Actor. Writer. Director. Producer. Dancer. Miss Denmark (2008). Avid traveler and photographer.

If you can think it, there’s a good chance Maria Sten has done it. Most recently seen on Amazon Prime Video’s Reacher as Frances Neagley, the female lead and title character’s counterpart in the second season, Sten is not content to sit still for long. She attributes that drive to leading to her career as a writer and ensures she finds the time to delve into her creativity no matter where she is or what role she’s currently occupying. Her first short When It Burns debuted at Uptown Short Film Festival and LA Shorts Fest in 2016. Sten was selected for both the 2017 The Black List/ Women in Film Episodic Labs and Christina Hodson and Margot Robbie’s Lucky Exports Pitch Program in 2019 and was story editor and writer on David E. Kelley’s Big Sky. She spoke to Creative Screenwriting Magazine about her career and interests and the type of storytelling that motivates her to continually return to writing.

Tell me about Frances Neagley and her character arc going into the second season.

I think she is still the same person at heart from the first season. She’s someone who stays mostly to herself and is focused on work. She has this relationship with Reacher, which has always been the same. They’re there for each other, no matter what happens. There are bigger things at stake for her in the second season, because it has to do with her old army unit, people she considers family.

Maria Sten

So I think that for her, these are the highest stakes possible which is also why I think she contacts Reacher, not the other way around this season. I think that is significant, and it also shows that it’s a two-way street for them, that they’re there for each other. It’s exciting that we get to know her better this season. We explore who she is and what makes her tick.

What do you enjoy about playing Frances?

I love the action, but I think what’s most interesting is that she is a tough woman. And we don’t know a lot about her. She’s guarded, but also has so much heart and this quirky quality about her. She’s a little bit of a child in a lot of ways. I had to find a way to make her grounded and real so that she isn’t just this cool, tough, badass that we like to see on television. She’s a woman and a human being. That to me was interesting to play around with.

As a director, producer and writer yourself, what do you appreciate about this series?

I really appreciate how close the final outcome of what you’re seeing on screen is to what’s on the page. Nick Santora is at the helm of this and he is so great at understanding what the tone of the show is… and how things are being shot. When you’re looking at the scene on the page, you know exactly how it’s going to come out, and that’s a testament to how tight the show is in terms of vision. I think that’s part of the reason why it’s so successful – it knows what it is and stays true to that.

That’s been really great to be a part of, with people who know what they’re doing in terms of having a vision for a project while still having the ability to play around within the scene and figure out how to make it work when faced with production challenges.

We have such a great team and they’re always willing to work with us which is also really lovely. My favorite people to work with are always those who view what we do as a collaboration, not as a dictatorship or hierarchy, no matter who you are – showrunner, director, or actor. I always approach it as a collaboration where we are together to make each other perform the best that we can.

How did you first become interested and involved in writing?

It was really out of a lack of work opportunities as an actor. I was exploring acting at the time, going on auditions and getting really good feedback, but they just didn’t know which box to put me in, or at least it felt that way. I realized that I’m not someone who is made to sit and wait for the phone to ring. I have to just go out and do my own thing to stay productive and stay engaged and stay in exploration, constantly growing in my craft.

Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan) & (Frances Neagley) Photo by Brooke Palmer/ Prime Video

So I started writing, directing and producing shorts, just from going out and shooting things with my friends. And that’s how I initially came to screenwriting. I had always written, but that’s how I came to screenwriting specifically – out of a desire to tell stories. Then I wrote my first pilot, which I put on The Black List. I didn’t know if it was any good, but I had a really good response from it and it became one of the top pilots on there. I had a couple of meetings with some managers and a producer and then I wrote a second pilot. The first was a post-apocalyptic alien sci-fi drama and the second was a Black period Western. Again, people are always trying to put you in a box, but having these two very different projects showed that I have range and do not necessarily fit in one box. I love world building, that’s one of my main joys as a writer and it’s what my material showed.

So that’s how I got roped into being a writer! I thought that I was going to have to give up acting because the writing was starting to take off, but then I booked my first job, which was the lead in a TV show. So I then pivoted back to acting and did that for back-to-back roles.

But I still found myself wanting to write, because I do think that you have so much more creative control as a writer. You don’t have to wait for anybody to tell you when you can work. You can just sit down at your laptop, open a document and write. Of course, if someone’s paying you to write, that’s a different story! But I think there’s an innate need we have as creatives to tell stories, and there is a tremendous joy in that.

The second part of me that still feels the need to write is that I look at the landscape of cinema, film and TV, and I see certain voids in that landscape especially for people of color, of course, which we’ve talked much about already. While we have certainly made strides in diversifying content, I think that, especially for lead characters, we still have a long way to go. Where are the cool female anti-heroes and villains? There aren’t a lot of them. So that is one of my main drivers in writing, and my philosophy – creating based on what I’m seeing is not in the landscape.

Your passion for storytelling includes “Telling Stories that Matter.” Can you tell me more about that?

When I think of stories that matter, I think of commercial ideas with something to say. For example, my first project, the post-apocalyptic, alien and sci-fi drama was actually about climate change and how humanity is its own worst enemy. And about the self-destructive nature of mankind that I felt was important and interesting, especially given the water shortage and continuous climate change that we’re living in. And the Black period Western I wrote was about these forgotten African American spies who existed during the Civil War and were part of the reason why the Union won. No one knows about them. And so I wanted to give them a voice and a space to exist. I think that is, in its nature, a story that matters – how can we talk about something that means something while not being spoon-fed? It’s not a documentary and we still want to make entertainment because it is show business at the end of the day.

Given your various professional roles and personal interests, when do you find the time to write?

It’s been difficult the last couple of months because I’ve been shooting. But I also do find the time if I’m on set and waiting. I have my laptop there and will work on my scripts while I’m on set. It’s a little bit of a crazy double task, but I love it. I love what I do and so I do try to find the time, like when I’m on an airplane on a long flight. That’s a good writing session – without any Wi-Fi, you can just write. And, of course, when I’m not shooting, I approach it like I’m still at work and can write more regularly.

I also think I’m just wired to always push myself. I never feel like I’m doing enough and never feel like I’m working fast enough, ever. So inherently, I just have this need to produce material and it doesn’t matter how fast I do it. It’s never fast enough.

Tell me about your experience working on Big Sky and anything you learned from your time on that series.

Big Sky was my first network TV show. I generally don’t do a lot of network because there’s a very specific format that you have to adhere to when you do it. But it was such a great opportunity to work with David E. Kelly – he’s like the King of television. I’ve admired him for a long time and I wanted to work with him. The series was about a black woman working and living in Montana. I live in Wyoming and it was very close to me in terms of its world.

I definitely learned a lot from having to adhere to these guidelines that are imposed on you when you are working within the network format. You always learn so much when you’re in production on something that is shooting and you’re not just sitting in your cave. So for me, just getting the chance to produce, and have hands-on experience, do rewrites on a very short notice – all of the things that come with production as a TV writer, were helpful in terms of problem solving.

Working to help realize someone else’s vision can be challenging for a lot of people because we all have our own ideas and our own stories. I learned a lot in terms of production and thinking on your feet and just becoming a tighter writer in terms of what you make up when you’re doing it on the page versus what has to be translated to the screen. Anyone who’s been in production knows that it’s all a process. There’s the script you write, the script you shoot and the script you edit. It’s so helpful to do that in real time. And I think the more you do it, the better a writer you will be.