Total Recall: How Emily Ballou captured the battle between remembering and forgetting for ‘One Night’

What do you do when you have run out of stories to tell?

If you’re Emily Ballou, you use it as the foundation for your next story.

The American-Australian writer, known for her work on series The Slap and Dance Academy, was a “dried up story prune” in 2019 when talking to British producer Simon Maxwell.

The four-word description would provide the basis for the character of thwarted would-be novelist Simone in Paramount+ drama One Night, which follows three friends from the So...