Who Run It?: Exclusive Interview with Prentice Penny

In an exclusive interview with MADE, Insecure Showrunner, Prentice Penny shared his journey to running the show.

MADE: What helped you get focused as you were working on building your name in the industry?

PP: One thing was my wife. She was like, “It’s fine that you’re writing here and there, but you’re not acting as if you’re a professional writer. I know you’re not getting paid for this yet, but you need to treat your time and your resources like they’re precious and valuable.” For example, I’d get up during a weekend day, this is before we had kids, and I might wake up and fool around. Then I’d look up and it’s like 2 or 3 o’clock once I started writing. I wasn’t treating time right.

MADE: And then kids came into the picture! The time management lesson probably intensified, right?

PP: You know, I really appreciate it now – being a father of three and I’m married, doing different shows. Time is the only thing. I can’t make more time. Money can’t buy you more of it. It is what it is at the end of the day. We only get 24 hours of it. I understand now that God was working me towards being organized, professional and enabling me to be more prepared. I started to get up around 8 o’clock, start writing and treat it like a job even though I wasn’t getting paid for it. I treated my time that way. I think you have to step outside of your comfort zone. While you’re waiting, we think “Oh, I’m gonna just sit here and wait while this thing will eventually come to me.” That’s not how
things always work out.

MADE: What do you think contributes to that lack of movement on their dreams?

PP: It’s scary when you realize the effort that it takes and you have to really commit to it. One thing I believe every writer has had is being scared to be great in a lot of ways. I would sort of write and then share with people who would tell me the things that I wanted to hear. It wasn’t making me better and it wasn’t pushing me forward. I was kind of staying in neutral because I wasn’t doing things that were challenging me – I was kinda doing like “just enough”.

Click HERE to read more of the interview (page 47) with Prentice Penny & MADE Magazine.