Sierra Nizhoni Teller Ornelas (born 1981)[1] (Navajo) is an American showrunner, screenwriter, filmmaker and weaver from Tucson, Arizona. She is one of three co-creators of the scripted NBC (Peacock) comedy series Rutherford Falls, alongside Ed Helms and Mike Schur.[2][3]
Sierra Teller Ornelas | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1981 (age 40–41) |
| Education | University of Arizona |
| Television |
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Known for writing and production work on shows such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Happy Endings, Splitting Up Together, and Superstore, Ornelas has also written and contributed to This American Life and the New York Times.[4] In 2019 Ornelas signed a multi-year development deal with Universal Television, beginning with the Peacock sitcom Rutherford Falls.[4][2]
Ornelas is from Tucson, Arizona.[4][5] She is Navajo, born to the Edge Water clan. Her maternal grandfather is Water Flowing Together clan and her paternal grandfather is Mexican clan.[6]
Ornelas knew as early as second grade that she wanted to write for television.[7] She attended the University of Arizona, where she studied media arts.[8]
After graduating from college, Teller Ornelas worked for five years as a film programmer at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.[4][9] She was inspired to leave that job and pursue her dreams of becoming a television writer by a "big swing" her mother and aunt had made in the 1980s when they spent four years weaving an enormous rug. They sold it for $60,000, which changed their family's lives.[7]
Ornelas applied to and was selected in 2010 for the Disney/ABC Television Group's diversity writing program.[10] After this, she gained a position as a staff writer on Happy Endings.[11][12] She contributed to a sub-plot in which Dave, played by Zachary Knighton, discovers he is one-sixteenth Navajo and begins playing into stereotypes about Native Americans.[11][12] Ornelas said in a 2011 interview with the Navajo Times that if done right, comedy can be a way to "get conversation going about very dense, complicated issues."[11]
Ornelas is committed to gaining diversity in writers' rooms and the media.[12] She, Ed Helms, and Mike Schur were co-creators of the series Rutherford Falls, which presented its first episode on NBC in 2021. As showrunner, Ornelas oversees a writers room that includes four other Indigenous writers – Tazbah Chavez, Tai Leclaire, Jana Schmieding, and Bobby Wilson. Having five indigenous writers for a series is believed to be a first for a major television production.[3] Her overall deal with Universal Television was renewed in August 2021.[13]
In addition to writing and producing, Ornelas is a sixth-generation Navajo weaver.[4][8] She was commissioned by the Arizona State Museum to make a documentary film, A Loom with a View: Modern Navajo Weavers, which explores the weaving of family members: mother Barbara Teller Ornelas; aunt, Margaret Yazzie; and brother, Micheal Teller Ornelas.[8][1]