Molly Fowler, Producer-turned-Mitigation Specialist

Molly Fowler

AGE: What was your first job in the TV industry and how did it come about?

I was the AD (Assistant Director) on a Broadway play called Execution of Justice by Emily Mann, which was a documentary play about the trial of Dan White for the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. Somehow I ended up meeting the then-President of NBC News who was interested in how Emily wrote the play and how we folded in the media piece of the storytelling (we rolled in video and shot the piece live, long before ‘Network' hit Broadway — this was 1984.) But I was working on Broadway and as the Literary Manager of a major theatre in New York City, Manhattan Theatre Club, and I was struggling to pay off my Yale Drama School student loans. So at his polite invitation, I called up the NBC president and he offered me a job. On my first day, there was a hurricane headed for NYC and a lot of the staff no-showed, so I got promoted pretty quickly just for showing up, and to my great honor was assigned to then NBC News V.P. Tim Russert before he was on Meet The Press. A cameraman, Neal Davis had just shot his own death in a coup attempt in Thailand and I took in the feed of his footage. A sobering and auspicious beginning.

AGE: What are some of the highlights of your TV career?

Early on? Working for Phil Donahue. He has an astonishing mind and tremendous humility for someone in television. His understanding of his limitations and willingness to see that as an asset rather than an obstacle changed television forever. He ceded his own ego to the curiosity of his audience. He understood that people think differently and tackle questions differently. So watching him mine the audience for gold by turning the questions over to them when they may have asked the same question he wanted to ask was brilliant. He knew a little old lady asking the question was good TV. And then, he loved his audience. He knew a lot about how to pace the story and himself to keep an hour of live talk moving.

Within that, the things that mattered to me were not the show big ratings getters. I booked a lawyer who was willing to help get a kid out of jail in Texas who was arrested in Oklahoma and charged with stealing a handbag from an old lady when the kid had been at work in a Fuddruckers in California on the day of the theft. We got the boss, the kid and the lawyer to undo this case right before the eyes of the audience. {That lawyer was Jonathan Turley — who, as a Constitutional Scholar appeared before Congress in the Trump impeachment trial.}

On another show, a pilot had been called out, named by Sen. Bob Dole as being responsible for friendly fire in the Gulf War. We had video that showed he followed orders, had questioned them at great risk to his place in the military, and those above him could have prevented what happened had they been doing their jobs. But Dole had let him fry for it. The pilot was so afraid of a live audience and had no reason to trust ‘ole liberal Phil.’ But Phil carefully led them through the story, and by the end you could see redemption happening before your eyes. Did it get good ratings? I don’t remember. But it changed a life, and maybe saved lives in the future because we taught the audience that a simple GPS device could have prevented the loss. 

Phil Donahue, Talk Show Host

AGE: Making a difference in the world is important to you. Tell me more about that.

The work I did in TV that has meant something to me are things that witness change. I was able to do a little of that for ABC News as Diane Sawyer’s booker too.

When I decided to leave News, I produced a soap opera for six years while my kids very young. I was very close to Agnes Nixon, who taught me a lot about storytelling. She was fearless — a deep Catholic who never shied away from topics that challenged the Church and her audience because she told the stories through characters she’d built from her heart.

Then I left ABC and did 3 films [World Birth Day I and II and World Wedding Day] for The New York Times and Discovery that witnessed huge life events around the world. They were anthropological, medical and social films where, for 2 of them babies were born all over the world on the same day and we bounced from story to story — kind of like you do in soap opera. The other was the same concept with weddings. I did a similar film with break dancers from around the world who compete every year in Germany. [Planet B-Boy] We premiered at Tribeca Film Festival to an audience of 10,000 because we had procured them through this new thing called YouTube.

For PBS, I led teams who embedded with 10 veterans who served since 9-11 to look at PTSD without demonizing the women and men we covered. I made it with best selling author Wes Moore, who is an Army veteran .[Coming Back with Wes Moore] and our premiere screening was in the Capitol for the Joint Chiefs. I had wanted to make the series because of a speech given at my nephew’s graduation from West Point by Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about how it was up to families of the military to translate the new military for the general public. My nephew had been treated for depression at West Point, and the series took a hard look at mental health without choosing to demonize anyone. So that premiere in that place was a pinnacle for me.

AGE: When did you start thinking it was time to make a career change?

I made a documentary for Oprah’s Doc Club with Forest Whitaker called Serving Life. My team and I lived in a men’s maximum security prison in Louisiana to tell the story of inmates who staff the hospice there. I arrived believing in the warden and his system and trusting the guards, while I was somewhat wary of the inmates. I left feeling the opposite. Again, I witnessed redemption, or so I thought. I had begun to wonder if and why people play for the camera. And certainly if the stakes are high enough, who doesn’t? I wanted to know these men better than you can with a budget and a timeline. So I decided I would try to help a few of the inmates seek post conviction relief after the film aired. Were they who they said they were or was that just for the camera? Why were they serving such extreme sentences like 35 years for robbing a Popeye’s till of $238. Or 99 years for a first arrest armed robbery? What happens to you when you essentially grow up in a place like Angola prison?

One of those two men asked me one day why I did not see him as the worst thing he had ever done. I didn’t. He asked if I wanted to know the worst thing he had ever experienced and I told him no. He was determined to tell me and I was somewhat curious but held him at bay. I only want to know the story if it has something to do with the film I was making, which is a film about how you find redemption doing hospice work. "I’m not your friend,” I told him. "This is my job." Eventually he told me, and when I refused to repeat what I learned to the prison, I was thrown out. It was a terrifying moment where a lot of money was on the line, but so was the life of this man. We were able to finish the film, and in the following years I vetted the story, spoke to the Police where the incident he’d witnessed took place, and in the end, he found redemption. But not on camera.

I found that work to be incredibly powerful for me. At the same time I was trying to raise money for other films and I just couldn’t reconcile myself to the kinds of compromises you have to make to get a doc made any more. I didn't like what it was doing to me and to the people about whom I cared. My last film opened at the NY Film Festival and by the time it did, I had already left NY and didn’t even attend the opening.

Angola prison in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana

AGE: What prompted you to actually make the career change?

It’s really hard to raise money for a documentary. My husband died when my kids were 7 and 10 years old, and as a single mom it got harder and harder to find the money, tell the story and manage the people or the situation in a way that felt right. I got tired of doing it. I found that the people I was working around operated from a very different moral core. Not better, not worse, but different and I struggled to make sense of it for myself. And then I learned I could use my story telling ability and willingness to see past the worst thing someone has ever done in the work I’m doing now. The question was, would anyone hire a 60 year old woman in a new career?

AGE: What other fears did you have about moving forward?

Change is scary. But having buried a husband, and changed careers from theatre to TV to film, I called upon that thing that Phil Donahue taught me: use the obstacle as an opportunity. Phil couldn’t think of any more questions, so he took the microphone into the audience and let them ask questions. He changed TV forever. Change is an obstacle, but if you don’t let it stop you, it’s a huge opportunity.

AGE: How did you get past these fears, or any other fears you’ve had in your life?

One foot in front of the other. Know where your anchors are. Hold on for dear life and go. I’m really lucky to have very smart and necessarily resilient daughters who have forgiven me for uprooting myself as soon as they got to college.

Molly with daughters Macklin and Carson Levine

AGE: What is your new career?

I created a 501c3 called Justice Partners Inc. so I could raise money (oy! raising money is still hard.) I partner with lawyers and social workers and journalists to focus on criminal justice reform and social issue story telling.

Right now I am working as a mitigation specialist with the Louisiana Center for Childrens Rights. We represent children who are arrested for murder and face life in prison without the possibility of parole. I do the same thing I did as a journalist or producer or filmmaker. I connect to a subject and I go after everything (factually and socially) I need to build a narrative. A true narrative but not necessarily the one that is in place. In this case it’s to flip the narrative that is being told by the DA to a judge and or a jury, (and often the press) about someone, a child, who has made a terrible mistake. Two Supreme Court cases, Miller and Montgomery recognize that children’s brains are not the same as adult brains and therefore their culpability should not be the same. I have clients who were convicted of murder at 15-16-17 years old and are now over 40 and are eligible to be re-sentenced. We simply need to provide a narrative that mitigates their crime. How did that 15 year old get to the place they were the day of the murder, and who is that 15 year old now? I also have a client who is 17 and reality is just crashing in on him.

AGE: “Mitigation Specialist” wasn’t on your resume, yet you were hired. How did you manage that?

When I was interviewed by LCCR, I told them that if they were not sure about hiring me they should let me do the work for a period of time for a nominal fee, or expenses. See if my skills matched their expectations. They did, and a few months later they offered me a full time job. I love the work. I love every minute of it. It's heartbreaking. It’s devastating. It’s overwhelming. I make mistakes. I don’t sleep until I figure out how to fix the mistakes. But I work with people every day who inspire me. They challenge me to do better, to separate from it carefully, to tell the story with clarity and vision and they constantly look for new ways to do the work and be more effective. I could not be happier. 

AGE: What advice would you give someone who is thinking about a job/career change?  

Oh it's such a cliche (but true)! Follow your gut, your heart, your inner voice, your whatever it is that pushes you to keep going. Think outside the box. I kept thinking that I didn’t have the money to do it, because I knew it would be a step back. Maybe I’m lucky to have bought a bunch of Apple stock at $11/share and that has helped get my last daughter through Dartmouth. But if you don’t live in NYC-Chicago-San Francisco or LA — it's amazing how well one can live when you live outside of the bubble. So a willingness for MAJOR change with a solid plan B and a livable Plan C is always good. Be patient, shoot straight and don’t lie to yourself.

AGE: Do you have a website you can share?

Website: Justice-Partners.org