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Carlito Rodriguez, writer-producer for Fox's Empire, credits his career break to a place he dubs "magical Starbucks." When Rodriguez moved from New York in 2010, he searched for an outpost of the chain in Burbank. "The constant buzz of coffee shops tricks me into thinking I'm not pushing the boulder up the mountain by myself," says Rodriguez, who spotted Damon Lindelof in line the day after reading THR's 2013 cover profile on the Lost co-creator. "Before I could talk myself out of it, I tapped him on the shoulder, like, 'Hey, man.'" Rodriguez later was named a Humanitas New Voices for Drama winner, upon which Lindelof suggested a meeting at his office on the Warner Bros. lot, where the then-new writer was offered a job on the first season of HBO's The Leftovers. "Boom: magical Starbucks," he says.
Rodriguez now works at home when not in the writers room, but as traditional studio deals that include lot offices are down overall, more Hollywood scribes than ever before are tapping away in coffee shops, at Soho House and at shared workspaces, from Santa Monica's theOffice to multiple WeWork spots to Hollywood's NeueHouse. "For people who are staffing on cable or streaming shows, there's a good part of the year where they're not reporting to the room," says WME agent Jordan Cerf. "Writers can be creatures of habit. Even if it's not that designated studio office, they still have their favorite spots."
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