Feature Story & Q&A Interview of Distinguished Cinematographer Meena Singh

Meena Singh was the cinematographer for “Seasoned” whose pilot episode screened at the recent Tribeca Fest 2025, starring Mandy Patinkin and his wife Kathryn Grody. It’s an eye-opening, jaw dropping comedic series about their real-life marriage. This gem of a gem, which is comedic but spans several genres, follows the couple as they navigate their relationship in a world with endless surprises – good, bad, ugly, mind blowing and beyond belief. It’s a semi-improvised series, inspired by Patinkin’s and Grody’s cache of viral videos and focuses on them … as chaos ensued.

In the course of the interview Director Singh talked about the super-challenges the series filmmakers faced ranging from near cataclysmic if not apocalyptic like forces such as the writer’s strike that took place.

Based just on the pilot episode that screened at Tribeca, “Seasoned” in total would be rated Awesome Beyond Belief by this writer-reviewer – and one of the main reasons for its ABB: Meena Singh.

Meena Singh Feature Story & Interview-Part 1

Meena Singh:
During the strikes, “Seasoned” actually got dropped even though a full season had been ordered and a whole season had been written (in a screenplay). And the concept of the show is that every episode deals with a whole different part of being human and everything. Each episode is to feel kind of like its own short film, and it’s all with Patinkin and Grody. And some episodes might be less with them, more on the other characters, but it all comes back to them. But they’re all supposed to have quite a big somatic through line, just like the pilot episode you saw does. So all of that is written and ready to go, and we just needed to find a new home for the show. [The new home was The Big Apple.]

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
Okay. I’ve got to say something like how it was shot in New York City. In my mind, the film looked like only a person who lived in New York City would be able to capture New York City the way it was captured. I was stunned that someone from New York could actually grab that kind of stunning visual real word look and put it in a show that’s about 30 minutes long.

Meena Singh:
I love that. I love that you felt that. I’m actually … I don’t live in New York City, but I have such a deep love for New York. So when I read the script and I knew it was going to be all about being out on the streets and feeling the life, the energy of being out on the streets, walking around in New York late at night, so in love with that city, and it just was like, that’s what I wanted to capture was just the vibrance and the life of the city. It’s in the script too. It’s in their script. Just the whole interactions. I was just in New York for Tribeca, and it was like I had the same experience that they had trying to find a restaurant. It just feels very, we’ve all had the experience.

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
Okay, so at this point, I’m going to just ask this straight out question: What’s the difference between a director of photography and a cinematographer?

Meena Singh
There’s no difference really. It’s just what a person prefers to call themselves. I don’t know. I don’t know where historically those two different names came from, but they’re the same person. I’m a cinematographer and I’m the director of photography.

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
So I’m interested in … my background is writing. I’ve done books and I write news stories, but I was one of these journalists who fell in love with films. So I feel some kind of cosmic connection between film and journalism, and I marvel at the way how you pursued truth accuracy and avoided inaccuracy, the way that journalists are supposed to – you know, always be in pursuit of the truth. So again, it was amazing.

Meena Singh:
Yeah, I’ve called myself both. So same thing. Same thing. But I appreciate that what you’re saying about the writing and journalism and yeah, I think for me it’s all the films that we make all start with the writing. So that is where this began. I think when you read a script right away, you can tell if it’s going to be say something, if it’s going to be a jewel. And I felt that with this one. So I’m glad that that’s years later, once it’s done and it’s out there and people are watching it, they’re getting the same feelings that I got when I read it.

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
It takes years to make films. I’m used to knocking out a 750 word story or doing blogs and other writing platform, and so I don’t know how you survive from the beginning. I can’t imagine myself surviving over a year or two waiting for something I did to come to life. So I have this terror in that somewhere. Anyway …

Meena Singh:
Yeah, I would say that pressure is much more on the director and the people who created the show because they go all in on the show. They’re in all aspects of it. The writing, the creation, the selling, the making of it, the post of it, then the distribution, and I just come along and I shoot it for five days and then I’m done. I was on for about a month of prep, and then we filmed for one week. That was it, which is pretty quick for a pilot. We had one week to film everything. We were shooting all nights.

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
That was shot in a week? Wow. It looks like it was months. I mean, it is a flawless episode. I mean, it was just … Anyway, at this point are there any questions that you were expecting me to ask or you wanted me to ask that I’ve missed so far?

Meena Singh:
No, I can take this any direction you want to take it.

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
Okay. So how did you get into the business?

Meena Singh:
Oh, cool. So I went to Columbia College in Chicago, and it’s a very technical school. A lot of great filmmakers come out of there. ,And that was really my inspiration. I don’t know if there wasn’t a school just right outside my doorstep that I could go to. I don’t know if I would’ve found my path there. I mean, I have to say also, my cousin was a screenwriter, so she from India. She came over with her newlywed husband, and he was a screenwriter and he was going to UCLA for screenwriting.

And that was the only connection I ever had to a person who’s in the film industry. That happened when I was about 16. And it was a huge revelation to me that there’s people who actually make movies, not just the huge, you think of Spielberg and the huge people who make movies, and it feels very much like a family thing, generations. You can’t just get into it, which turns out is kind of true.

But yeah, I think my cousin being in the film industry. He was struggling for a long time. So that part I didn’t really pay attention to. But the fact that he was, he was a writer and he was pursuing film was a huge; it gave me, it felt like I could also do the same thing. Everybody else in my family was doctors, engineers, scientists.

So I don’t know. I think that we choose a direction that we can see from an older generation that has already pursued. It’s a little easier that way than going at it from a completely different new angle.

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
But it feels like filmmakers have to deal with more rejection than …

Meena Singh:
We deal with a lot of rejection.

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
So how do you?

Meena Singh:
Deal with it?

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
I mean, is there something cosmic that helps you to make it part of the learning experience or something?

Meena Singh:
Yeah, good question. I think that when you do finally get a project and it finally does happen, the other thing is that … I have four movies I’m attached to right now that are still waiting to happen. So there is something cosmic to how do that all the pieces come together at the right time and with the right people, that the movie actually happens. It’s really a lot of work, and I think all I can do, but to answer your question, I’ll say it’s extremely stressful.

It’s very hard on your confidence. So that took me a long time to build my confidence to the point where I just kept, I mean, I just keep plugging away. And I think anyone who really wants to do this just keeps pushing against all of the rejection, which is so hard. But the thing is that when you do finally make something, it makes all of it worth it. It really does.

And you kind of forget all of the trauma that you’ve been through trying to get the movie made, and you just want to do it again. Because for me, it just brings me so much joy. And the whole point of doing this to me is to connect people to each other, to connect people, understanding that we are all sharing the same story, really impactful for me and makes me keep going.

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
I remember interviewing a filmmaker around the time I think I became fascinated with short films like 15, 20 minutes. And I was talking to him about how he got into business. And I know that sometimes, or maybe a lot of times I want to get away from the tutorials I was reading about filmmaking, but sharp filmmakers, they make films totally dedicated, but with some idea that eventually they can turn it into some kind of feature film.

And so I asked, I was talking to him about how he was dealing with the business, and he says something like, I only work with my friends. I work with people I know and I stay away from the others. So we didn’t go into the others, but it seemed that there was that affinity to connect with other people on the project, and they were all carrying the same torture. So that was enlightening that.

Meena Singh:
Yeah, I think that’s very important. I think it affects the project for sure that everyone is on the same page and that you all, I mean, I think it’s very important to work with people that you enjoy being with. I think people that are all trying, they have the same message. And, yeah, I want to be friends with, I am friends with everyone I work with, and I think everyone I work with, I tend to work with again, because it’s like a lifetime.
I feel once you make a movie with somebody, it’s like a lifetime bond with directors. Very much so. I just want to keep making movies with them.

Gregg Morris-theWORD:
The people I worked with … in my early journalism stage when I was in Rochester, New York where I got really started, I had this sense that I couldn’t deal with someone with a camera, I couldn’t deal with a producer that is, what I’m trying to say clearly is that I couldn’t deal with a crew the way that the broadcast journalist did (at the local news stations), because one of the things that I sort of tripped into, I had a wave insinuating myself to sources.

And I could never get into my head how I could insinuate the whole film crew. I mean, there were ways to do it, but insinuate a whole film crew into a source to get him or her, them to tell me stuff. I became a fly on the wall. I was covering police and crime, and they (police commanders would let me, I don’t know how me-they did this, but I sort knew what to write for what was on the record and what was not without going through the rigmarole, which is necessary nonetheless, what was on and off.

My editors didn’t know this was one of the ways I went about reporting. I just sort of knew what was on the record. The investigators would let me know where they were coming from and why they didn’t want this or do that and stuff. And I just felt there was a pleasure with it at the same time. But it was lonely and I don’t get the pressure that filmmakers are lonely. I was reaching out to readers, hopefully my story would influence them to do something. That might not sound clear but that’s the best way I can describe for now.

Meena Singh:
Well, filmmaking is very much a collaborative art. I mean, you have got to use the people that are your creative team and use your crew. I mean, a director has to; people say you’re only as strong as your team. You’re only as strong as your crew. And I have realized that I think when I was younger, I felt like I have to do everything myself and know everything myself because I felt that I had to prove something coming into it as a young person. And probably also because I was coming into it as a female in a highly male dominated position.

End of Part 1, Click here for Part 2