Tony and Emmy-nominated writer, producer and performer Anthony King ’97 received the New York Carolina Club’s John L. Haber Award for outstanding contributions to the arts.
Tony Award-nominated Beetlejuice the Musical will return to the Durham Performing Arts Center this spring. It will be a full-circle moment for Anthony King (English ’97), who co-wrote the musical and grew up going to PlayMakers Repertory Company plays (his parents had season tickets).
Before Beetlejuice, King co-wrote the two-man show Gutenberg! The Musical!, which originally ran off-Broadway and off-West End in London before a successful Broadway run. Like Beetlejuice, it is now being performed on stages all over the world.
Carolina was the only school King applied to, but initially he had no idea he wanted to be a writer. He entered college premed, but after not doing well on a chemistry midterm, he switched to English. At first, King admitted, “it didn’t occur to me that I could be a writer.”
King remembers fondly taking creative writing classes with the late Randall Kenan, seeing PlayMakers shows featuring company member Ray Dooley, and performing and directing productions for the UNC Pauper Players and Company Carolina. He also wrote movie reviews for The Daily Tar Heel and had a short-lived humor column.
In email’s infancy, King created a daily comedy newsletter, composing it in a UNC computer lab.
“When I look back at my time at Carolina, so much of what I learned was outside the classroom,” he said. “At some point, hundreds of people subscribed to that newsletter.”
About a year after graduation, King moved to New York and began directing, eventually finding his way to the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), a comedy and improv theater. He performed there and served as the theater’s artistic director for six years. That is where the seeds for Gutenberg! The Musical! were planted.
After he left UCB, King took a job opportunity in Los Angeles, writing for television. He has been successful in that medium as well — serving as co-creator and executive producer for Robbie (Comedy Central) and as writer/producer for shows including Silicon Valley (HBO), Dead to Me (Netflix) and The Afterparty (Apple TV+).
King calls theater “his first love,” but said that the writer’s room is “one of my favorite places on earth.”
“We’re all trying to figure out how to create a new thing together, and sometimes we’re at odds with each other, but that kind of messy, creative debate is exhilarating and fun,” King said in an interview from his LA office. “When you hit on something, there’s a shared energy in the room. That’s the kind of collaborative process I really love.”
King was recognized in June with the John L. Haber Award — or “The Habey”— given by the New York Carolina Club and multiple UNC organizations to recognize outstanding contributions to the arts.
“I shared at the alumni brunch that so many successes in this line of work are about the relationships you build with people,” he said. “One of the reasons I got into this business is because I really love the act of collaboration.”
King is working on new projects for theater and TV that he can’t talk about — yet. And he still performs at the UCB’s LA theater. He urges students who are interested in the entertainment business to embrace their failures, learn from their mistakes and realize there is no one path to success.
“You can’t control so many things, but what you can control is that you can get better [at your craft],” he said. “There’s a great Steve Martin quote that I love: ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’”
By Kim Weaver Spurr ’88