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In His Element: Producer-writer of TV show has local roots
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Published: July 3, 2009
Carter Covington got his first taste of show business when he was attending Moore Elementary School in Winston-Salem. Now he's in charge of 10 Things I Hate About You, a teen comedy series, that will make its debut at 8 p.m. Tuesday on ABC Family (channel 18 on Time Warner Cable).
"Moore was where I was in my first play, in kindergarten, and that gave me the bug for show business," said Covington, who is 36.
He drew attention by putting on a record and dancing along with it during a talent show.
"The kindergarten teacher was so impressed that I had no shame. They were putting on a play and asked me to play the lead," he recalled. He played the Gingerbread Boy.
"He loved that," said his mother, Marie Covington. She and Carter's father, Butch, still live in Winston-Salem. "Then he was in the Little Theatre, but when he went to college he didn't do any plays, and we were surprised at that."
In middle and high schools, Carter performed in 12 shows with the Little Theatre, "but I was never the lead, always in the chorus," he said. "I loved putting on shows, but I knew I was never going to be the star of the show." He graduated from Reynolds High School in 1991.
At the University of Virginia, he studied foreign affairs and Spanish. After college, he spent a year in Mexico as an English teacher. He decided that living abroad wasn't for him. Then he tried his hand at the advertising industry, hated it, and studied the entertainment business at UCLA. Graduating in 2001, he still wasn't satisfied with his job prospects.
But his parents weren't concerned that he hadn't found his true calling. "He's a free spirit," his mother said, "and we weren't supporting him; he was supporting himself."
Covington said he felt that the time was right for another change. "I thought, if I'm going to pursue my passion, this is the time to do it. I just wasn't sure what it was."
Then a chance encounter with a TV writer from Smallville inspired him. "I said, ‘Wow, you guys get in a room and figure out what the story's going to be; that sounds like so much fun.' I couldn't get that out of my head."
Marie Covington said she and her husband "never saw the writing coming" when Carter was growing up. But, she added, "we have loved everything he's written."
He took classes to see if he could make a career out of writing and got into a pilot program for young writers at Warner Bros. Studio, which got him signed by an agency. He wrote a pilot for a series called Just a Phase, which he described as "a Wonder Years-type show about a boy growing up in the 1980s in North Carolina."
It didn't get picked up, but the script helped him land a job at ABC Family, where he wrote for the college comedy-drama Greek for two years.
Now, he is the executive producer, show runner -- which means he oversees day-to-day production -- and head writer on 10 Things I Hate About You.
"I want this show to feel like a John Hughes film every week," Covington said, referring to the writer and director of such classics as The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. "Even if you're watching it in your 50s, you remember that time of your life. Everyone can watch and hearken back."
His parents recently visited the set of the show in California to meet the actors and watch the filming of episode seven and a table read for episode eight, when the cast gathers to read the script out loud for the first time. Butch Covington described the visit as "pretty exciting for proud parents."
The series is based on a popular 1999 teen comedy of the same name, which in turn was based on The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare.
So how does it feel to be adapting the world's most famous playwright?
"Oh my God, don't put that pressure on me!" Covington said with a laugh. "When you are an adaptation of a movie that was an adaptation of Shakespeare, you're pretty removed from The Bard, so I don't feel as much pressure as the movie makers probably felt."
The series follows two sisters, one popular and one a sarcastic outcast. They move to a new town and try to adjust to the new high school.
"I think I view the world through a sarcastic eye," Covington said. "I loved Reynolds High School, but I had a love/hate relationship with it…. There were so many moments where I couldn't wait to get to college and get this done with."
■ Tim Clodfelter can be reached at 727-7371 or at tclodfelter@wsjournal.com.
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