JOY GORMAN WETTELS - Exec. Producer “UnPrisoned” starring Kerry Washington, “13 Reasons Why”, Founder of Joy Coalition

Joy Gorman Wettels is the founder of Joy Coalition, an impact producing venture with a focus on creating purpose-driven film and television content for a global audience. She executive-produced the newly-released UnPrisoned, and is currently working on a multi-part storytelling ecosystem inspired by landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize. Her body of work includes, notably, the critically acclaimed series Home Before Dark, the influential 13 Reasons Why, created by Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright Brian Yorkey and directed by Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight).

Other works include The Meddler, named Vanity Fair's #1 film of 2016, and the forthcoming adaptation of Little House on the Prairie. She serves on the Advisory Council for UCLA’s Center for Scholars and Storytellers and the Advisory Board for Hollywood, Health and Society at USC. As part of their commitment to social change, Joy Coalition works in collaboration with the Office of the Surgeon General in response to the youth mental health crisis. She’s accepted a Sentinel Award, Television Academy Honors for advancing social change, and the 2018 Mental Health America Media Award. 

“I watched things with my grandparents, and I read books with my grandmother. And my mother was obsessed with Sondheim and Neil Simon, and she took me to standing-room-only Broadway shows for $5. And she held me during A Chorus Line. So the lyrics I was singing when I was four years old were very inappropriate. We did community theater, and my mom had this incredible network of gorgeous gay men who would drink coffee and eat biscotti and listen to show tunes in my tiny one-bedroom apartment.

I think that I was surrounded by storytellers and hams and charming, charismatic people who sang beautifully. I still can hear my mom's friend Bobby Cipolla's voice. I hear him playing the leading player in Pippin in our community theater production of Pippin, and my sisters and I all sang. So we were very theatrical for a bunch of girls who shared a couple of bedrooms in an apartment in Yonkers.

But my mother also just always showed us how New York City was only 10 miles away, and like greatness was attainable. And you can do fabulous, cool, fun things. You didn't have to be rich to do them. And she would walk me around the Columbia campus and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we would go to the nosebleed seats to the ballet. And so I think the storytelling came from a combination of that exposure to the arts and closeness to New York City.

Brian Yorkey is my dear friend. We went to college together. Brian and Tom Kitt wrote Next to Normal, which was the very first Broadway show that dealt with mental health and mental illness. I had a grandmother who was bipolar and institutionalized, and when Brian told me when we were like 21 years old that he was writing a musical about electro-shock therapy, I was like, great idea! 10, 12 years later, and many iterations and workshops later with Tom and Brian, the show went to Broadway and got the Pulitzer and 11 Tony nominations, and it was groundbreaking.”

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