SAMEER
GARDEZI

Sameer Gardezi is an award-winning Pakistani-Muslim comedy writer and producer who founded Break the Room. With a vision aimed at bringing more writers—often relative newcomers—to the industry from under-represented communities, Gardezi sees Break the Room as a boundary-breaking pipeline that expands opportunity in episodic television.

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The model for Break the Room Media was first tested in 2018, when Gardezi and Pop Culture Collaborative grantee, Muslim ARC, came together to build the writers room model for East of La Brea, a digital episodic show about two Muslim-American women living in LA, produced by Paul Feig.

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Since then, Break the Room has garnered deals with Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, ViacomCBS and 20th Century Studios and continues to work toward expanding opportunity, creative freedom and agency for artists who are crafting sustainable careers in the industry and creating new narratives for mass audiences.