SANCTUARY - SCIFI AND TV TALK: Sanctuary Writers' Room - Gillian Horvath
12/06/2011
by Steve Eramo
As a little girl, Gillian Horvath loved reading The Hardy Boys mysteries. She later became enamored of Sci-Fi/Fantasy stories by such authors as (the late) Anne McCaffery and Patricia McKillip. As these tales continued to unfold in front of her, Horvath dreamt of one day becoming a writer and, much to her delight, that dream became a reality.
“When I was in high school I was a poet and actually won some local poetry awards. So I thought I’d grow up to be a professional poet, and my mother worried about my future,” recalls Horvath with a chuckle. “I then started noticing the writing credits on my favorite episodes of my favorite television series, and if, say, Michael Gleason wrote a story I knew I was going to enjoy it. That’s when I also realized that there were television writers and that that was a job that people had.
“My Mom, bless her heart, when I told her I changed my mind and wanted to write for television for a living, she said, ‘That’s great. You can buy me a beach house.’ She immediately assumed that I would succeed at that, and unlike poetry there was a potential for buying beach houses in that line of work. Now fair to say I haven’t yet bough my mom a beach house, but I think she’s proud of me anyway...”
... Sanctuary’s fourth season debuted back in October with a duel storyline involving Magnus trapped back in Victorian England and Will in charge of the present day Sanctuary network and trying to avert an all-out war between the world’s governments and thousands of Abnormals who have come to the surface from Hollow Earth. Horvath penned Untouchable, the episode to follow the two-part season opener and, like her previous two scripts, it had its creative hurdles that had to be overcome.
“Untouchable was not the type of story that I’m automatically drawn to,” says the writer. “I mean, Awakening was this big two-handed that was all about feelings. Not Untouchable. In some ways it’s the first episode of season four because the first two are the wrap up of last year’s cliffhanger. This episode puts into motion the story that will play throughout this season, all the way to the season finale.
“That’s a big responsibility, and Untouchable is far more intellectual. Damian [Kindler] actually told me, ‘Channel The West Wing and [the show’s creator] Aaron Sorkin.’ I told him, ‘I love Aaron Sorkin, but I’m not him.’ So getting used to a mode of writing and writing dialogue that is not my typical style was quite daunting, but, honestly, I can be even prouder of it than an episode that would have been easy to write. I had to really dig deep and couldn’t look into my usual bag of tricks, so I’m very pleased with what I did..."
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