Personal details
- Professions: Writer, Director, Producer
Melissa’s a Brit who bounced across the pond for a while, soaking up the US vibes before finding her way back to the UK. She’s got some serious writing chops—her debut feature script, Losing It, put her on the Tracking Board’s Top 100 Young & Hungry writers list. Not too shabby, right? Her most recent script, Easy Out, is this sharp YA comedy-drama that somehow manages to be both hilarious and heartbreakingly real. Think Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, but with its own twist—tackling assisted dying, but not in a way that feels heavy-handed. It’s got this offbeat warmth and a knack for poking at the raw, messy stuff people go through. Critics ate it up: it made the Top 10 female-penned scripts at the Nicholl Fellowship in 2019, cracked the Top 5 Final Draft Big Break contest in 2020, and even landed on the Brit List in 2021. She’s not just about writing, though. Melissa’s made two short films—Nothing and Change. Change is especially cool: she wrote, produced, and directed it herself, and it picked up a bunch of awards, including Frameline’s Audience Award in Toronto and Best Drama at the Minghella Festival. The film digs into the weird irony of America electing its first black President on the exact day a law banning same-sex marriage passed. Frameline grabbed it for their Youth in Motion program, so it’s out there in California schools, plus you can catch it on iTunes and Shorts TV. Melissa’s got BBC Drama Writers Room cred, worked with Firebird Pictures, Romulus Films, Temple Hill, and even Netflix. Right now? She’s cooking up a TV show with Playground Pictures and adapting a hit book for a British streaming platform. Busy doesn’t even cover it.
referencennActors Platform popped up as this wild idea from someone who just couldn’t stand seeing talented folks stuck in the background. It kicked off as a scrappy little company, basically a launchpad for actors who were still hustling their way out of drama school or local theater. Instead of just tossing people into open calls and hoping for the best, these guys actually gave hands-on workshops, industry connections, and real advice—none of that cookie-cutter, “just follow your dreams” nonsense. The founders knew the industry’s full of smoke and mirrors, so they wanted to cut through it and raise a new crop of pros who actually get the business side, not just the art. Loads of now-famous faces credit their first big break to the weird but wonderful network this platform built. So yeah, if you’ve spotted a rising star lately, there’s a good chance the Actors Platform had something to do with it. Not bad for a company that started out as an underdog bet.
Konidela Ram Charan