Jessica Tuckwell

Jessica is a screenwriter, story producer, and director, specialising in drama, comedy-drama and adaptations. She loves character and relationship-driven stories of varying scale, and anything related to love, intimacy, angst, awkwardness, conspiracies, mysteries, speculative fiction, spies, philosophy, the absurdity of life, weirdos, dreamers and hope against all odds. She originally trained as a theatre director and dramaturg.

Most recently Jess wrote on upcoming Netflix series Breakers from Clerkenwell Films. She co-wrote the pilot for and developed the Stan, Roadshow Rough Diamond and CBS Studios medical drama The F Ward, the fastest selling Australian drama of all time. Previously, she wrote on emotional thriller series Fake for Kindling Pictures and Paramount+, winning the Australian Writers Guild Award for Best Limited Series. Jess was the development executive and then script producer on seasons 1 and 2 of record-breaking, award-winning Stan series Bump, writing multiple episodes across 3 seasons; she was nominated for an Australian Writers Guild award for the S2 episode which she wrote and directed. Jess co-created spin-off miniseries Year Of for Stan; she wrote 3 episodes and directed the final two eps of the series. Jess has previously written episodes for NCIS: Sydney and Les Norton, and is sought after for script development and writer’s rooms, most recently in the room for the Netflix and Jungle drama series My Brilliant Career.

In 2023 Jess was selected by Fremantle UK’s Global Drama Team for Screen Australia’s professional development program Enterprise as a writer/creator, mentored by Lingo Pictures’ Helen Bowden (After The Party, The Secret She Keeps) and award-winning screenwriter Tony McNamara (Poor Things, The Great). She was selected for the 2024 For Film’s Sake lab at Sydney Film Festival, and the Torino Film Lab TFL Next Series program. Jess is part of The Creators, the AWG’s showrunner leadership program run by Jeff Melvoin (Killing Eve, Northern Exposure).