NYWIFT Blog

By Marchelle Thurman

Welcome to NYWIFT, Sophie Ostrove!

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sophie Ostrove, a thoughtful and funny storyteller who graduated with honors from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she earned her BFA in Film and Television with a focus on comedy.

As a queer, disabled, and Jewish writer, Sophie is passionate about creating stories that center joy and offer authentic representation.
Based in New York City, she splits her time between writing, freelancing, background acting, teaching filmmaking, ushering — and watching as much TV as possible (a job requirement she’s more than happy to meet).

In our conversation, Sophie reflected on her creative journey, the role of comedy in her work, and why representation truly matters.

NYWIFT Member Sophie Ostrove

Tell us about yourself—give us your elevator pitch!

I am a TV and comedy writer based in New York, focused on expanding positive and accurate representation for my historically under- and misrepresented communities through stories that center humor and joy. I graduated from the NYU Undergraduate Film and Television program in May 2024, and so I’m currently excited to be figuring out the next steps in my career.

Sophie at her NYU graduation

What was your journey to NYWIFT?

I first learned about NYWIFT through the Fusion Film Festival at NYU. Fusion is NYU’s student-run film festival dedicated to centering gender underrepresented filmmakers, and I led the Photo/Video department at the festival for my last two years at NYU.

Once I graduated and was moving on to this next phase of my life, I was looking to continue to build and find community within the film world, especially in New York. That led me back to NYWIFT, and I’m so happy to be a part of this community that I had heard so many wonderful things about while at school.

Sophie on set at SNL

Congratulations on completing your internships at Saturday Night Live and the Paley Center for Media! What were the biggest lessons you learned from those experiences?

I would say that one of my main takeaways from the Peter Roth Internship Program at the Paley Center was to try to observe and learn at all times. That internship program was really special because it included an intimate guest speaker series with folks in the industry who I deeply admire, and also included some industry site visits and panels.

And getting to work in the iconic Paley Center three days a week, and having the chance to walk past the exhibits and the archives and all of the resources that institution has to offer, was an amazing experience. There were all of these opportunities, big and small, to gain knowledge and experience, and that program really taught me to take full advantage of every single one of those.

In fact, even over a year after the internship program ended, the relationships I built there have continued to develop and branch off into more relationships and connections, which I am so incredibly grateful for, and never would have happened if I simply came to work, completed my tasks, and left.

I had a similar experience at SNL, because every time that I was able to walk into 30 Rock – another iconic building that I had only ever really dreamed of working in – I felt like I wanted to just soak it all in and take in every little detail that I could. SNL is (expectedly, understandably) super fast-paced and so much of it happens in the moment, and so it can be easy to get swallowed up in the work. Finding those moments, whether it was coming into work a few minutes early or jogging instead of sprinting from one place to another, to ground myself and get my bearings was really helpful in allowing me to both stay in control of my work and to take a second to remember how amazingly lucky I was to be there in the first place, and how important this work was to me and everyone else there.

There was a lot for me to learn through my actual assigned responsibilities at SNL and at Paley, but there was also a lot to learn beyond checking off tasks on a to-do list, and that is a really valuable lesson and skill.

Sophie (right) on set

What drew you to comedy?

I was raised on comedy – my family would listen to stand-up specials on car rides and they would take me to see comedians live and we watched every sitcom together. And so I started exploring comedy at a pretty young age, including performing stand-up comedy in my yeshiva’s middle school talent show (an absolutely loaded sentence, and yes, I did eventually win the talent show).

My favorite comedies were always able to make me feel better, no matter what else was going on in my life, and I recognized quickly how important that was for me on a personal level, and so when I decided to pursue this professionally, I knew that I wanted to work on TV shows or films that made people feel good about themselves and the world around them, even (and especially) when that feels impossible.

Comedy is just a part of who I am; I like to be the funniest person in the room, I know that I’m getting closer with someone when I know exactly how to make them laugh, and I’ve always appreciated that even when I’m trying something new (songwriting, poetry, etc.), even if I can’t yet make a perfectly crafted piece, I can probably still make you laugh.

And, on a deeper level, I’m used to seeing my communities’ stories portrayed as tragic, even when that doesn’t reflect my or my peers’ personal experiences. As someone with a visual impairment, I am used to every story about a disabled person being either about their obstacles, or bullying that they face, unless they are supposedly “uplifting” stories that are ultimately infantilizing. As a Jewish person, I’m used to seeing a million Holocaust movies and every story about being an Orthodox Jew, as I am, is about escaping an oppressive religious society. And as a queer person, I rarely see any happy endings.

And all of that is when a disabled, Jewish, or queer person is portrayed at all, and of course it’s almost never any combination of those identities, or all of the above (I mean, what sorta person would have that much going on!). Being able to infuse those stories with humor is authentic, and is both healing for those communities that are so used to reliving our trauma through media, and is helpful in breaking down barriers and making audiences connect with people they may have otherwise seen as “other.”

That’s a deeply unfunny dive into comedy, but I promise that I am actually funny, too.

Sophie (right) behind the camera

How has your experience been writing your pilot Bullshidduch, and what’s next?

I’ve been working on Bullshidduch for a couple of years now, and workshopped it across a couple of advanced-level courses while at NYU and submitted it to a handful of screenwriting festivals and competitions, and it has been the most incredible experience seeing how people respond to the story.

Bullshidduch follows two young Modern Orthodox Jewish people who decide to pretend to date one another to avoid being set up on more arranged dates (AKA “Shidduchs”) that end up going nowhere. There are queer and nonbinary characters, and references that are unique to Judaism, and the even smaller Orthodox Jewish sphere. I have been so touched to see so many people, regardless of background and previous familiarity with the world of the story, connect to the characters, laugh at the jokes, and relate to the themes.

Even the title became a pleasant surprise for me; I had been using “Bullshidduch” only as a placeholder until I came up with something better, recognizing that a title that most audiences couldn’t translate, let alone pronounce, probably wouldn’t get me very far. But my professors and peers all insisted that I keep the title as is, telling me what has kind of become my mantra: maybe not everyone knows what a Shidduch is, but “everyone knows bullshit.”

It’s easy to question whether some story ideas are too niche, but ultimately every story (when done right) taps into larger universal truths, and seeing that play out in real-time as people have responded to Bullshidduch at every step of the process has been amazing. Though I do continue to play with Bullshidduch a bit, I’ve mostly moved on to other projects now – I’m working on an hour-long dramedy pilot about a vigilante gang of Orthodox women, and a half-hour comedy pilot about two friends with albinism who move in together despite their shared disability being their only commonality, and I have had pause at every stage of those new projects, wondering if these are really stories that anyone outside of those communities would really want to see.

Having the experience that I’ve had with Bullshidduch was the most wonderful and necessary reminder of how TV and comedy can connect people regardless of shared experience, and that is definitely helping motivate me through my newer projects.

Pearl on Blue’s Clues & You!

Can you tell us about your work as a disability inclusion consultant?

I started working as a Disability Inclusion Consultant on Nick Jr.’s Blue’s Clues & You! in the summer of 2020, during the pandemic and after I had just graduated from high school, and I worked with them through the end of the series last year. Fulfilling that role for them was honestly the honor of a lifetime, as I aided in the development of a character with albinism, like myself, representation that I had never had a chance to see on screen before.

The team was so unbelievably thoughtful, curious, and caring, and asked me questions about albinism and disability representation that I had honestly never been asked before. Their attention to detail was astounding; I would give them such minor notes, like that the character might pause for a moment before stepping up on the curb so that they could locate it, and that tiny millisecond of a pause would make it to screen. Every time the character was onscreen, they animated her nystagmus, the involuntary movement of the eyes that’s a side effect of albinism but could have so easily been neglected in an animated character.

I loved the experience of working with the team at Blue’s because it gave me a chance to see every step of the animation production process, which I adored on a professional level, but it was also incredibly moving to play even a small role in creating the representation that I never got to see when I was a kid. And then, when the character, Pearl, debuted (in the Fall of 2022), I was able to see firsthand the impact that she had within the albinism community. I have always believed in TV as a force for real, tangible social change, but being a part of that moment reaffirmed that belief for me a million times over.

Pearl on Blue’s Clues & You!

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received so far in your career?

I would say one of the best pieces of advice that I’ve heard is to be open to exploring new options, but while having some form of direction and knowing what you ultimately want. There are so many careers within the film and television world, and all of our adjacent industries, and so it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the options, and jump from one thing to another.

I don’t expect to know at 22 or 23 what I’ll be doing in 10 or 20 or 30 years from now (I’m not even sure what I’m doing tomorrow, to be honest). But I do know who I am, and what gets me excited, and what sorts of projects I’m drawn to and why. I have my current goals (hoping to one day work in a writers’ room!), and I know that I may end up going down a different path, but because, for now, I have somewhere that I want to be, I have something to work towards.

Because I am so clear about what I want, I am highly motivated to do everything that I can in order to get it, and I think (I hope!) that that dedication and commitment comes through in everything that I do, which is essential at this point in my career.

Sophie on set

I know you’re a big TV fan—what’s your favorite show right now?

My favorite current show at the moment is probably Severance, which is a little bit different than a lot of what I usually watch. However, I watched Lost in middle school (that was considered a rite of passage in my household) and it was one of the first TV series that completely blew my mind and made me think a little deeper about character arcs and themes and story.

I never had the chance to experience watching Lost in real-time, and so I’ve been really enjoying being able to approximate that experience now with Severance. I love being able to talk about what I’m watching with other people, so it’s exciting to me when there’s a show that everyone else wants to talk about, too.

Connect with Sophie Ostrove on her website www.sophieostrove.com, on Instagram at @sophieostrovefilm, and on LinkedIn.

(All images courtesy of Sophie Ostrove)