Tessa Thompson

Oh, you did?

So you shadowed?

Yeah, I shadowed, which was, it's just such a delight.

I did a ton of it in Atlanta.

And I'm so grateful to all the folks there that were so generous with me.

But, you know, it's gotten better now.

But it has been, you know, for a very long time, a very competitive industry.

And for women in particular, there is a scarcity of opportunity, which creates its own sort of drama.

Did you go out on stories with them, or what was your shadow?

Yeah, I got to go out on stories.

They got to help me with my copy, so I would send my copy in the show.

They would help me rewrite.

I got to go in studio and watch them work.

It's one of the great, extraordinary pleasures of what I get to do is to really, in the

process of preparation and research to meet so many extraordinary people that do incredible work and to really get a window into worlds that I think I might know something about.

But truly, like anything, you know nothing about it the closer that you look.

Oh, I'm so curious.

What's something you learned that was a surprise to you about the job?

Something that was really surprising to me is I'd always sort of assumed that anchors in particular were people that were just reading the news as opposed to writing it, that they actively are really, you know, writing those stories and have so much to do with that.

And then also just being in the room where they're deciding what stories are important or when something's breaking.