Sarah Thompson '00

During her time at Trinity Prep, Sarah Thompson was mainly involved with ballet at the School of Performing Arts, but her passion lay in writing, and she took AP English her senior year. Sarah continued her academic career at Pepperdine University, where she received a B.A. in English: Writing and Rhetoric, and minored in Creative Writing. During her last semester, she wrote a screenplay entitled “Eavesdrop,” submitted it to the San Diego Film Festival screenwriting competition, and was a finalist in the student division of the competition. She also wrote feature articles for a lifestyle magazine, 944, while living in San Diego. In 2006 she was awarded entry into the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts for the MFA Screenwriting Program. There she studied under screenwriting greats like Jack Epps, Jr. (“Top Gun”) and Mardik Martin (“Raging Bull”), and was awarded a MFA in Screenwriting in 2008.

Since 2010, Sarah has been working at Shondaland under Shonda Rhimes on the shows “Off the Map,” “Scandal,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “How To Get Away With Murder.” She wrote scenes for the first three seasons of “Scandal” before transitioning to being one of ten writers on the staff of “How To Get Away With Murder,” where her job consists of breaking episodes, pitching them to ABC Studios and the network, writing outlines and scripts, and supervising the actors on set during the filming of episodes.

In 2014, Sarah signed with the TV Lit department of United Talent Agency, one of the top talent agencies in the world. Her first fully-produced episode of “How To Get Away With Murder.” entitled “Meet Bonnie,” premiered on Oct 22, 2015 on ABC to a live audience of over six million. Her next episode, entitled “We’re Bad People,” premiered on January 19, 2017 on ABC. Sarah is currently in a three-year contract with ABC Studios, where she has a first-look deal for any pilot scripts that she writes.

In addition, Sarah has also given talks for graduate-level screenwriting classes at USC, and her pilot script “Boobs” was listed as one of the top staffing samples in the industry for 2015, according to The Staffing Survey.