Ask An Assistant: Bianca Stelian (Showrunners' Assistant, SHOWTIME)

Bianca Stelian,

Showrunners' Assistant, SHOWTIME

Hi Bianca! We appreciate you joining us! You currently support the two creators/showrunners behind SHOWTIME’s seven-season hit, Billions. Tell us what initially drew you to the role.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer and be close to the creative process, and as many know about Hollywood’s age-old apprenticeship model, one of the best ways to learn how to do a job is to work as the assistant to someone who has the role you want. That’s a vague way of saying I always knew I wanted to work for a showrunner, and when I got the opportunity to work for two who had had a long track record of success, especially at the helm of such an iconic show, I jumped at the chance to work for them and learn from all their years of experience.

Working for multiple people must be difficult. How do you prioritize tasks?

I’m lucky enough that I have a co-assistant, and because our bosses are so close, we don’t each report to one of them, but instead split duties for both of them combined. It’s been amazing how easily it’s worked out that there are certain tasks that I prefer and find more in my wheelhouse and the same for her. As she came up in the production world and I came up in the talent agency world, we have different skillsets that cover most, if not all of the bases required to do our jobs, so it’s been shockingly easy to divide and conquer based on what we each do best. We each think we’re getting the better end of the deal, so it’s worked out great.

You have a wide breadth of entertainment experience with a career spanning a production company (Color Force), a studio (The Weinstein Company), talent agencies (Creative Artists Agency, United Talent Agency), cable (Comedy Central), and late-night (Full Frontal with Samantha Bee). You’ve practically seen every side of the business! Was this a conscious choice? Would you recommend that young professionals dip their toe in everything before settling?

I’m lucky that I knew from a young age I wanted to work in entertainment, so I was able to gear a lot of my free time toward that goal, and I managed to land two internships for my first summer after freshman year that served as really formative experiences, at Color Force and The Weinstein Company. Being 19 and seeing how the sausage got made from each of their ends was really illuminating and made me curious to explore every side of the industry that I could. I know luck and timing played a huge role in allowing me to get as many opportunities I’ve had, so I can’t earnestly tell someone to do five internships to develop a breadth of knowledge, as that’s not a realistic expectation, but I would definitely recommend people try to explore at least more than one part of Hollywood before committing to a certain path—or at the very least, to try working in an environment that exposes you to a lot of different routes, like a talent agency (which I’ll get to in a bit!).

It’s well-known that students at universities in New York and Los Angeles benefit geographically from easily accessible school-year internships. Notably, you attended school in Rhode Island, but still managed a Spring semester internship in New York at Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Tell us more about this decision and whether you recommend school-year internships.

Haha, I still can’t believe I managed to juggle a full courseload and commute three and a half hours each way twice a week to work at Full Frontal on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I was coming off of a semester abroad, and I was a bit disillusioned with my college experience so I was, frankly, a bit overeager for something else to take me away from College Hill (the generic-sounding name of my university campus’s location). In retrospect, I wish I had tried to immerse myself more in the college experience and not run away from it, but hindsight is 20/20!Anyway, regrets aside, I learned a lot by working on an active production; while late-night isn’t the same as a scripted show shoot, I’m glad I was able to get some set experience before landing my current job. I got to be up close to the show’s creative process, and I even washed my hands next to Sam Bee herself a few times, so that was really great.But to be totally candid, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend school-year internships, or at least not as a blanket statement. The summers exist for a reason, and I don’t think any company would look down on an applicant who wasn’t in NYC or LA and didn’t do a school-year internship. It was also my fourth internship at that point, so I think it had diminishing returns on my overall viability as a job candidate. I don’t mean to sound too down on the experience; at the time, it was what I wanted, and funny enough, of the seven late-night shows I applied to, I had connections at six, and Full Frontal was the only one I had no in with, yet the only one I ended up getting. I’m grateful for my experience there, but I also don’t think a college experience is best spent accruing that many hours on the Northeast Corridor Amtrak.

You graduated college in everyone’s favorite year: 2020. How did the pandemic affect your career trajectory?

I was so naïve in the summer of 2019, when I was working at the talent agency to which I planned to return, and began mapping out a year in advance my "desk" trajectory and ensuing gigs. Little did I know a pandemic would place an essential freeze on hiring right when I was supposed to interview to seal my position. I was able to take some much-needed time to myself and spend more time with family, and eventually, I was able to land at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), in a role that ended up feeling totally tailor-made for me, so despite it taking about a year more than expected, it all worked out swimmingly. Some unsolicited wisdom to anyone reading: I’m not terribly religious, but as they say, when we make plans, God laughs.

Often referred to as “the graduate school of entertainment,” how would you describe your experience at CAA? Is this a path you would recommend to others hoping to get their foot in the door of the entertainment biz? 

It’s funny, agencies have a reputation for being brutal, but I couldn’t have asked for a better experience working at CAA. I do think that so much of your life as an assistant depends on your boss and, by extension, your relationship with your boss, and I just happened to work for someone who was incredibly nice, thoughtful, and supportive—a lot of which goes against the stereotypical agent vibe. I developed a community in LA through working at CAA and gained an immeasurable education into how projects actually get made. The work can be tough and nonstop, but I wouldn’t change a thing about my time there, as I really did love it, believe it or not.

I’ll recommend working at an agency—with a caveat. I think it’s the best way to get a broad understanding of the entertainment industry, and you meet so many people in similar positions to you who will one day become your collaborators. However, as I’ve spent more time in Hollywood, I’ve come to recognize that people have a tendency to vaunt the career path that they took, so I’m of course biased in encouraging agency work as it’s the path that I chose, but it’s also not the only path. Like I mentioned before, my co-assistant who also wants to be a writer came up in the production world, and we ended up in the same place, so there’s really not one right or wrong way to come up.

You worked at CAA in Los Angeles—but you moved to New York in January for your current role. The reverse bicoastal move of this month’s Former Assistant interviewee! Can you share your take on the entertainment business on the East Coast vs. West Coast, and your own advice to someone choosing between coasts?

This may sound too direct, but I think the short answer to this question is, if you want to work in entertainment and you are in possession of a driver’s license, go west. There are exponentially more opportunities in LA. This isn’t to say that there aren’t exceptions to that, of course; I had no interest in ever leaving LA, but my current opportunity was too good to pass up, even compared with other jobs I was considering in LA. So I took it knowing it would help me in the short- and medium-term, but I still plan on eventually moving back to LA.

There are also tons of great reasons to be in NYC that have nothing to do with career; for me, it’s been awesome to reconnect with so many college friends, be closer to family, get more steps in by living in a walking city, and put my winter coats to good use. If any of that appeals to you, or you can’t stand driving, then of course you shouldn’t feel bad about choosing NYC—life is about more than just optimizing for job prospects. But in a vacuum, I’d be lying if I didn’t say LA has way more in its favor in terms of job prospects.

Outside of your day-to-day job, how do you work on your career development? And using the skills you’re developing, where is it that you hope to be in 10 years?

When I moved to NYC, it actually came at a wonderful time, as I had been immersed in the Hollywood life for so long that I started to get burnt out. My entire life—work, extracurriculars, friendships, unrequited crushes—came from CAA, and I was beginning to feel like a move back east would be healthy for me. So for my first six-ish months in New York, I actually focused on reintegrating with the rest of my life, with reuniting with college friends, dating outside the industry, going on walks, and generally allowing myself to do things that weren’t career-related. (Besides, we were also in the thick of production on season 7 of Billions, so I had a lot of work-related stuff going on in the daytime.) But after settling in a bit more, I’ve recently been trying to strike a healthier balance between career and personal, so I’ve been slowly re-dipping my toes in the world of getting work drinks, or working on my writing, or watching TV and movies with an ear for the production elements of it versus just for pleasure. I’m about to start a pilot workshop that I’m excited about to help work out some of the kinks in my latest draft.

Networking has historically been fun for me; I like meeting new people and getting to know them beyond just how we can help each other in Hollywood. But I’m now trying to prioritize writing to strengthen other parts of myself.

I’ll give you a moonshot and a realistic answer to where I hope to be in ten years. Moonshot, I’m a seasoned showrunner running a successful production company, and I have this uncanny habit of always buying winning lottery tickets. But more realistically, I’d love to have come up the staffing pipeline in a variety of rooms, and be working on my own development, too. (My first-ever dream job was to write movies, so the ultimate goal is also to work in features, but one step at a time.)

Let’s end with a fun one: where would my exec be impressed if I sent them for lunch or dinner in NY and LA?

One of the best parts of my time working for my current bosses is how well-versed they are in the NYC dining scene, as they’re huge foodies. So I’ve been lucky enough to go to some of New York’s best restaurants as we’ve actually filmed at a lot of them while I’ve been with the show!

In New York, there’s no harder table to get than Rao’s, an old-school Italian joint where you can’t get a reservation; you just have to know someone who has a table. If you were able to figure that out to get your boss a dinner at Rao’s, maybe they’d promote you on the spot.

In LA, I feel like my answers will be dated because I haven’t lived there since 2022, but if I can time-travel back to last spring as part of this answer, snagging a table at Mother Wolf would be an impressive find. One of my side hustles at CAA was born when I discovered the secret to getting a reservation there and I just started booking tables left and right and flipping them to agents and assistants who wanted them. People genuinely thought I was somehow related to the management with how often it seemed I was able to get a table, but I had just figured out Resy and loved sending mass emails about it.