In Reunited, Awards Insider hosts a conversation between two Emmy contenders who have collaborated on a previous project. Today, we speak with Dopesick creator, writer, and director Danny Strong and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel creator, writer, and director Amy Sherman-Palladino, who previously worked together on Gilmore Girls.

Amy Sherman-Palladino and Danny Strong are actually together in person for this Reunited conversation—they’re both in New York, where Strong is moderating a panel for Sherman-Palladino. But it’s not rare at all for the two television creators to find themselves in the same room. They built a strong bond in the early 2000s on the set of Sherman-Palladino’s show Gilmore Girls, in which Strong played Yale Daily News editor Doyle. They actually met even earlier, when Strong had a part in Over the Top, a 1997 ABC sitcom on which Sherman-Palladino was a writer. But it was Gilmore Girls that bonded them, and they’ve kept in touch ever since. “I’ve always sort of viewed Amy and Dan like my adopted aunt and uncle,” says Strong now of his relationship with Sherman-Palladino and her husband/writing partner, Dan Palladino.

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Much has changed since their early days together, though. Strong has gone from an actor to a prolific writer-creator, with his most recent work, the Hulu limited series Dopesick, earning critical acclaim and several awards already. The series, starring Michael Keaton, explores the explosion of the opioid crisis by looking at both the individuals involved in the creation of OxyContin and those affected by the drug’s addictive and often deadly effects. Meanwhile, Sherman-Palladino’s hit Amazon series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which has earned 54 Emmy nominations and 20 wins, is fresh off its fourth season, which sees Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) dealing with the fallout from her botched stand-up tour.

Both veterans of TV, the pair weighed in on how the industry has changed with the influx of streaming—for better and for worse—and reflected on why Gilmore Girls (and especially star Lauren Graham) never got its due.

Vanity Fair: How did you two first meet?

Amy Sherman-Palladino: We were working on a show called Over the Top, and we needed a funny guy for, I can't even remember the part, but I was really good friends with Marcia Shulman, who was the casting director on Buffy. And I was a Buffy fanatic, and I literally called her up and I said, "That guy, can you just send him? Send him down." It was like one of those things where we just couldn't find anybody, and we didn't want to sit through any more casting sessions without hard drugs. And Danny, literally, just showed up. And that was the beginning of a mad love affair.

Danny Strong: I usually have my best shot at getting cast when the producers are very desperate and just sick of looking.

Danny, what do you remember about meeting with Amy back then?

Strong: My first real memory is more Gilmore Girls, to be honest. It was when I went to the table read of Gilmore Girls for the very first episode I did — it was a straight offer. I was stunned because it's not like I was getting lots of straight offers. A table read can be very terrifying because people get fired after table reads. And because it was a straight offer and I had no audition, I'm literally like, "I got to really nail this table read." I remember I did the very first scene and there was a little monologue there and I finished the monologue, got a laugh. Always love getting a laugh. And then I look at Amy and she gave me this huge thumbs up and the relief I felt — I remember this like massive amount of stress just faded away.

Sherman-Palladino: I can't imagine a worse job than being an actor. It's so tough because there's so much constant judgment at every level. I've always tried to understand because you work with a lot of people behind the scenes, especially a lot of executives and to an actor's face, they'll be like, "We love you baby." And behind they're like, "They don't know how to put their own fucking shoes on." I will say we have really tried our entire career even when we had no power to try and make it as friendly and kind for actors as possible. I think the hardest thing to find is those go-to funny, comedic, solid guys who look real, who are going to show up and just do that job. And when you find one, when you find a Danny Strong, you cling to it.

Strong: Thank you.

Sherman-Palladino: We do it all the time now because Danny's fancy now. We're constantly like, "You look for a Danny Strong type," because you need an anchor. It doesn't matter how clever the dialogue is or anything. If those anchors aren't there, it's not going to happen.

Danny, did watching Amy on set inspire you in how you act now that you’re a showrunner and a leader on set?

Strong: Well, they're incredibly actor-friendly as Amy just talked about. I feel like I’m naturally like that because I've spent 30 years as an actor, so I’m sensitive to my cast. If someone's got one line, even my background people, I'm always like, "You guys are doing great." I just treat everyone as if they're the stars of the show when we're doing their scenes. I would say probably the most influential element was the bar of where the writing was. I do think I really learned how you can give every character a moment to pop or something for them to really do and really sink their teeth into. It makes it a richer, fuller experience for the actor, but for the audience watching it adds a level of entertainment value that is surprising and comes out of nowhere.

Sherman-Palladino: The really fun connection with Danny is that he was hanging out on the set and talking about maybe writing something and becoming a writer. And we're like, "Oh, why not Danny? You're a smart dude. Why not?" And I remember, I think you were writing Recount on the set. And we were like, "Danny’s writing a script over there. How adorable is he?" It was so cool because the next thing you know, it's this fucking massive thing, he became this great writer and producer. We don't have children, which is good for the world, but it was a little bit like, "Oh, our Danny and the good he's done." I'm sure it didn't start on our set at all, but that's the story that we tell: "We started it — if it weren't for us, there would be no Danny Strong."

Strong: It's true, that's where I pretty much started writing, it was during season one of Gilmore.

Sherman-Palladino: I think that there's a feeling in show business like, people don't want their peers to succeed. I really dig when someone in our circle pops out because it's a hard business and it can beat the life out of you. I've seen it deflate people, and I've seen it push people to the side. Good people, people that who deserved more, because it's a hard fight.

Strong: They were always rooting for me. When I moved to New York, they would take me to dinner all the time. And it was so funny, I remember the first winter and Amy was like, "Do you have the right coat? Do you need a blanket? Can I buy you blankets?” She kept trying to buy me things just for warmth.

Sherman-Palladino: I just want you to be warm. I'd like you to survive.

Strong: One thing I do want to say too about Amy that thrills me with the instant breakout success of Maisel is I remember on Gilmore Girls thinking, "This is the literally most dynamic, unique voice I think on television right now.” And I remember feeling that it was very unjust that she wasn't winning the Emmy every year. It was WB, the early days of WB and people didn't take it seriously because of the network itself, it was viewed as a teen network. Didn't Lauren Graham get nominated for an Emmy?

Sherman-Palladino: No, and it made me insane. To this day. That part, what she did with it and the amount of work and that she had to turn it from up to down to funny to comedy, cry, laugh. It's just what she did was so incredible. It will always anger me that she didn't at least get nominated and frankly just win because I just feel like they should just give her an award.

Maisel helped put Amazon on the map, Dopesick was released on Hulu. What’s your perspective on your work going to streaming versus a network, and what TV really is today?

Sherman-Palladino: The thing about Maisel is Maisel could not live on a network. That kind of character would still scare them, I think. And obviously the world is something that you could not truly explore on a network. But the thing is I'm torn because I came up on networks. Roseanne was my first job and an amazing job and an amazing show, and networks did amazing work. And every now and then they still do amazing work. And I've always wondered why they don't bob and weave more? The problem is that they’ve still got to sell tampons. Streaming, they don't have to worry about that. But now streaming is running into its own problems because streaming now there's so much of it. There's so many networks that there's such a glut of content. Now for streamers it's like, "Well, how do I get noticed?" I watch good work all the time, and I go, "Oh my God, have you seen Giri/Haji on Netflix?". I felt like I was working for the Giri/Haji marketing team. And no one I know had seen it.

There's so much content out there that it's almost the biggest challenge now is to cut through and to be heard and to be noticed and define your audience because there's nothing sadder than something really special and wonderful that just flies into the ether and nobody finds it.

Danny, did you consider how people would consume Dopesick because it was being released on Hulu?

Strong: I sort of have a philosophy now, which is I don't care if I get a show on the air, I want to get a great show on the air. I'm very calculated because the things I do, there's nothing about them where a studio or a network is saying, "Ah, I really want to do a movie about a White House butler over 50 years."

Or for Empire, “we're going to do an All-Black soap opera and a hip hop empire that's based on King Lear.” There's nothing about that where everyone's like, "Yes, please!” I'm super calculated: first is the idea then I get excited about the idea and I'm like, "Oh, I really want to do that. Who would do that? Who would actually finance it and who's going to get it on the air and who's going to promote the hell out of it?" Because of what Amy said, there's so much content out there, it's so difficult to pop.

In the case of Dopesick, it ended up being a nobody because nobody wanted it. It was just kind of universally passed on. Everyone said, "Oh, it's going to be too depressing." And I was like, "No, no, no, I'm doing it like I've got a crime story. It's an investigative thriller. I promise you. I promise you." But no one seemed to believe me, so then Hulu pretty late stepped up. Originally I wrote it for FX because they were the only ones that bought it and then they didn't want it after I wrote it in a way that very much surprised me. So I was very sucker punched.

Sherman-Palladino: But you're fine with it?

Strong: Sometimes you develop things and you're like, "Oh, this isn't going to go." In the case of Dopesick, it was the opposite. It was like, "Oh they're making this, they're making this." And then I got the call, "We're not making it." I'm like, "Whoa, I wasn't expecting that." But now I had a script. So I'm very grateful to FX for buying the script in the first place because they were the only ones that wanted it. So now I had a script and then Dana Walden, who is at Disney, read it and she was so into it and she gave it to Hulu. And so Friday night I got the call, FX said no. And then Tuesday morning I was greenlit to series, which is crazy. Hulu just kind of stepped up and just jumped in the deep end. So I am eternally grateful to them. And then they gave me the biggest ad campaign that I could possibly have.

What are you most excited about when it comes to the future of TV?

Strong: There's potentially a home for any idea, any tone, any version of execution in a way that I don't know if this has existed in the history of scripted drama in film or television. I think extremely it's daunting in how hard it is to break through, but thrilling in that you can have the most random ideas or ideas that are considered completely uncommercial, unsellable, like doing the history of the Opioid crisis, and be able to do it in such a big kind of splashy way.

Sherman-Palladino: I'm going to hope and put all my thoughts that maybe this town has finally is going to turn around and realize that movies have got to exist. I'm going to hope that this constant attack on the theatrical is going to stop a little bit because I think that it hurts great television when you start dumping shitty movies on streamers. It's been such an important part of my life because weirdly before the pandemic, my husband and I would literally, our whole weekends, we're going from one movie to another. It fed our creative forces for what we were doing on Maisel or on Gilmore or whatever we're doing. It's been something that as we watch it sort of go away and a little bit of greed of those streamers wanting it to go away so that everybody comes in. But I think it behooves everybody to have more diversity in types of storytelling, more venues, more places. Stories on a small screen do not play the same on a big screen, stories on a big screen do not play the same as stories on a small screen. And as somebody who loves both mediums very deeply, I just want the world of movies to exist and thrive and be magic.