NBCU Launch Sets TV Directors Program’s Class Of 2024-26

Rosy Cordero
·5-min read

EXCLUSIVE: NBCU Launch has set its 2024-26 class for the TV Directors Program, now in its fifteenth year. Those selected and the shows they are attached to are Parisa Barani (Law & Order), Winter Dunn (The Irrational), Nina Kramer (St. Denis Medical), and Liz Sargent (Chicago Med).

Founded in 2009, NBCU’s scripted directing program (now called the NBCU Launch TV Directors Program) gives experienced directors with distinct points of view their break into episodic television. The program supports the company’s goal of producing authentic stories with talent whose lived experiences inform their unique creative visions.

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It’s the first scripted directing initiative in the TV industry to guarantee that participants will helm at least one episode by the program’s culmination. Directors shadow on two episodes of an NBCU scripted series before sitting in the director’s chair themselves. This year’s class will benefit from new learning and development opportunities to prepare the program directors to helm their first episode of scripted TV.

Each class member has been paired with an alumnus currently working as a TV director to be their mentor. SJ Main Muñoz (Fear the Walking Dead), Brenna Malloy (On Call), Kim Nguyen (Survival of the Thickest), and Dinh Thai (Wu-Tang: An American Saga) will help guide the new program directors through the process of helming their episodes.

Barani, Dunn, Kramer, and Sargent participated in a recent six-day intensive workshop held across two weekends with TV directors Mary Lou Belli and Bethany Rooney. During their time together, Belli and Rooney led participants through exercises on practical sets aimed at honing their creative visions, technical craft, and communication and interpersonal skills.

The program is open to experienced directors of all backgrounds who must have directing experience in their respective fields, including feature-length films, short films, music videos, commercials, digital content and unscripted programming. Candidates can have no more than one scripted television directing credit. All eligibility requirements can be found on the NBCU Launch website. Applications will open next in the second half of 2025.

Class members were selected following a lengthy selection process where showrunners and executive producers from the participating shows chose the candidate that best suited the creative direction of their show.

More on the class of 2024-26 in their own words below.

(Deadline has edited responses for length and clarity)

Parisa Barani (Law & Order)
Barani is an award-winning queer Iranian-American-Canadian film director. She is a directing fellow of the 2024 WBD Access x Canadian Academy directors talent roster and Ryan Murphy’s Half Initiative. She participated in Netflix’s 2023 TV Episodic “Directors on the Rise” masterclass led by Paris Barclay, ViacomCBS Emerging Directors Program, Universal Directors Initiative, Creative Capital’s On Our Radar, and a recipient of Tribeca Film Institute Sloan Grant. She has been a semi-finalist for Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Barani is slated to direct the upcoming features Haram and Haji and is in development for her TV pilot, Duty Station. Her film Human Terrain stars Maggie Siff and Sarita Choudhury.

Winter Dunn (The Irrational)
Dunn is an award-winning filmmaker dedicated to amplifying universal narratives through the lens of BIPOC voices. Her short film Dear Mama premiered at SXSW and won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Short Film (Live Action). The short is currently streaming on The New Yorker’s Screening Room and Short of the Week. Her film Junebug premiered at the American Black Film Festival and made its TV debut on Fox Soul. Most recently, her latest film, Play Hard, had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival. Beyond film, Dunn has directed a wide range of digital content, including web series and editorial videos.

Nina Kramer (St. Denis Medical)
Nina Kramer (they/them) is a Chilean-American award-winning comedy writer, director, and actor based in Los Angeles. Kramer won an Emmy Award in 2016 for Best Scripted Web Series for their project, Playhouse of Cards. Most recently, they were selected to participate in Disney Entertainment’s 2024 TV Directors Program where they directed their first TV episode for General Hospital. Separately, they’ve shadowed on shows such as Abbott Elementary and are currently developing an hourlong series with the Wolper Organization based on their true-life learning that their mother was South American political royalty. Kramer is represented by Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment, and Guinsburg Daniels Kallis LLP.

Liz Sargent (Chicago Med)
Sargent is a Korean-American adoptee whose work explores themes of adoption, disability, and family. Drawing from her background as a choreographer, she infuses her visual storytelling with complex emotions, shaped by her unique experience as the middle child of 11 and her intersectional identity. Her film Take Me Home premiered at Sundance, screened at the White House and won the Grand Jury prize at American Cinematheque’s Proof Film Festival. The feature script received an SFFILM Rainin grant and is currently in development in partnership with Caring Across Generations; filming will begin in the spring. Sargent is a two-time New York Emmy winner, a Ryan Murphy HALF Initiative Mentee and an AICP Mentee with MSSNG PCES. She works with TDW+CO and ROSY Productions on commercial projects celebrating the AAPI community and is an executive producer on Minos Papas’s latest film, Motherwitch.

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