By Skylar Provencher
Clutching a newborn lemur to her chest, actress Kirstie Alley wound her way through the bustling TV set of Cheers until she reached a friendly face on the production team. The actress took a bottle of breast milk from the producer, then lifted it to the mouth of the lemur. Alley, who starred in the iconic 1980s sitcom, had adopted the lemur and needed the breast milk for her new pet. She got it from writer and producer Cheri Steinkellner, who was nursing her own child at the time.
“You need your actors to be happy,” Steinkellner said, recounting the story of her breast milk gift to Alley, who died two years ago at age 71.
Cheri Steinkllner, writer and producer, is UCSB Film and Media Studies lecturer. Photo Courtesy of The Groundlings Theatre, Los Angeles, CA
Steinkellner, now a lecturer in the Film and Media Studies department at UC Santa Barbara, has earned four Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, a Writers Guild, People’s Choice, Parents’ Choice, World Animation Award, and the British BAFTA during her career as a writer and producer in Hollywood.
Working in television, film, theater and now writing a novel, Steinkellner, continues to be a legend in the storytelling world —and shares her expertise with UCSB film students, as well as her insider stories from the industry.
Starting as a writing duo with her husband Bill, Steinkellner worked writing episodes for The Jeffersons, Benson, The Facts of Life, Who’s the Boss, Hope and Gloria, and Cheers. Disney then sought the writing team out to create Teacher’s Pet, an animated children’s television series released in 2002 and later turned into a musical film in 2004.
Steinkellner had a background in theater and worked on musicals including Princess, Jailbirds on Broadway, Instaplay and Hello! My Baby. One of her most acclaimed works, Sister Act, was a Broadway hit released in 2006, is and is still performed today.
Her current project, Get Happy, is an adaptation of Judy Garland’s Summer Stock and will likely be hitting Broadway within the next year starring actor and singer Corbin Bleu. Steinkellner calls the show “magic.”
“You always know, whatever you’re working on currently, you have to devote your heart and soul to,” she said. Steinkellner says she draws inspiration for her writing from seeing and hearing a scene in her head. She stresses the need to imagine the universe of characters you are writing for, knowing them inside and out in order to produce effective scenes.
“When it flows the best is when you’re hearing those voices and able to just take it down. Other times it’s just hard work...to get what the people are going to like the best and laugh at the most,” she said.
Screenwriters Cheri and Bill Steinellner alongside creator/producer Gary Baseman of Teacher’s Pet at the World Premier red carpet. Photo by Lee Celano of the Hollywood Reporter.
Steinkellner’s transitioned into the academic world for the first time in 2012 when she began teaching courses in the Film and Media Studies department at UCSB to “just basically tell how I do what I do,” she said.
As an active member of the industry, Steinkellner uses her connections to invite distinguished speakers from the television world to talk to students in courses such as Hollywood Industry. She also teaches hands-on courses such as TV Writing and Writer’s Room, where students work in a seminar-style class to produce scenes for all genres and perform table reads, mimicking the style of a real writer’s room.
Steinkellner believes that teaching means something different for each person. In the creative world there is no formula, she believe, so Steinkellner helps students discover their own unique writing processes.
“What I’ve learned over years and years of teaching is how to facilitate different types of people, different types of students and writers,” she said.
In such a vast and competitive industry, Steinkellner acts as a pillar of motivation for UCSB students, curating a rare space for exploration within her courses. Her goal is to train students to be writers for themselves. Through creative writing exercises such as scripting for an existing show or writing a comedy sketch in the style of SNL, Steinkellner strengthens students’ abilities to transpose what’s in their imagination into text.
“I’ve gained more skills to not so much tell you how I do what I do, but open doors so that you all can figure out how to do what you do,” Steinkellner said.
Cheers cast, crew, and writers Cherie Steinkellner and Bill Steinkellner on a panel at the Cheers 200th Episode Celebration, 1990. Photo by Alice S. Hall
Guiding students to follow their own paths, she stresses individual creativity in her writing courses, TV Writing and Writer’s Room, two of the most competitive courses within the department. Steinkellner turns the classroom into a mock writer’s room, allowing students to work with scripts both individually and collaboratively to develop a sense of the industry’s inner workings.
Steinkellner urges students to understand what they love to watch and then apply those techniques to their writing. Students say her unique, real-world experience is invaluable in helping aspiring storytellers develop, and discover their personal voice.
Steinkellener encourages prospective writers to trust in themselves and their creative imagination to succeed. Her favorite advice to students: “Write the show you wish to see in the world.”
Skylar Provencher is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Film and Media Studies. She wrote this article for her Digital Journalism course.