Amy Aniobi

Amy Aniobi (born August 28, 1984) is an American writer, producer and director. She was the head writer and co-executive producer of Insecure and was also an executive producer for the HBO special 2 Dope Queens. Aniobi signed a two-year overall deal with HBO in 2019. Quotes I got the idea after a friend was shocked that I hadn’t seen 12 Years a Slave (still haven’t, sorrryyyyy!!!). I was like “I’m such a bad black person.” So I was talking to my friend Lisa McQuillan — she and I went to grad school together and have been in the same writers’ group for a while — and she admitted she hadn’t seen it either. We were kind of shaming each other, and it got random, like her saying, “at least I’m not a vegetarian,” and I was like, “at least I have fake hair” — as if any of that makes you more or less black. I think the decision to put our slightly scripted nonsense online stemmed from a feeling that, as writers, your scripts often just wind up in a folder on your laptop, because it’s hard to get people to read (lots of people just don’t know how, which is sad). So Lisa, my DP Kalilah Robinson and I decided we wanted to make something we could actually see — and then force friends to watch. I’ve been into the tech industry since college. I went to Stanford between two tech booms, and now about 40% of my friends from undergrad are working in tech (the other 60% are questioning the validity of that random statistic). But maybe I know a wee bit more about apps now than I would ordinarily? That said, I still have a last generation iPhone, and I can rarely find anything in my Gmail (a topic of constant grief amongst friends, but I blame Google for that). On the show, I’ve learned that the people in tech and their real stories matter much more than the actual tech. You just get more mileage out of experiences than out of a funny app or weird device. So my personal research for the show mostly has involved catching up with college friends. I’ve gotten to connect with their lives, their work and hear the drama behind the tech they create that we use everyday, or at least when drunk. If anything, writing for Silicon Valley has made me super into free snacks and swag (thanks, Google!). Oof, I watched a TON of television growing up. My brothers and I were total latchkey kids (sorry Mom, sorry Dad) and were oft babysat by Fresh Prince and Full House and re-runs of I Love Lucy and The Jamie Foxx Show and The Simpsons and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — a lot of stuff. But the show that likely influenced my decision to write was Boy Meets World, because when it started, I literally didn’t understand that it was scripted. I thought some kid named Cory Matthews had people follow him around all day and film his life. I guess I was dumb. I don’t know how I got into college. But when someone finally clued me in and told me he was played by an actor, my mind exploded. I was like, “So he didn’t come up with all those jokes?” (Oooh, burn!) That was probably when I started to think writing was cool. Now, I later learned that quoting your “poetry journal” to friends in class was INCREDIBLY UNCOOL, but by then I was too into writing to care.