Margaret Nagle

Career

Nagle wrote the script for The Good Lie, released in 2014, a movie about the Lost Boys of Sudan, It premiered at 2014 Toronto Film Festival where it received the longest standing ovation in the history of the festival. It was released in 2014 by Warner Brothers. The Good Lie received an A+ rating from CinemaScore one of a handful of films ever to receive that high a rating. Nagle received the prestigious 2015 Paul Selvin Award from the Writers Guild of America for The Good Lie. The award is given each year to the WGA member whose script best embodies the spirit of the constitutional and civil rights and liberties that are indispensable to the survival of free writers everywhere and to which Selvin devoted his professional life. Nagle was nominated for Best Original Screenplay of a Feature Film for THE GOOD LIE at the 2015 NAACP AWARDS. Through Thegoodliefund.org the movie has been raising money for humanitarian aid for South Sudan. Nagle recently received the 2015 Jonathan Daniels Award named for the slain civil rights worker who was working with MLK from the Monadnock International Film Festival celebrating the fusion of great artistic merit and social awareness. The Good Lie is currently nominated for the Humanitas Prize for 2016 for Best Screenplay of a Feature Film.

Currently Nagle is working on adapting the Danish cult hit television series "Legacy" for director Doug Liman to direct. Recently bought by USA Network the series, by the producers of Borgen and The Killing, is about the adult siblings of a great female artist. Nagle is also working on a mini-series of the David Nasaw's Pulitzer Prize nominated book The Patriarch for HBO. The mini-series covers the turbulent and complicated life of Joseph Patrick Kennedy. Nagle is also adapting Bonfire of the Vanities as a 10 part mini-series at WBTV.

A former actress, Nagle appeared in the cult-hit My So-Called Life as the beleaguered biology teacher Ms. Chavatal. Bruce Weber in his New York Times review of the show wrote, "Watch out for the faculty members, each astutely idiosyncratic. I especially liked the hopelessly perky science teacher, played by Margaret Nagle, whose style is to lead the class to answers they have no interest in giving: "An experiment must test a what? A hypothesis. And a hypothesis consists of several . . . ? Anybody?"

Nagle's movie Warm Springs about FDR's dealing with polio was a critical success for HBO. It won the Emmy for Best Movie in 2006. It was also nominated for Best Television Movie by the Golden Globes. Nagle won the 2007 WGA Award for Best Screenplay of a Movie Made for Television for Warm Springs and was nominated for the Pen Award for Best Screenplay of a Television Movie as well as the 2007 Humanitas Prize.

Nagle wrote two episodes for Season One of HBO's Boardwalk Empire: "Broadway Limited" and "Anastasia". She was a supervising producer on season one and season two of the show. Boardwalk Empire Season One won Best TV Series at the Golden Globes in 2010.

Nagle's other work includes the critically acclaimed Lifetime show Side Order of Life in 2007 for which she won a special award from The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.She also wrote a CBS 2009 television pilot, The Eastmans, a medical show centered around a complicated family of doctors.

Nagle wrote the 2014 pilot for American television of The Red Band Society for Fox with Amblin TV based on the Catalan TV series of the same name (Polseres vermelles). Nagle created 8 new characters along with keeping several and wrote the pilot. Although critically acclaimed and beloved by fans the show did not receive high enough ratings to continue after 13 episodes. It starred Academy Award winning actress Octavia Spencer, Charlie Rowe and Ciara Bravo.

Nagle's script for The Goree Girls is being produced in 2015 by Bron, Kristin Hahn and Jennifer Aniston. Based on a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth about the first all female country western band that was started in a Texas prison.

Personal

Nagle's fathers family is of Irish descent and related to The Venerable Nano Nagle who created the Presentation Order of nuns in County Cork, Ireland and was voted in 2000 by the country of Ireland the most important woman in Irish history. Nagle bears an uncanny resemblance to her first cousin many times removed Nano Nagle. Nagle's matriarchal lineage reaches back to the House of Plantagenet. Nagle is named after her great aunt, the modern dance pioneer Margaret Newell H'Doubler. Nagle, who has a brother with a brain injury from a car accident, is actively involved in furthering rights and visibility for people with disabilities. Nagle recently received the Media Access Award from the Writers Guild of America for through her work "doubling the number" of people on network TV with disabilities. Her acceptance speech at the 9 am award show was a highlight.

Awards/Nominations