Tammy Nguyen never thought she’d find success as a producer when she moved out of Los Angeles and back to Texas. But the UCLA alumna found a way to combine her knowledge as a producer with her living situation. She is a producer behind “Girl Meets Gown,” a new reality show premiering Sunday on WE tv about Texan brides searching for the perfect wedding dress.
“I took advantage of the things I learned at UCLA and applied them to what I knew in Texas, which was big, Texas characters and big, Texas stakes,” Nguyen said. “Before you know it, we had this concept about Texas brides on the search for the perfect wedding dress.”
Though she now works as a director of development and distribution for original programming at AMS Pictures, a Dallas-based creative media company, Nguyen wasn’t sure where her career was heading after attending UCLA.
She grew up outside of Dallas and graduated from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University with a bachelor’s degree in cinema. Nguyen made a name for herself as a model and actress, appearing in films, commercials and advertisements.
Nguyen attended UCLA for her Master of Fine Arts at the School of Theater, Film and Television, specifically as part of the Producers Program.
“They were just amazing at giving me the guidance that was needed to understand the industry,” Nguyen said. “One of the key things that I learned was story development and structure, and I actually use that today.”
While at UCLA, Nguyen won a Mickey Dude Fellowship for her work on Asian-American projects. She also co-produced a satirical movie about being an Asian American in Hollywood titled “Yellow.” She then set out to find a job where she could use the skills she had developed.
“I actually started working for a music video production out in L.A., and it wasn’t until I moved ironically back to Dallas that I started really applying skills that I learned in grad school,” Nguyen said.
After moving back to Texas, she started working at AMS Pictures, which creates and develops original documentaries, commercials and shows.
“(They) were kind of forging their way in original programming, mostly with documentaries at the time,” Nguyen said. “I got to really try out my experience as a producer and with storytelling when we started changing our direction and moving more toward television programming, which was very new to me because I had a film background.”
Andy Streitfeld, the CEO at AMS, said he considers Nguyen a valuable part of the company.
“Her job is to develop ideas,” Streitfeld said. “So she takes ideas … and pitches them to the networks. It’s a process, you give them ideas and they critique them, and you go back and forth.”
Though Nguyen was new at television development, she found a way to adapt her film studies to her work at AMS Pictures.
“In the end, you’re trying to tell a great story with compelling characters and it’s generally the same … you just had to learn a different structure,” Nguyen said.
It was this position that allowed Nguyen to help pitch the idea for “Girl Meets Gown.”
Kim Clemons, senior writer and producer at AMS Pictures, remembered visiting a Texan bridal salon called Stardust Celebrations when she was a bridesmaid.
“I had been there as a customer, and I told my boss, Tammy,” Clemons said. “And we went over there and paid them a visit, and they agreed (to do the show), and the rest is history.”
The show Streitfeld, Nguyen and Clemons helped develop revolves around the customers at Stardust Celebrations as they search for their perfect wedding dress. WE tv granted them a pilot, which aired in March of 2009 and received great ratings . WE tv then picked up a six-episode series.
“For many people, Texas is that frontier, for everything is bigger in Texas; the drama is bigger, and it just made for a really interesting television show,” Nguyen said.