DVE-News/TV interviews Disney VP Mariel Brooke

DVE-News/TV reporters recently had the opportunity to Zoom interview the vice president of comedy development at Walt Disney Television Studios’ 20 Television, Mariel Brooke. The reporters discovered that she is a DV graduate, in the graduating Class of 2000. When in high school, she played sports; field hockey and was the softball manager. After high school, she went to American University in Washington, D.C. for broadcast journalism and worked in news.

She later changed her mind about working in news and went back to school, attending USC in Los Angeles. She told the reporters that it’s okay to change your mind and decide to do something different. She changed from news/media to television. She started a job in the Series department. That means after a network says “yes” to a series, they want to do the show.

She seems to have a work hard, play hard life. In her free time, she loves to run, snowboard, rock climb, and play with her dogs. She travels for work a lot. She currently lives in Los Angeles. She enjoys returning to this area to visit close friends and family. Her favorite shows as a child was “Saved By the Bell” and “Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” Her favorite book is “Night Circus.” We didn’t realize she is a ‘Swiftie’ and her favorite song is New Years Day. She showed us a picture of her and Taylor Swift.

We asked her what famous people she worked with the most and she told us Ty Burrell from “Modern Family” and Tim Allen from “The Santa Clause.” When she first started in the business, the first show she worked on was “Turner and Hooch.” She is currently working with both of them on new pilots. She is also working on “Percy Jackson Season 2” on Disney Plus.

She had worked at Paramount on the “School of Rock” series for two years, working on a promotion. She started her television journey at Fox, then it was switched to Disney. She’s been there about 14 years and has a lot of multi-tasking to do.

We asked her what genres of shows she likes, and she told us definitely comedy. She does not like anything scary.

When asked if she would ever like being an actor, she said, “definitely not”; she said she has “no talent for that”. She really enjoys being creative in her current position. She likened it to being a coach. She gets the best out of people. Brooke said that the best part of her job is to see something she’s been working on get placed in a series. The hardest part of the job is delivering bad news to someone, that their idea is not being placed in a series by the network. She also loves the ability to being able to work from home and the office.

We asked Brooke why Disney chose to include adult content shows. She explained that the larger companies started to buy out the smaller media companies, so Disney did the same. Now they own Hulu, Freeform, ESPN, FX and many more!

Brooke was asked if she could go back to her past self, what would she tell herself. She said to keep going, that all the hard work pays off and to follow your dreams. She was then asked if she could go to her future self, what would she say? She said to definitely have a work/life balance.

It was a great interview and we’re very happy to have spoken with her and we all thank her for the Disney pencils! Thank you, Ms. Brooke!