach people with respect. A true interest in others is helpful, not just contacting people to get them to make connections for you or do things for you. A professional relationship is a two way street.
Do you have any side projects you’d like to highlight?
Besides the bread and butter of short form magazine writing, I’m happy to have written some recent spec scripts. One is about a Vietnamese woman vampire in New Orleans. It was fun to weave international and NOLA local lore into her story-line. It’s called “Blood Drop Killers.”
I also wrote an eerie drama feature about Vietnamese refugees and a Vietnamese-American woman lead that takes place in New Orleans. IG: @scentofthedelta
Another feature screenplay I had fun with is called “Mindy Wu Tran Versus Silicon Beach” where the lead is a Vietnamese-American social good start-up founder who faces racism, sexism, and white feminism in “Brotopia.”
To find out more about Thuc, please visit her at:
Instagram: @paidtobenice
Twitter: @biatchpack
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