NICE
CREATED BY: NAOMI KO
DIRECTED BY: ANDREW AHN
WRITTEN BY: NAOMI KO
PRODUCED BY: CAROLYN MAO
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: NAOMI KO, ANDREW AHN, CAROLYN MAO
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA
RUNNING TIME: 23 minutes
GENRE: Comedy/Drama television show pilot
LANGUAGE: English and Korean with English subtitles
AWARDS / ACCOLADES
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2018 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2018 NEW ORLEANS FILM FESTIVAL
AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER (EPISODIC) AT THE 2018 NEW ORLEANS FILM FESTIVAL
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2018 SAN DIEGO ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2019 SERIESFEST INDEPENDENT PILOT COMPETITION (DRAMA)
WINNER OF BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA (NAOMI KO) AT 2019 SERIESFEST
LOGLINE
Nice is a half-hour series about Teddy Park, a 20-something Korean American living in Minnesota, who must deal with the consequences of keeping her breast cancer a secret from her friends and family.
PILOT SYNOPSIS
Teddy Park is a 23-year-old Korean American woman living in Minneapolis. She’s an aspiring writer whose biggest accomplishment to date is winning two fantasy football championships. After a routine mammogram, Teddy discovers she has breast cancer for the second time. With the stress of her older sister’s upcoming wedding, intense fantasy football league, and burgeoning romantic relationship, Teddy decides to continue to keep her diagnosis a secret from her friends and family.
SERIES SYNOPSIS
Nice is a ½ hour series about Teddy Park, a 20-something fantasy football obsessed Korean American woman living in Minnesota. Teddy has tried to live her life as a typical “nice” Minnesotan girl. However, after she finds out that her breast cancer diagnosis has recurred, she decides to throw that Minnesota Nice to the wind — to become the biggest asshole in the state. But, in doing so, Teddy withdraws from everyone, and especially from her older sister, Hana (who is also preparing for her wedding). Teddy’s choice to keep her cancer a secret and the consequences of the decisions she makes ripple throughout her relationships with her friends and family. Teddy believes that keeping the cancer a secret makes her a nice person by not burdening others with the news. But being nice isn’t the same as being good. And Teddy is fed up with being a “nice person.”
BIOS
Naomi Ko (Showrunner, Creator, Writer, Executive Producer, Lead)
Naomi Ko (she/her/hers) is a writer, actor, filmmaker, and cultural producer. Her TV pilot, NICE, was an official selection at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. Naomi created, wrote, and starred in the half-hour pilot. Naomi’s work has been developed by Warner Bros., the Knight Foundation, and the McKnight Foundation. Naomi also played Sungmi in the 2014 Sundance award-winning feature film Dear White People, is a Moth StorySlam winner, and a featured performer for Mortified. Naomi performs with Funny Asian Women Kollective (FAWK) around the country and her comedic writing and performance can be seen in Episode 5 of The Mortified Guide, now available on Netflix. Naomi is the co-founder of the APIA MN Film Collective and has won multiple grants, awards, and fellowships for her work. This year, she is one of the first individuals to receive a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship through the Jerome Foundation. Naomi is currently in pre-production for an upcoming short film she is directing and she is developing her feature film Good Genes.
Andrew Ahn (Director, Executive Producer)
Andrew Ahn (he/him/his) is a queer Korean-American filmmaker born and raised in Los Angeles. His feature film Spa Night premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival where lead actor Joe Seo won a Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance. The film also won the John Cassavetes Independent Spirit Award in 2017. Ahn workshopped Spa Night in the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, the Sundance Screenwriters Intensive, the Film Independent Screenwriting Lab, and the Film Independent Directing Lab. Ahn directed the entire first season of the Sundance Now original show This Close from creators Shoshannah Stern and Josh Feldman. Ahn has also recently directed the feature film Driveways, which stars Hong Chau and Brian Dennehy.
Ahn is an alum of Film Independent’s Project Involve and the Sundance Institute FilmTwo Initiative. He has promoted diversity in the arts by mentoring youth filmmakers through programs like Pacific Arts Movement’s Reel Voices, Outfest’s OutSet, and the Sundance Institute's Native Filmmaker Lab. He graduated from Brown University and received an MFA in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).
Carolyn Mao (Producer, Executive Producer)
Carolyn Mao (she/her/hers) is a creative producer based in Los Angeles. Carolyn recently won the 2019 AT&T Presents: Untold Stories $1 Million Grant with writer-director Kate Tsang for their upcoming comedy coming-of-age feature, Marvelous and the Black Hole. She was a fellow of Film Independent’s 2015 Producing Lab and also participated in Film Independent’s 2016 Fast Track with the project. Her first feature Good Enough premiered at Boston International Film Festival where it won the Indie Spirit Best Actress Award. Previously, she worked as a development executive where she developed television, film and book properties, including the Emmy award winning children’s series Spooksville. She also co-launched the comedy web series platform, Thundershorts. Carolyn was a 2017 Film Independent Project Involve Fellow and received the inaugural Amazon Studios fellowship and is also a Time Warner OneFifty Artist. She is currently in pre-production her second feature, You and Me Both, with writer-director Jennifer Cho Suhr.
Ki Jin Kim (Cinematographer)
Ki Jin Kim (he/him/his) is a Los Angeles-based Korean filmmaker and founding member of Nonetheless Productions. Kim is known for his work as the cinematographer on the John Cassavetes Independent Spirit Award winning film Spa Night (2016 Sundance Film Festival) and Driveways (2019 Berlin Film Festival). Kim’s recent producing work includes the feature film Columbus, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, as well as award-winning shorts Deer Flower and Myrna the Monster. Kim participated in the Sundance Creative Producing Summit and the IFFR Rotterdam Lab. He received a Panavision New Filmmaker Grant and The EFILM | Company 3 Feature Film Grant. He moved from his native Korea to Los Angeles to attend the Film Directing Program at the California Institute of the Arts.