From corporate attorney to screenwriter of the new holiday film Oh. What. Fun. Chandler Baker enjoys the ride.
Once the writers’ room for her new series Discretion breaks for the holidays, writer and co-showrunner Chandler Baker plans to return to her home in Austin, Texas, where she will host a Christmas Eve dinner with her family. The evening will include games, the crafting of a holiday cocktail, and the preparation of her grandmother’s beef stroganoff recipe.
“And I’m not a good cook, so thoughts and prayers on that,” confesses Baker, a WGAW member since 2022. “My oldest child is 10, and I still feel like I’m in the process of trying to figure out what traditions I want to do.”
Yuletide traditions—and the mayhem that can ensue when people either rigidly observe or deviate from them—are at the heart of Oh. What. Fun., a holiday comedy streaming on Amazon that is Baker’s first produced film. Co-written by Baker & Michael Showalter, based on a short story by Baker, Oh. What. Fun. finds Claire Clauster (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) twisting herself in knots to orchestrate the perfect holiday gathering of her children and grandchildren only to get left behind when the entire family goes off to a performance that Claire organized. But in this spin on Home Alone, Claire takes a decidedly different action.
Baker was involved with pre-production and was on set in Atlanta during the entire duration of production, an experience she described as “celebrating Christmas all year-round.”
Baker wrote the story as a “breather” from the novels she had been writing, the last of which—The Husbands (2021)—had churned up discussion in her circle about the division of labor among partners in dual income households.
“A lot of my friends talked about where they felt the most stress, which was during the holidays, trying to make the holidays go well,” Baker says. “We were all in the process of becoming mothers ourselves and becoming part of our own family traditions while still being the children of our parents. And I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to write this fun Christmas comedy, this short story between my novels,’ and it just kind of weirdly took off.’”
“Certainly, I have never left my own mother behind or been left myself in this way,” she continues laughing. “I don’t have siblings, so I didn’t have that experience of the Clausters, but there are lots of touch points in the film that came from my life and my family’s traditions—beef stroganoff and our elves and all of these little moments that felt personal either to me or my friends.”
I was so proud that I had made it into the WGAW and that I was going to be a paid screenwriter.
- Chandler Baker
Screenwriting has become her third chapter. Baker spent several years working as a corporate attorney, but even while crafting NDAs (the world of which would inspire the idea for Discretion) she was planning her exit from the law and subsequent entry into writing. Between professional and family commitments, she became adept in pulling out a timer and writing in 15-minute sprints, forgoing music and podcasts on her drives to and from work to focus her thoughts on the writing she would do later.
After publishing several YA novels, she moved into writing for an adult audience and became a full-time writer. Although she no longer has need for that 15-minute timer, the focus and scheduling discipline she developed earlier have served her well.
“I was prolific then, and I feel like I’m pretty prolific now,” she says. “Once I left, I really had to find a routine again, because I feel like the task can sometimes exceed the amount of time you have.”
Describing herself as “nothing if not a good student,” Baker was voracious in consuming information in her pursuit to become a published novelist. She has been equally insatiable as she worked to make the jump to screenwriting. Baker recalls listening to hundreds of episodes of The Screenwriting Life and Scriptnotes podcasts, following along with a PDF with every three-page challenge. She joined writing workshops, and read a script a day, tracking her progress in logs.
“I don’t know what works for other people, but I do think being a fan of the medium that you’re working in is never a bad thing,” Baker says.
At the beginning of December, she started the writers’ room for Discretion. Produced by A24, and slated to air on Paramount +, the series stars Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning, and is also adapted from one of Baker’s short stories. Baker will also serve as Co-EP and co-showrunner with Susannah Grant, who Baker calls “a wonderful mentor for me.”
In 2022, after the sale of her script for The Husbands, Baker proudly snapped a photo of her newly-issued WGAW card. Nearly four years later, after her first produced screenplay, and her first writers’ room, she feels even more appreciative of her union membership.
“I was so proud that I had made it into the WGAW and that I was going to be a paid screenwriter,” Baker says. “Since then, we’ve been through the strike, and I’ve gotten to experience what the Guild has done to protect our jobs. Now that I’m in a writers’ room, I can see how the benefits have played out and what the Guild has fought for much more clearly.”
