BATES MOTEL 
COLONY 
STRAIN, THE 
LILLE, France -- In town for a keynote address at this year’s Series Mania, the first edition since moving from Paris to Lille, preeminent Hollywood TV writer and showrunner Carlton Cuse addressed a packed UGC center for the better part of two hours in which he addressed his early career, the “Lost” finale, and the need for diversity in a writers’ room.The keynote started by looking back at Cuse’s grade school years, when his parents split and he found himself...
Genre Arts
Carlton
Cuse
Principal / Producer / Writer
Character-driven series with an element of mystery and danger are a hallmark of Carlton Cuse’s work, especially in his post-“Lost” career writing for A&E’s “Bates Motel” and FX’s “The Strain.”
Cuse broke into TV writing for “Crime Story” in 1986 before working with screenwriter Jeffrey Boam developing “Lethal Weapon” sequels and the story for the third Indiana Jones film. That led to the cult Fox Western “The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.,” followed by Cuse creating “Nash Bridges” and “Martial Law” before partnering with Damon Lindelof as co-showrunners on the ABC hit “Lost.”
Collaborations continue to fuel Cuse, who has partnered with another writer on each of his post-“Lost” series. “We live in a society where the dominant idea is the singular accomplishment, when in fact the evidence really points in the other direction,” Cuse told Variety in 2015. “The Emmy-winning TV show for 2015 was won by two guys (David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, for “Game of Thrones”). To me, collaboration is the essence of what makes TV successful.”
For 2017, Cuse has the final seasons of “Bates Motel” and “The Strain” and season two of USA’s “Colony.” He’s also working on the debut of a “Jack Ryan” series for Amazon, as well as an adaptation of “Locke and Key” for Hulu.
