he authors and screenwriters behind the film “American Fiction” and the series “Slow Horses” won the 36th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards on the evening of Saturday, Mar. 2. Selection committee chair Howard Rodman announced the winners at a black-tie ceremony at USC’s Doheny Memorial Library.
The Scripter Awards recognize the year’s most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen, including both feature-length films and episodic series.
In a Scripter first, novelist Mick Herron and screenwriter Will Smith repeated as winners in the episodic series category. They took home the award for their contributions to the episode “Negotiating with Tigers” from season three of “Slow Horses,” which Smith adapted from Herron’s book “Real Tigers.”
Smith could not attend due to work on the next season of “Slow Horses” but relayed his sentiments through Herron.
“This award is very important to me,” Smith said, “because it also celebrates the author, without whom the show would not exist.”
In the film category, author Percival Everett and screenwriter/director Cord Jefferson won for their contributions to “American Fiction,” based on Everett’s novel “Erasure.”
Jefferson told the audience that he read Everett’s book in December 2020.
“It felt like I was reading a book written specifically for me,” he said. “It felt like I understood what was going on in these characters with the story at a molecular level.”
Everett’s win marks another Scripter milestone, as he is the first USC professor honored with the prize.
