Comedian and TV writer Clare O’Kane revealed the “insane” levels of behind-the-scenes drama when she was working as a writer on SpongeBob SquarePants.
O’Kane, who has also written for SNL and Shrill, got the job on the kid’s cartoon through a personal connection. However, she says poor experiences with fellow employees tarnished her time with the program.
Making an appearance on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, O’Kane said she got the job on SpongeBob through Kyle McCullough, who was a neighbor of her then-boyfriend Josh Androsky. Clare and Josh got writing roles on SpongeBob as they were “the only young comic writers he knew.”
Host Clare O’Kane speaks onstage during the Viceland panel at the A+E Networks 2016 Television Critics Association Press Tour at The Langham Huntington Hotel and Spa on January 6, 2016, in Pasadena, California. O’Kane has worked on shows such as SNL, Shrill and Spongebob.
Jerod Harris/Getty Images for A+E Networks
As a huge SpongeBob fan, Clare says she was initially so excited to work on the show.
But describing her arrival on the show, O’Kane says it was an “insane experience” due to “resistance from the old guard.”
“It was one of the first times they [SpongeBob] were changing the way they wrote the show so this was a proper writer’s room where normally I think it was animation writers and storyboard artists who have their own way of doing things.”
“They were immediately annoyed at us comics as writers. They were all guys who were your age. I was the only girl in there,” O’Kane told Maron, 60.
Describing the individual behavior of some of her SpongeBob colleagues, O’Kane said, “Some of these guys just treated me really weird” and described an incident when one senior male colleague doodled a steaming poop on her script draft.
“Oh, it felt so bad. That kind of colored my whole experience of it,” said Kane.
“But that experience [SpongeBob] was so exciting and so intimidating, and I got to write two episodes on my own. I think I’m maybe one of three or four female writers in the whole history of that show.”
O’Kane worked on SpongeBob for a few months and says she was let go soon after Kyle was fired as head writer. She then went on to work for Shrill—an experience that was “so ideal and fun.”
On the same podcast, O’Kane shared similar views about her time on SNL and described being behind the scenes on the show as akin to “middle school” and something that caused her huge amounts of anxiety initially.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
