After her termination as a Friends writers’ assistant, Amaani Lyle filed suit for harassment and discrimination. In response, writers defended their professional authority over the writing process, facing two related tensions. First, Lyle v. Warner Bros. emphasized frictions between artistic freedom and social responsibility, amid concerns about a lack of diversity among writers. Second, the case also spotlighted the ambivalence of writers’ artistic status, within a collaborative and vertically integrated system of production. Focusing on problems of organization and profession, this article explores writers’ negotiations of these tensions as negotiations of their role in a complex industry.
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