Variety’s Showrunners Breakfast Honors Top Producers, Ryan Murphy

Hollywood’s top showrunners and creatives snuck out of their respective writers’ rooms for Variety’s annual Showrunner Breakfast on August 14. The intimate gathering was held at Oleander at The Sun Rose Hotel in West Hollywood, California, honoring top showrunners, including some listed in Variety‘s 2026 Showrunners Impact Report.

As the room finished munching on their breakfast quiches and sipping cups of coffee, top showrunners and producers from Apple TV’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” Netflix’s “The Diplomat,” Apple TV’s “Shrinking,” FX’s “Welcome to Wrexham” and Adult Swim’s “Rick and Morty” joined Variety‘s executive TV editor Michael Schneider for a panel discussing the timely topics on everyone’s minds — from network notes, the changing state of the writers’ room to AI.

When it comes to navigating network notes, showrunners are often tasked with getting their version of the show across against what the network exec’s version might be. For “Your Friends & Neighbors” boss Jonathan Tropper, the most helpful notes ask about the writer’s intention.

“You know, ‘I don’t know if that emotion is landing the way you think it is,’ or ‘I don’t understand, he seems to be acting like a dick here. Do you mean for him to be acting like a dick here?’” Tropper recalled. “Those are helpful because it’s somebody outside the brain trust reading it and reacting fresh. So I always divide notes into: Are they trying to write or direct the show? Or are they just trying to help me write the show?”

Many of the panelists are hard at work on new seasons of their shows, including “Shrinking” executive producer Ashley Nicole Black, who has a lot to live up to after Season 3 nabbed 10 Emmy nominations.

“It’s pretty daunting at first, but I find that once you make one decision, it sort of begets a bunch of other decisions,” Black said. “Now, in Season 4, Gabby’s moving into practicing a different kind of therapy, so we started working with a different therapist, Dr. Andrea Barthwell, who practices that kind of therapy. Once you start hearing her stories and her philosophies, the stories start to come out of that.”

“The Diplomat” showrunner Debora Cahn said it has taken her four seasons of working on the show to learn the most valuable lesson.

“I’m starting to get that the panic doesn’t go away because we’re still trying to do something we haven’t done. We’re still looking to do something slightly different and more,” Cahn said. “Panic is what it’s supposed to feel like.”

“Rick and Morty” co-creator Dan Harmon heavily relies on his younger staff writers, especially to honor the canon of his show’s past seasons.

“The kids, they go, ‘Well, I think Evil Morty should come back!’ And I say, ‘Says you, have fun writing that crap!’” Harmon quipped. “Thank God you’re here. Thank God we tend to promote our writers’ assistants so that they have everything on file.”

Schneider ended the panel by bringing up the inevitable topic of AI. It’s of particular importance to these showrunners who work alongside the younger writers and assistants hoping to one day create their own show. But how will the next generation of showrunners fare?

“It does start to feel like work is getting more and more temporary. A couple of years ago, it’d be like, ‘OK, I have to work on two or three shows a year.’ But there has to be two or three shows in order to make that work,” Black said.

Tropper, meanwhile, said he “hesitates” to talk about AI because his mindset shifts based on the latest podcast or documentary he’s tuned into.

“However fast we think it’s going to change things, it’s going to be faster,” Tropper said. “I cling to the hope that art will still have to be created by the vision of humans, and whether they’re using AI to realize that or not is going to fracture a lot of things.”

The event closed out honoring Ryan Murphy, the prolific showrunner known for creating groundbreaking shows like “American Horror Story,” “Nip/Tuck” and “Glee,” with the Norman Lear Award. It was presented to him by another trailblazing showrunner in his own right, Greg Berlanti.

While accepting the award, Murphy recalled how watching Lear’s landmark sitcom “All in the Family” helped him realize how television “can change hearts and minds.”

“TV characters really become like friends, which we all know because they’re beamed at your house. And if you do it right, you can reach hearts,” Murphy said. “I got to tell Norman that story about the impact it had on me and how I realized so young that tackling important, if controversial, topics was necessary. And the amazing thing is when I told him that, he burst into tears like nobody had ever said a nice word to him in his life. But that was Norman.”

Check out photos from Variety‘s Showrunner Breakfast below.