“I'm big on if you ban a book that kids love, I'm probably going to come and adapt it. I'm probably going to come after it because adults fail children all the time. Because we are afraid of their feelings. We are afraid of what they can get themselves into until it's too late. And we're avoidant as a culture with them. And we've also left them a pretty screwed-up world where they're living in a terrible state of anxiety. They've got lockdown drills in kindergarten. They don't know if a gunman is going to walk into their school. And they've got so many images coming at them. good and bad.There's a lot of good that comes from TikTok and YouTube as well. It's just we're still in the beta phase of knowing. iPhones only came out in 2007. We're still figuring out truly how it's going to affect our brain development. So I think that 13 Reasons Why came at a time when we had all been really concerned about mental health. Brian Yorkey is my dear friend. We went to college together. Brian and Tom Kitt wrote Next to Normal, which was the very first Broadway show that dealt with mental health and mental illness. I had a grandmother who was bipolar and institutionalized, and when Brian told me when we were like 21 years old that he was writing a musical about electro-shock therapy, I was like, great idea! 10, 12 years later, and many iterations and workshops later with Tom and Brian, the show went to Broadway and got the Pulitzer and 11 Tony nominations, and it was groundbreaking. And it was before you could put Broadway on YouTube. And we were the first Broadway show on Twitter, nobody even had Twitter. I remember signing up for Twitter because I had to follow the Next to Normal tweets. So we were always ahead of the mental health conversation among teenagers and parents and trying to break the silence in a way.”Joy Gorman Wettels is the founder of Joy Coalition, an impact producing venture with a focus on creating purpose-driven film and television content for a global audience. She executive-produced the newly-released UnPrisoned, and is currently working on a multi-part storytelling ecosystem inspired by landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize. Her body of work includes, notably, the critically acclaimed series Home Before Dark, the influential 13 Reasons Why, created by Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright Brian Yorkey and directed by Oscar-winner Tom McCarthy (Spotlight).Other works include The Meddler, named Vanity Fair's #1 film of 2016, and the forthcoming adaptation of Little House on the Prairie. She serves on the Advisory Council for UCLA’s Center for Scholars and Storytellers and the Advisory Board for Hollywood, Health and Society at USC. As part of their commitment to social change, Joy Coalition works in collaboration with the Office of the Surgeon General in response to the youth mental health crisis. She’s accepted a Sentinel Award, Television Academy Honors for advancing social change, and the 2018 Mental Health America Media Award. www.joycoalition.com www.imdb.com/name/nm2229726www.imdb.com/title/tt20228406/mediaviewer/rm1596470273/?ref_=tt_ov_iwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast