Shawn Ryan ’88 is rooting for you

If Shawn Ryan ’88 has anything in common with the hard-nosed shows that make up his acclaimed career, it’s that he’s as easy to talk to as a seasoned officer by the water cooler. 

Ryan is the award-winning writer, showrunner and producer of shows including “The Shield,” “The Chicago Code,” “S.W.A.T” and most recently, “The Night Agent.” Hailing from Rockford, Illinois, his Midwestern humility shines when talking about coming into his own as a writer at Middlebury – Ryan began college as an Economics major on the soccer team and graduated with a BA in theater and a passion for writing. One need look no further than the title of his television production company, MiddKid Productions, to glean Ryan’s appreciation for this undergraduate creative arc. 

Ryan’s connection with the college runs deep – he’s an active partner with the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI), serves on the Middlebury Performing Arts Council and on the Middlebury Board of Trustees. During his most recent campus visit, I sat down with him to discuss his time in college and what a Middlebury education can look like. These are lightly edited excerpts from the conversation. 

Catherine Goodrich: What memories stand out to you when you think about college?

Shawn Ryan: I just wanted to do everything and I thought the people I was meeting in my class and at the school, I thought they were fascinating – a lot of them were much smarter than me and I embraced that, like, how can I learn from them? How can I learn about the world from them? Because I wasn’t a particularly well-traveled kid at that point. So my memories are just like, ‘Oh my God, what is this world?’ I just wanted to drink it all up. I wanted to do everything I could. 

CG: When you were here in January, one of my favorite points from your talk was about having a theater professor who you knew was good and you could try to impress but you were like, ‘you know, I’m just going to write something me and my roommates would enjoy.’

SR: Well, I didn't know that I could impress him (laughs). Yeah, yeah, in fact, I assumed I couldn't. So rather than try, I wrote something that me and my buddies on the 4th floor of Stewart would think was funny. And that was a good lesson for me because you write something that's personally meaningful to you and sometimes the most personal things are the most universal. So that was a good lesson. But yeah, because I had been much more of a math student than an English student in high school, my high school teachers would never have guessed that I would become a professional writer. You know, my essays were not really impressive at all. So I just kind of assumed I wasn't a writer of any kind but writing plays, writing screenplays is different than more academic writing.

CG: I’m curious what the plays you wrote at Middlebury were about. 

SR:I’d say if there's a thread in the first few plays I wrote it was just young people trying to understand the world and their place in it. You know, I didn't project at that point onto worlds that I didn't know and didn't understand. It was just, ‘Why am I having trouble with my girlfriend?’ You know, ‘What's this relationship with my best friend?’ It wasn’t until I started writing for the TV world that I expanded my canvas beyond the immediate world that I knew. 

CG: I mean, I’m stating the obvious, but Middlebury’s remote. Like when you’re here, you’re really here and it’s hard to take your mind off it.

SR: I found it to be a tremendous place to write though, and it doesn't surprise me that there is this rich history of writing. There is something I always found, especially in the winter months. You know you're in some room and the heat emanating from one of those metal heaters and the isolation, you know, like when I go to New York you're always hearing traffic and honks and ambulances and police cars and people arguing on the street. I always found this here an incredibly great place to write and to collect your thoughts, especially during the colder months.

CG: Your shows are so well-known as being pretty hard-boiled and urbane, which is great because you also have this attachment to rural, small-town Vermont — where do you think this interest in crime comes from?

SR: My parents, like a lot of parents, started to read to me when I was young. And one of the series we read was the “Bobbsey Twins” mysteries, and I was so hooked. And I graduated from “Bobbsey Twins” to the “Hardy Boys” to Alfred Hitchcock magazine, then short story mysteries to Agatha Christie. I was just always fascinated by these twists that were happening and people I thought were the killers that weren't. I didn’t live around any kind of criminal life growing up, this was sort of all of my imagination, but I was always fascinated by crime, the people who committed them, why they committed them, the motivations of the people who caught them, the back and forth of good versus evil. I read some de Tocqueville in high school, you know, the French writer who came to America and wrote what I thought was the best explanation of America. I always thought, ‘Oh, that's so interesting that somebody who wasn't from America was able to come and give such a perfect distillation of this country and its people.’ I took that as inspiration coming from a not-very-big town in Illinois, and then to this rural Vermont campus, and then landing in Los Angeles. I thought maybe there was an advantage to me being an outsider, being able to see this world with fresh eyes rather than being somebody who was born and raised here. 

CG: What did you and your friends watch when you were in college? 

SR: “Cheers”! There was always a debate because “Cheers” was on at the same time as “Magnum Pi” and I was a big “Cheers” fan. My friends liked “Magnum Pi” and eventually I sold them on “Cheers”. 

CG: How did you get everything done in college?

SR: By sacrificing my grades (laughs). No, I'm, I'm serious. I did not graduate with honors (laughs). You know, there were times where I prioritized theater and time with my friends a little bit over studying. Now I didn't fail anything – I knew that I had to maintain a certain grade point average to satisfy my parents, and frankly, I was going into personal debt to go to college because I had a student loan and my parents were stretching for me to go here. So I knew that I couldn't screw it up, but the reality is, there are a lot of classes where I got B's and B pluses and a few C pluses, and in my mind, I felt I was still learning. But I just felt that the time that I could spend talking about the world with my friends, having deep conversations with them at night; the time I was spending to act or write or direct a student production in the Hepburn Zoo that I wasn't getting any academic credit for; the time I was spending, you know, playing different intramural sports because I still love sports, even though I was no longer on the soccer team, I knew somehow in my gut that, like, ‘oh, when I graduate, that's all going away.’ And I want to take advantage of it. So it's not that I'm recommending to students that they de-prioritize their academics, but I will say that I think you can overemphasize academics in an environment like this.

CG: Totally, I agree. What do you think the most formative part of your Middlebury experience outside the classroom was?

SR: The other students. I had great professors, had great classes, but the thing I remember — not necessarily the specifics — but I remember the feeling was the late-night conversations in the dorm rooms with other students. Again, who came from very different places than me, had different perspectives, oftentimes better vocabularies than me. I love to argue, and I mean that more in a debate sense than, you know, hate sense. You pick a topic and even if you believe the other side, you would argue the other side just so that there was another side to have an argument about. And I had friends who were like that and that sharpened my brain. Back then there was only one late-night place to get food. It was kind of opened sporadically. You never knew for sure if it would be open or not and was on the other end of campus by Allen. And I remember trudging through the cold nights hoping they'd be open and you could get some fries, but the conversations that you were having during it got you through. I remember spontaneous snowball fights starting on the first big snow and all of a sudden Stewart’s battling Hepburn in a big impromptu snowball fight. I remember those experiences, the friendships, and the bonds. And I'd like to believe I was learning that whole time and learning to be a critical thinker, and I'm sure I was. But the emotional things for me were my friends, you know, the people I had deep relationships with.

CG: What were those friendships like?

SR: You know, I hate to be one of those in-my-day sort of guys, but especially in rural Vermont, they were everything because you didn't have social media, you didn't have a connection back to your hometown other than a collect call once a week to your parents, right? You didn’t have video games and you didn't have Apple Music to listen to. You might have a record player and five albums in your room and you hoped that your other buddies had five different albums than you. So friendships and community were everything at that time because you were cut off from the rest of the world.

CG: When you’re back on campus, what differences stand out to you?

SR: There's a spirit I think of Middlebury, that hasn't changed. It's very recognizable when I come here, and yet there are a lot of things that are different. I've become a very nostalgic person in my 50s now. And I get very nostalgic when I come back here and this place, it's very temporary. I don’t know if you’ll recognize this theatrical reference but it's almost like going to Brigadoon for me. This sort of mystical world that pops up every now and then, because this is so different than what my life in Los Angeles is like. So when I come back here, it's almost kind of like refilling my gas tank. It's reminding me of my roots as a writer. It's a bittersweet reminder of how many years have passed, but also a pride that I've done enough to be worthy to be asked to come back here to work on the board and talk to screenwriting and theater students. So that makes me proud that I've gone from being a not-so-confident student to someone who feels comfortable in his skin and comfortable talking about my experience and trying to pass out lessons I've learned to, you know, the next generation.

CG: What do you hope for Middlebury students today?

SR: What I would hope for students is that they take advantage of all the opportunities on campus to explore different things, to figure out what their hidden strengths are, to figure out what talents they have that are unexplored, or if they've been explored, how that could they be advanced and raised up, and find a path to be the best people they can and have the best impact in the world they can. You know, I think Middlebury students have an outsized impact on the world. The people who are coming here and learning about political science or economics or computer science or theater, – Middlebury is about finding the thing that isn't just going to be your job but is going to be your passion. I would hope for every student that they can find that.