Rowe grad who works on 'Grey's Anatomy' knows secrets of tonight's season premiere

Aaron Serna was going to call Festiva at 4 p.m. as promised, but on the set of Grey’s Anatomy, you are frozen in time from the moment the red lights start flashing and the buzzer sounds. That means they’re filming a scene, and you better not move or make a sound.

Serna is a production assistant on ABC’s cult hit Grey’s Anatomy, which has its two-hour sixth season premiere tonight. It’s a high-pressure environment, sure, but it’s also the greatest job a 23-year-old recent college graduate could hope for in entertainment.

During his last semester of college, he left The University of Texas at Austin to attend a satellite school in Los Angeles. It was an internship-for-credit program that scored him a gig at Paramount Advantage, a film division of Paramount Pictures specializing in art-house movies. At the time, the company was co-producing There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild and No Country for Old Men, all of which later scored Oscar nominations.

Before leaving California for graduation in Austin, Serna interviewed with the makers of Battlestar Galactica for a position as a writer’s assistant, a coveted position for any aspiring screenwriter. Not only was it a chance to sit in the writer’s room and craft storylines – he would be able to work on the epic show’s last season. Weeks passed, and no call back came. He moved back to Austin to receive his diploma.

“The day before I was going to graduate, I thought ‘You know, I never really got that finalization about the job. Who knows if they even made a decision?’ So I e-mailed the guy I interviewed with,” he said. “Literally, three minutes after, I get a call from him saying, ‘Hey Aaron, it's Ryan. Can you start with us Monday?’”

The show wanted him to move back to L.A. for the temporary position. It would only last a week and a half; the full-time employee was on his honeymoon. The ticket back to the West Coast would cost $600 alone, and Serna would have to forego a family vacation to Montana that had been planned for months. He turned to his once-screenwriting teacher Jack Kenny, a famed television writer who right now is penning for the Syfy network series Warehouse 13.

“He replied to my e-mail with three words, ‘Take the job,’” Serna remembers.

He did. It was the best thing he could have ever done.

His job stretched into a full-time position when the former assistant moved on to another show. The man who worked at Barnes and Noble to get through college was sitting at a table with legendary TV screenwriting talent.

“It was a dream job,” he said.

He was with Battlestar for three months before moving on to the Paradigm Agency, where he worked with a TV literary agency.

“When you say agency, people automatically think Entourage. And it is a very, very tough job,” he said. “I had a tough boss, but learned so much working for him. … They say if you last a year at an agency you can do anything.”

Exactly a year later, he left for Grey-er pastures, where he has the inside scoop about the show’s much-anticipated premiere and upcoming season – not that he can divulge any of it.

“I’m very proud of the work we’ve been turning out,” he said.  “You’ll just have to watch.”

HOMETOWN HOLLYWOOD
Name: Aaron Serna
Age: 23
Graduated from: McAllen’s Nikki Rowe High School in 2004; University of Texas at Austin in 2008.
Job: Production assistant on Grey’s Anatomy
Long-term goal: Screenwriter

Serna got to see many of this season’s new shows while working at a TV agency in Los Angeles. Here’s what he has to say about some of the new shows:

On Glee: “I think the writing is so witty and so sharp.”

On Modern Family: “That is a laugh out loud riot. It’s one of the funniest scripts I’ve ever read and funniest shows I’ve ever seen.”

Also watch: Cougar Town and Flash Forward

Sandra Gonzalez writes about Valley natives who work in the entertainment industry for Festiva. You can reach her at (956) 683-4427.

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