A Safe Place to Start

Madeline is a second generation Greyhound - her father, aunt and uncle all attended in the 70s. She was the first of her siblings to attend, followed by her sister Chloe ‘06, then her brother Jonathan ‘09, and finally her triplet cousins Justin, Rachel and Benjamin Chasalow ‘12, who she believes were the first set of triplets to attend the school.

What she took from it wasn't academic. "It never felt competitive, but everyone was going to do their best," she says. "There were high expectations, but it didn't feel like you weren't allowed to fail."

She badly wanted to be good at art. She wasn't. "I did very well in soccer, I always had very good grades, but I wanted to be an artist, and I just wasn't. I came to a point where I was like, you know what, I can appreciate this, and it's not for me. Other people in my grade were really good at it, and that's so cool, and I have things I'm good at too."

She credits the School. "JTD was really good at making people not have to feel special at every single moment. It was more like, 'we know what your star thing is, and we'll find that for everyone'".

Her favorite traditions were Catalina and Candle Lighting. "There was something about Catalina. We were the oldest on campus, we were all going away together, and a year from now we'd all be somewhere different. We'd never all be together again."

She also points to something smaller: the School's policy on birthday parties. "It's so democratizing. There were kids who could have rented out Six Flags, and they wanted it at JTD because that's what everyone was doing."

The teacher who left the biggest mark was Miss Mansfield. "She was everything JTD. Warm, welcoming, and she really impressed the importance of reading, which is a huge part of my life now, personally and professionally. That first grade classroom is a touchstone of happiness for me."

She is still close with classmate Jack Davis '04. She went to his wedding two months ago. He'll be at hers this fall.

The Long Way to a Studio

After growing up in LA, Madeline was deliberate about moving out of state for college and landed at the University of Michigan. "It felt very not LA. A place where I could disappear into myself in a good way. I always knew I was coming back, but it was a chance to try something new, and more than anything, meet different people."

Back in Los Angeles at 21, she took the least efficient route available. Her father is a television writer. She declined to use it. "I had that very 21-year-old mentality of, I don't want any help, I'm going to do this on my own. Which of course, once I got into the industry, you realize: you're so annoying. If you had an in, why didn't you use it?"

Instead she found a job on EntertainmentCareers.com, assisting the CEO of a visual effects house. The next job was as an assistant at Fox 21. Twelve years later, she's still there, through a merger and a rebrand, now a VP of Series.

What she didn't have was a plan. "When I got a job at a studio, I did not know what a studio did. I was like, what do we do? What's our part?" She had, however, spent her childhood listening to her father hang up the phone and complain about studio notes and studio executives. "And then, in the lamest form of rebellion ever, I went and became a studio executive."

The appeal was proximity. "There's the writer, the producer, the showrunner, everyone over here, and then there's us, and we're the conduit between the talent and the network. I'm not putting pen to paper. I never wanted to be a writer. But you're so involved in the creative process. I pretty quickly learned, even though I couldn't put a title on it, this is exactly what I wanted to be doing."

Her credits reflect that range. She was on Tell Me Lies at Hulu, a massive success, and now working on a spin-off with the creator. She's been on CBS's Tracker since the beginning, her first time on the number one show in America and a different muscle from her usual streaming/cable work. She also covers the studio's Ryan Murphy slate, including Love Story. Variety named her to its most recent list of executives to watch.

Keeping the Train on the Tracks

The plain-English version of the job, in her words: "The most reductive way to put it is that I'm keeping the train that is the TV show on the tracks. And that is all encompassing."

That means the pitch, the outline, the script, the cut. It also means budget, hiring writers and directors, weighing in on casting, and, she says, being a therapist. "You're telling people what they need to hear in that moment. And you're also fielding crazy things you're totally unqualified to deal with."

The thing that would surprise people is how close the work is. "There's this feeling that we're the studio execs sitting up in our tower sending you notes and telling you what to do. In reality, when you're on shows going five, six, seven seasons, you become really close. If you're in Vancouver and you call me and say there's a problem, I'm there."

Her hardest professional stretch was COVID rolling directly into the strike. "The industry was really on its knees. There was a lot of frustration toward studios." The ongoing challenge is structural. "It's always hard to get things done in a business that is a very ‘no’-centric business. But those are also the most rewarding parts, when you do get something through."

Unlearning the Girl Boss

The traits she names are collaborative and kind. "Being kind to others, when I was an assistant, a coordinator, a manager, a director, a VP, I think made people want to work with me."

The lesson she didn't expect had to do with the other thing that got her here: acting more certain than she was. "It was fake it till you make it, be the girl boss. I did that academically and certainly at the beginning of my career."

Early on, it was the price of entry, and largely a defensive one. She describes bringing someone back to her office for a meeting and being asked for a coffee, black with two sugars. "And I'd say, no, I'm your meeting. Come on back." Projecting authority was how a young woman got taken seriously in a room, and it worked.

What she didn't anticipate was that the same instinct would start costing her once she had the title. "It put me at such a disadvantage."

What changed was giving herself permission not to know. "Now I ask so many questions. If someone's explaining something and I don't get it, I stop them and say, back up a second, I really want to understand this. It's made me better at my job, and it's given me a more holistic view of it. I'm totally happy to tell someone I don't know what they mean."

Home Base

Madeline is getting married in Tuscany this fall, followed by two weeks driving through Italy. Her days start with three dog walks, one per dog, since they differ in age, size, and level of blindness. Then boxing, which she's done for eight or nine years, then work, which is different every day and sometimes on a set. Evenings involve cooking with her fiancé and watching whatever is new, which counts as both pleasure and homework. Her current picks: Deadloch on Amazon, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, and Death by Lightning.

Her sister has two young boys, Andre and Macklin. Her brother runs a surf camp for kids in Los Angeles and has been known to take a PTO day to surf.

And she is back in Hancock Park, where she grew up.

What Resilience Actually Is

For parents of current JTD students, she has an answer that runs a little bit counter to what might be expected.

"What's made me resilient is being able to trust and rely on other people. JTD gave me the vulnerability to ask for help, and then the people along the way, whether it was my parents or Ms. Mansfield or kids in my class, made me feel really supported."

It's the same muscle as stopping a meeting to say back up a second. "I'm resilient because I can be vulnerable, and I can ask for help, and I can need support from people I love, and then I get it."

She's arrived at that recently, in a season of taking stock. "A lot of people would point to college as when they figured out what they wanted. For me it really goes back to JTD."