Tony McNamara (writer)

• 1. Introduction

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  Tony McNamara was working in catering and then finance before a trip to Rome convinced him to pursue writing. He was born in 1967 in Kilmore, in the state of Victoria, Australia. His schooling was at Assumption College in that same town. After Rome, he enrolled at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology to study writing. He then trained in screenwriting at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. What would bring a writer from Australian episodic television to the level of Academy Award recognition is not obvious from those beginnings. The first clue involves a screenplay Deborah Davis had written roughly twenty years before it reached production.

• 2. Australian Foundations

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  In 2003, McNamara made his film debut by directing The Rage in Placid Lake. He adapted it from his own stage play, The Café Latte Kid. Before the film, he had already built up years of television writing across Australia. Twelve of his episodes went into The Secret Life of Us, and seven each into Love My Way and Tangle. Puberty Blues claimed seven more. That body of work earned him a nomination at the 2013 AACTA Awards for Best Screenplay in Television. His second feature film, Ashby, arrived in 2015. That comedy-drama starred Mickey Rourke alongside Sarah Silverman and Emma Roberts. A year later, he created Doctor Doctor, a medical drama that ran for fifteen episodes between 2016 and 2018. The Great, which would become his longest television series, had begun its life much earlier, in a different form entirely.

• 3. The Favourite

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  Deborah Davis had written the screenplay for The Favourite roughly twenty years before the film reached cinemas in 2018. Yorgos Lanthimos, the film's director, brought McNamara in to work with Davis and complete the final script. Emma Stone led the cast of the historical comedy-drama. The critical reception was strong. McNamara and Davis shared a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. That same nomination appeared at the BAFTA Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, and several American regional critics' associations. McNamara also served as executive producer on the film. A play he had written in 2008 for the Sydney Theatre Company was about to take a similar journey from stage to screen.

• 4. The Great

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  At the Sydney Theatre Company in 2008, McNamara's play about Catherine the Great had its premiere. More than a decade later, that material became The Great, a television series that premiered on Hulu on the 15th of May 2020. Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult led the cast. The series ran until 2023 and generated thirty episodes in total, with McNamara credited as creator throughout. His work on the show earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. He also wrote a separate film adaptation of the original play alongside his television work. Poor Things, his next collaboration with Lanthimos, appeared the same year The Great concluded.

• 5. Poor Things

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  Emma Stone returned as lead actress for Poor Things, the 2023 film that reunited McNamara with Yorgos Lanthimos. McNamara wrote the screenplay, which entered awards season as an adapted work. His second Academy Award nomination, for Best Adapted Screenplay, followed. The National Board of Review selected it as the best adapted screenplay of that year. The Florida Film Critics Circle, the Capri Hollywood International Film Festival, and the AACTA International Awards each recognised it in the same category. A BAFTA Award nomination arrived in 2024. A writing credit on the 2021 film Cruella also appears in his filmography from that same period.

• 6. What Comes Next

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  In April 2024, reports placed McNamara as the writer for a film adaptation of the comic book Avengelyne. Olivia Wilde will direct, and Margot Robbie and Tom Ackerley will produce through their LuckyChap Entertainment banner. By April 2025, he was co-writing a Star Wars film alongside Taika Waititi. McNamara married Australian actress Belinda Bromilow in 2009, and they have two children. He also has a child from a first marriage. His 2025 filmography lists a film titled The Roses.