He's a Marvel

by Laura Breen Galante

Born and raised in Central Florida, Los Angeles-based TV writer Josh Levine is a homegrown guy who’s gone far – both in his career and from one coast to the other.

“I get all of my creative writing skills from my mom, a lifelong English teacher and writer,” says Josh. “She still reads everything I write.”

Judy Levine, Josh’s mom, was instrumental in helping Josh pursue a career in writing, he says, starting at the young age of 10.

“When I was at Forest City Elementary School, there was something called the Young Author’s Conference,” recalls Josh. He has fond memories of participating in Young Author’s Night, during which students had the opportunity to read original works in front of an audience. “I didn’t play sports – that wasn’t my jam,” Josh laughs, “but my mom was able to go to this event that celebrated writing. It made me want to write.”

Josh credits his parents and that elementary-school program with his decision to become a writer.

“I was absolutely championed to write,” he says. “Truly, that was it.”

Josh wrote his first book in middle school, typing it on his dad Gene’s electric typewriter, and his mom took a red pen to each chapter.

During his teens, Josh participated in civic and theater programs at The Roth Family JCC and received a Superior rating for a play he wrote while attending Lake Brantley High School. He decided at that point to pursue playwriting, eventually earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Playwriting from The Theatre School at DePaul University.

“We basically drove a van full of stuff up to Chicago,” Josh says of his journey to DePaul’s home city. “Chicago has a very vibrant theater scene; there are a lot of world-class theaters with a reputation of doing new work.”

Josh spent two summers in the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive and then attended the Sewanee Writers Conference as a Tennessee Williams Scholar. It was there that he met and worked under Lee Blessing, a playwright best known for his 1988 work A Walk in the Woods. At the end of the conference, Lee asked Josh to attend the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University where he spent three years earning his Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing.

“At Rutgers, we studied TV writing and screenwriting every year,” says Josh. “I wanted to learn what television and screenwriting was.”

Go West

Following grad school, Josh and his husband, actor Ryan Dietz, relocated to Los Angeles.

“It was a big, scary move,” Josh recalls, but he and Ryan quickly established a community of friends. One friend opened the door for Josh to work as a production assistant on the USA show Playing House.

“Being in that writers’ room for season three of Playing House was a master class in how you write for a half-hour comedy,” says Josh.

He later served as a script coordinator on Schitt’s Creek and worked as the executive assistant to Natasha Rothwell of HBO’s Insecure. While Ryan and Josh were in the process of adopting their first daughter, Josh took a marketing job at the Wallace Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, but he spent his free time writing. This hustle paid off when he was invited to interview for a writing job for the second season of Hulu’s Emmy-nominated cringe comedy PEN15.

“My first job as a staff writer could not have been on a better show,” says Josh. “I could not believe I was going to be a writer on a show I had watched twice over, myself.”

The scriptwriting gig changed his career. Writing for a show that received such industry acclaim allowed Josh to get representation and opened up many doors. Following that, he worked on Ms. Marvel for Disney+, which he says was an amazing experience. Since then, Josh has worked on a number of shows, including Belated for FX and the upcoming Reboot for Hulu, but being an Orlando “Disnerd,” as he describes, there was no greater feeling than driving into Walt Disney Studios as a writer on Ms. Marvel.

“It’s all about relationships,” Josh explains. “The whole reason I do any of this – the playwriting and the TV writing – is to collaborate with other people.”

Josh enjoys receiving feedback about his work and says that feedback only improves his projects.

“Writing is such a collective, collaborative art form,” he adds.

Happily married, and now with two adorable young daughters, Josh is living a life he loves.

“I feel especially blessed and grateful to be doing what I do,” he says, “and it all started in Central Florida.”