TDFW: Issue #5 The Bandit Kat Likkel
"I can do something better I can live a better life, sometimes in saying no you're saying yes to yourself."
What should people know about you?
I’m 2nd generation Dutch, and I grew up in a conservative, religious family. My parents got divorced and at 15 I moved to be with my mom and my (I didn’t know it then) angry alcoholic stepfather to a tiny town in Kansas. Our trash was collected in a pick up truck by old man, named Mule Morgan — and I have no idea what he did with it after that. But I’ve always wondered. Got kicked out of my house right at the end of my senior year by my mother and my angry, alcoholic surgeon stepfather and drove off in my stepbrother’s hand me down ‘74 Nova Supersport. I still miss that car. Lived on a friend’s front porch for a while. Eventually dropped out of college, I got myself to LA where I thought I would become an actress— and then quickly realized I sucked. Bad. I learned how to juggle from itinerant performers at the Renaissance fair, which has been a valuable skill in Hollywood.
Any weird jobs?
I answered the phones for a crop duster who had glaucoma and was going to go blind. He smoked a lot of pot. Also worked as a waitress at the local country club and I sucked so bad that I would forget I even had tables —and when I did remember I’d be so embarrassed, I’d hide from them. Because Kansas people were too polite to say anything they would just seethe in silence until someone noticed. I eventually was asked politely to maybe find another job. Worked in a scary bar in college where I didn’t go by my real name, so people started calling me The Bandit. A huge biker walked in one day looking for me asking “You the chick they call The Bandit?” I’m standing there holding mugs and just like “yeah?” And he said “I just gotta tell you, you gotta lotta class ok?” And he turned and walked out. I said “um thank you?” And I have no idea what that was about. None. But it was one of the formative moments in my life. But the thing that ultimately focused me and got me to writing was working at AIDS project LA for a while where, among other things, I helped out with deathbed wills. Some of the people I sat with would spend so much of their time telling me what they wished they had done, chances they wished they’d taken, or life directions they wish they'd had the courage to pursue. I felt privileged they told me their stories— and it helped focus my life and it led me eventually to take the chance on becoming a writer.
Talk about a time when turning something down was a pivotal moment for you.
I’m kind of an “all in” kind of girl when the chips are on the table, so I’ve taken risks a lot and the dice have rolled my way at a few crucial moments. My husband [writer/showrunner John Hoberg] and I ridiculously turned down writing jobs on *two* TV shows, in hopes that we’d just get a MEETING on My Name Is Earl.” We had read the script and knew it was a show we belonged on. We called our agent and said out of all of the scripts you sent us this is the show we want to be on. But our agent said that they already had the writing staff for MNIE. Our agent and manager said it was crazy to turn down the offers we got and we said well we’re going to bank on ourselves because if we accept these other jobs we’re gonna be miserable. We have to take this shot or we’ll regret it. We went from being those writers who were hungry for anything to “this is what we want and we’ll do anything to get it.” We stayed up until 1 or 2 in the morning on a Friday night when our agent got us a meeting and we drove to the creator’s house at 7am in the morning on a Saturday to pitch ideas. That same night he called our agent and said he was going to try and make room in his budget for us. And a week later he did. If we had gone the safe route, those other two shows went thirteen episodes and then cancelled. MNIE changed our lives, changed our careers. Being stubborn enough to take that giant risk, I think that’s how most important things happen in your life honestly, it doesn’t always all work out. But so many good things have happened in our lives from looking at what we want and sticking to that and also being open when something comes to you and thinking oh hey this is an opportunity. You have to think about that core of what made you want to do this in the first place.
This year we turned down down some big network stuff with people we liked because we wanted to take chances doing some more off-beat passion projects. The jury is still out on this move. But fingers crossed.
Best or worst advice you’ve ever been given?
Worst advice I was ever given was learn how to type, so you can always fall back on secretarial work. Best advice I was ever given was learn how to type because that’s what makes script writing so much easier.
Fascinating additional info about Kat because we spent 2+ hours together in a coffee shop in Pasadena:
She worked in animation and as a writer on Aaahh!!! Real Monsters on Nickelodeon.
She is an excellent listener when it comes to talking about your love life.
She was once offered an on-the-spot modeling job by a guy on a motorcycle. She didn’t take it and later saw him on the news because he was a murderer who drove his models up into the San Gabriel Mountains to kill them.
She met a guy on the Promenade in Santa Monica who offered to cut her hair for free and she ended up doing Vidal Sassoon hair demos and shows for a year which was also while she was doing a lot of animation work for Nickelodeon. Their president ended up telling one of the show-runners she didn’t want him hiring Kat any more because her hair changed all the time and she thought it meant Kat was unstable.
Follow Kat on Twitter.