The writers of the Oscar-nominated film “American Fiction” and the Apple TV+ series “Slow Horses” took top honors at the 36th USC Libraries Scripter Awards on Saturday night.
Established in 1988, the awards recognize adapted screenplays and their original material. The awards are presented to both the author and the screenwriter, recognizing the collaborative process.
This year's winners, Cord Jefferson and Percival Everett for “American Fiction,” and Mick Herron and Will Smith for “Slow Horses,” were announced by selection committee chair Howard Rodman at a gala ceremony at the Library USC Doheny Memorial.
“American Fiction,” Jefferson’s adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” is also nominated for five Academy Awards, including best picture and adapted screenplay. The film stars best actor nominee Jeffrey Wright as a frustrated academic and novelist who writes an outlandish work under a pseudonym to highlight what he sees as black stereotypes in popular culture. Tribune News Service critic Katie Walsh described the film as “a social satire that wields a scalpel, not a sharp sword, as it surgically cuts through the many hypocrisies of the culture industry at large.”
Accepting the award, Jefferson told the audience, “I felt like I was reading a book written specifically for me.” “I felt like I understood what was going on with these characters in the story on a molecular level.” Everett is the first USC professor to win a Scripter Award.
British screenwriter Smith adapted Herron's 2010 novel (the first in his “Slough House” series, of which there are now eight books), which follows a group of marginalized MI agents trying to thwart a possible terrorist plot. The duo won again, taking home the award for the season three episode “Negotiating With Tigers” of “Slow Horses,” which Smith adapted from Herron's book “Real Tigers.”
