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Julia Moriarty courting success with storytelling voice

Julia Moriarty

When Julia Moriarty first began studying screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles, she was adamant that her Yanyuwa/Marra heritage would not influence her storytelling.

In the five years since, she has not only amassed credits on titles such as Total Control and Barrumbi Kids, but is also a founding member of the United Stages Collective, a group designed to provide support for Indigenous creatives in the US.

The 33-year-old admitted it didn’t take long for her to come full circle.

“I just wanted to find my voice and go away from that, but I’ve kind of done a full sort of turn where the first thing I wrote after graduating was an Aboriginal thing and all the Australian writers’ rooms I’ve been in have had a big Aboriginal element, which I love,” she told IF.

Moriarty has no shortage of experience to draw on when putting pen to paper.

Prior to taking up a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing at the University of New South Wales, she travelled the world as part of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Tour, competing in 38 countries between 2008–2015.

The NSW-based creative said the decision to pursue screenwriting as a post-tennis career was borne out of a long-held interest in English and cinema.

“I moved to Barcelona when I was 15 to attend tennis academy and I had a huge collection of DVDs and would always be watching movies or going to the English cinema,” she said.

“I loved English, they were my two hobbies and then I really took a screenwriting class at night, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

“So I just kept taking my short courses and, and then looked at best screenwriting programs in the world, of which the UCLA was one.”

During her three years at UCLA, Moriarty managed to write three features, three comedy pilots, a drama pilot, and a comedy spec, while also taking producing classes and interning at talk show Conan.

Despite this, she found it hard to break through the “super well protected” US industry following her graduation, going from a writer’s PA on a Showtime drama that didn’t get picked up to a temp job for a literary manager, leaving little time for her to work on her own projects.

Taking matters into her own hands, Moriarty made the decision to return to Australia at the end of 2019 for what she intended to be a two-month stay, going on to use her contacts to gain a foothold with Made Up Stories’ Australian branch.

“I’d previously interned at Lingo where I’d met [previous head of development] Donna Chang, who introduced me to Lucinda Reynolds,” she said.

“I bugged her a lot about interning at Made Up Stories, telling her that I was only back for two months and I really wanted to start, so she eventually let me come in.

“At the time, they were adapting The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, so I got to do a reccy with Lucinda, where I met [writer] Sarah Lambert,”

The project would prove to be Moriarty’s first writing job, with Lambert bringing her in to work on the three episodes that took place in the desert and also enlisting her help in finding the knowledge holders of the Aboriginal story the production was going to use.

Unable to return to the US due to the pandemic, she set about finding her feet in Australia, working as a script coordinator on the second season of Blackfella Films’ Total Control, writing on Ambience Entertainment’s Barrumbi Kids, and collaborating with Alice Bell on a script for an upcoming project.

“Even though I kind of got stuck in Australia, it was still the best thing that could have happened,” she said.

“I got an agent back in Australia and then I’ve been working now as a writer for a year so it’s been awesome.”

More recently, Moriarty was chosen as one of nine emerging creators to take part in Impact Australia 2, an initiative that reunited her with Lambert, who was one of the mentors for the eight-week accelerator program.

She was selected for her one-hour series concept The Mundi Girls, a 1950s-set mystery partly inspired by her own family’s experience with the Stolen Generation and conversations with women from the Cootamundra Girls Home, a training institution for Aboriginal girls who had been removed from their families under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909-1969.

Other upcoming projects include short-form drama Borroloola, in which a bush girl discovers her grandmother had a secret life after going through Sorry Business with her extended family. The idea was selected in the first round of SBS and Screen Australia’s Digital Originals initiative, with Moriarty and producer Judi McCrossin taking part in a week-long workshop earlier this year.

While there is no shortage of opportunities in her home country, the NSW-based writer said she still has aspirations to hone her craft in the US.

“I love Australia and I want to tell Australian stories but I also love American TV and the amount of time you get on a show over there.

“Rooms are so much longer, so you get to rewrite story and characters and then be a part of it all and see it all happen.

“I’m definitely someone who learns through example, so I love to see really smart people, especially women, doing what they do and just absorbing it all.”