It all started when she was a teen and she found a screenwriting book at the Prince George Public Library.
Now, Amber Alexander, who was born and raised in Prince George, has her script Raising Wild in the works at Apple TV+ with Renée Zellweger as executive producer and Cynthia Erivo as the star.
“There are titans who have rallied around this project from the get go and they have created shows like Fargo and Handmaid’s Tale, and they’ve produced Wednesday, which is Netflix’s top show right now,” Alexander said.
“Renee is a force, she is a titan, and her instincts are extraordinarily sharp, she gives exceptional notes and Cynthia is a superstar so all these forces are surrounding and pivoting this project, helping it to propel forward. People originally responded to the page but it’s become so much bigger than it was when I first wrote it because of the minds, the talent and the heart and the passion of everybody around it.”
The thriller series is about a neuropsychologist who is wanted for fraud, kidnapping and murder. Throughout the series, her public fall from grace will see question marks around whether she’s the victim of a dark conspiracy or is a grave danger to the government and society.
“It all started when I found a book on screenwriting at the Prince George Public Library,” Alexander recalled. “I think I was about 15 at the time and I was gobbling up every book I could find being a very avid reader and I was always drawn to the arts. Didn’t really know how they would fit into my life but then I read a book written by William Goldman, who wrote the Princess Bride, Misery, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. In his book there are snippets of this thing called a screen play and I cannot describe what that experience was like except to say it was like a recognition internally that said I want to do that someday. I grew up in Prince George. Hollywood was so far removed from my life, my home.”
But that spark was ignited and she wrote her first screen play as a teen, she added.
“And it was absolutely terrible because I was a teenager and ironically it was about me leaving Prince George to become a screen writer in my 30s,” she laughed.
The journey took a while, she added. She moved to Alberta and worked in professional theatre and let the screen writing sit on the back burner for a while.
“I worked in social justice and used art and story as a way for communities to make social change and I worked with a wonderful organization called Antyx Community Arts and it was really phenomenal to see people take hold of their own story and use story as a way to speak to things they wanted to see play out in the world.”
Alexander had worked with youth in the prison system and those who had been child soldiers in other parts of the world and she had consistently seen the power and impact of story.
“That’s when I realized the story I wanted to tell and that desire to tell that story had never gone away,” she said. “So I decided I wanted to give my own dream of screen writing another shot and I enrolled in UCLA’s post-grad screen writing course, which I could do online and then I was just bit. I was obsessive. I would get up before dawn and write, I would go to work, then I’d come home and write. I would write all weekend and was just determined that this was a path I was destined to take and I just refused to let closed doors stop me. It was a long journey but it paid off.”
She completed her studies in 2014 and has been writing ever since.
“My journey is much shorter than a lot of people’s,” Alexander said. “For some people it takes them 10 to 15 years to sell a screen play. It’s extraordinarily taxing emotionally and there’s a lot of ‘nos’, a lot of rejection and it requires some perseverance for sure. And perseverance might be more important than talent – you could be the most talented person in the world but you still have to be able to continue to move forward when those doors close.”
The project is still in its development stage.
“This project is light years better because of the minds that have invested in it and I’m just very thankful for those who have stepped up,” she said. “We’re still in the thick of it right now. There’s a lot of writing, working on the script, a lot of conversation. I think for myself the power of a dream is really key in my life. The desires that we have, we have the ability to go after that and I hope to always inspire people. Prince George is where those dreams began for me and it will always have my heart. I think sometimes it can be daunting when you have a dream that feels bigger than your geographical location or your educational background and so I think you have to believe in yourself and put in the work.”
Alexander still lives in Alberta, working remotely through Zoom and when it’s time to shoot the series she will be on location, wherever and whenever that might be.
We’ll keep you posted when the details become available so we can all tune in.
