Northshore Magazine

ne with Aricia Symes-Elmer Wardrobe Styling Personal Shopping Event Dressing Book your one on one consultation today www.TimeToShiftYourStyle.com 978-886-0487 See Aricia's style advice in every issue NBKJ Dec13 Tia.indd 178 The Arts for a play titled A New War, which was performed at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theater in Somerville. Ultimately, Napolitano returned to school and studied print journalism and English literature at NYU from which she graduated in 2007. While trying to figure out what kind of job would incorporate her passion for writing and producing plays, she decided "on a whim" to take a broadcast journalism internship at ABC News. "I was always interested in theatre and acting, which [are] a lot like television, and that led to my first full-time TV job," she says. "I worked for The Montel Williams Show as a field production assistant and still had no idea what I wanted to do. Then, I decided to go for it, and I moved to Los Angeles to get into scripted television. It wasn't a job you think you might get when you graduate from high school—a TV writer. You might as well say 'astronaut.'" When Napolitano arrived in Los Angeles in 2009, she started her first job at a talent and literary agency, ICM Partners. "That was a great way to break into TV writing and learn the business inside and out," says Napolitano. She worked as an assistant to TV literary agent Mark Gordon, who now represents her. Napolitano stayed at that job for eight months, until a position as a writers' personal assistant opened up at Grey's Anatomy. As an assistant during Season Six, she brought the writers coffee, went grocery shopping, and essentially acted as a gofer, she says, "just like all the Hollywood clichés." Next, Napolitano was promoted to writers' assistant, which enabled her to sit in the writers' room and transcribe every word they said. Her fingers hurt a lot, she recalls. Now, as a staff writer, she sits in that same room, which is typically filled with eight to ten writers, who discuss the show from about 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. every day. The Grey's episode that Napolitano wrote,"Walking on a Dream," was filled with all the usual drama. The character Arizona battles phantom leg syndrome—the condition of having sensation in an amputated limb— which agitates her continuously, and doesn't stop until she demands that Karev stab her prosthetic foot with a scalpel in the middle of surgery. Elsewhere in the hospital, a physician advisor appears in the ER, posing as a patient to anonymously measure the unit's efficiency. Eventually, she makes the shocking declaration to the senior doctors: "I am proposing that we close your ER." The process of writing an episode takes months and is a group effort, explains Napolitano. Staff writers each script anywhere from one to four episodes per season. Each writer receives a daily e-mail with the "the medical-medical of the day," which contains cutting-edge medical ideas and actual patient stories. Often, specialized surgeons will speak to 178 10/25/13 2:10 PM

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