Women Behind the Scenes Spotlight: Jana Sinyor

Today’s Women Behind the Scenes spotlight is shone on Canadian television writer and producer Jana Sinyor.

She received her bachelor of arts degree from McGill University in the late 90’s and then went on to direct the short film A Man of Substance in 2001. The following year she started working on the popular and long-running Canadian series Degrassi: The Next Generation where she was a part of the writers’ room during seasons 2 and 3.

In 2004, she created the children’s series Dark Oracle, where she also worked as a writer and executive producer for two seasons in Canada.

It was in 2009 that she created the popular Canadian series Being Erica (that aired on SoapNet here in the States); once again, also working as writer and executive producer for all four seasons of the series. Jana even appeared in three episodes of the series as well.

When asked where she came up with the idea of Being Erica she shared that she was “about 30 (years old) when I started thinking about the show. I was hitting a stage in my life where I looked around and I noticed that a lot of my friends were very accomplished in terms of their education. They were attractive and funny and intelligent and yet, there was this feeling that I saw all around. They felt like they were failing if they hadn’t achieved certain things by the time they hit 30 or by the time they were in their late 20’s. If they hadn’t found a partner or if they hadn’t found a career that they loved or if they weren’t starting to buy a house or have children, there was a feeling that you’re supposed to be at a certain spot in your life by the time you hit 30. I just started to really question that. Of course, everybody gets where they get in their own time.”

She continued, “I thought it was interesting and I thought it was something I was seeing a lot of. These women were talented and beautiful and wonderful and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them except that they put all this pressure on themselves to have achieved these things by this drop dead date. That was really the beginning of how the character of Erica Strange came to be. She’s really based on people I know and trying to make her feel really real is extremely important to me”.

She finished with, “The whole idea of the time travel is just something I’ve always really been interested in. Why does time have to go one way? What if we could go back and relive stuff that we’ve done? What would we do differently? It was a marriage of those two areas of interest for me”. [Source: Staying In]

You can visit Jana Sinyor at Facebook here.