2013 College graduate Kelly Diamond’s passion for the television industry has brought her from Philadelphia to the sunny shores of Fiji for “Love Island USA.”
Diamond served as a story producer for the hit reality television show’s eighth season. In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, Diamond — who majored in cinema and media studies at Penn — described her postgraduate path as “a series of fortunate events.”
She said that working in television was “not a popular path” during her time at Penn, which she spent involved with the web series “Classless,” the Kelly Writers House, and Under the Button.
However, Diamond said, “being the only one looking for these opportunities” in the entertainment industry allowed her to benefit from more specialized attention from those already involved in the field.
Diamond highlighted an advanced screenwriting class she took in her first year with 1970 College graduate Andy Wolk, who has worked on numerous television projects — including writing for the Emmy-winning miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon.”
Though the class was not geared toward first-years, Diamond said that Wolk “set his sights on helping me succeed” and “teaching me everything he knew.”
“He changed the course of my life for a long time,” Diamond said.
After graduating, Diamond said she benefited from the Penn alumni network. Her first job, she explained, was an assistant position to 1986 Engineering graduate Mark Cronin — “a creator of the ‘celeb-reality’ genre of television.”
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“There are things that just bond you for life — even if you’ve never met, even if you went to school 20, 30, 40 years apart — that will help you feel like you can kind of assimilate into the world outside of Penn with the support of Penn,” she said.
Diamond subsequently worked in comedy and digital media before returning to reality television through another Penn connection, 1995 College graduate Barrie Bernstein.
Bernstein’s executive producing history — including for numerous seasons of the “Real Housewives” franchise — inspired Diamond to get in touch.
“I reached out to her, being like, ‘I love Housewives. I want to work on it. What do I have to do?’” Diamond recalled.
That led Diamond to her current position as a story producer for NBCUniversal, which she said was “a job that I think a lot of people actually don’t realize exists in reality TV.”
“As a story producer, I get the footage and I make it into a story that makes sense,” Diamond explained. “It’s very much like a segment of post that focuses solely on story, comedy, whatever we need to make the show interesting.”
Diamond added that the entertainment industry was not without its drawbacks. Despite having worked on “Love Island” and “Traitors” this year — which Diamond described as “two of the biggest shows in America” — she said “it doesn’t mean that much because I still need to work the rest of the year, and they’re over for the year.”
“I love what I do, and I love telling stories,” Diamond said. “Even if people don’t look at Love Island as a storytelling kind of show, it is, and it’s really hard, and I’m proud of it. But there’s a lot of insecurity in this kind of work too.”
Artificial intelligence is also a complicating factor in the entertainment industry, according to Diamond. She said that while “there are some boundaries in place” at NBCUniversal — “where they’re currently not really using AI by policy” — several of her friends have seen staff reduce significantly due to the technology.
Diamond explained that others in similar producer positions are being “trained to prompt AI instead of doing their jobs,” a development she characterized as “really frightening and upsetting and inevitable.”
“These companies don’t want to pay to keep us around,” Diamond said. “They’d rather keep the money in their pockets, and I do think it’ll get worse if we don’t have these production companies, these streamers, these networks putting guardrails up.”
She advised Penn students interested in the “really brutal” entertainment industry “to lean on that community” of connections they make during their time on campus.
“TV is really, really, really tough right now, so it’s not a career path I’d recommend,” Diamond said. “But I know who I was at the time when I was graduating, and no one would have steered me a different direction.”
According to Diamond, television is “pretty much the hardest thing to break into right now, and you have to love it more than anything and want it more than anything to make it work.”
“If you have another career you’re interested in — and I’ve told this to many classes at the Writers House — do that instead,” Diamond added. “Sometimes I wish I did. You know, follow your dreams, but know that your dreams may not provide the lifestyle that you might want.”
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Staff reporter Lavanya Mani covers legal affairs and can be reached at mani@thedp.com. At Penn, she studies English. Follow her on X @lavanyamani_.
