Meet Us

Taylor Coriell

WRITER | DIRECTOR

A redhead who hails from Kentucky, Taylor Coriell (she/her) is a bicoastal writer & director with an affinity for ladycentric stories about belonging and the people who make you feel at home with yourself through the lens of buddy comedies and rom coms.

A Black List Recommended writer, she has been honored to be in the Top 15% for the Nicholl Fellowship, a 2x Semifinalist for the Sundance New Voices Labs, and a Finalist for the Humanitas New Voices Fellowship, Atlanta Film Festival's TV Pilot Competition, & Catalyst Content Festival's Live Pitch Competition, and was most recently featured on The Stunt List's 2023 Naughty List. In 2024, Taylor won Panavision's New Filmmaker's Award for her short film, Ladylike, and PANO's Production Microgrant for her short film, squish. Her work as a director & producer has been seen on Amazon Prime, Dekkoo, SeekaTV, and in festivals all over the world.

A former figure skater, recovering opera singer, and full-time pal, Taylor would love to talk about your favorite period piece, whether or not LA can one day provide her with a *actual* bagel, or even hear if you have a theory about why Barack Obama follows her on Twitter (yes, still).

Director Statement

“When I visited the Players Club for a mixer in pre-Covid 2020, I first heard the story of the “Sarah Bernhardt Room”. “The Divine Sarah” was one of the world’s first international superstars, and in 1911, on a tour to the US, she was granted special permission by the members of the gentlemen-only Players Club in NYC for one night only to visit the club. Upon arrival, she boarded the elevator– and got stuck there for about an hour. When the fire brigade finally released her, she was so angry, she stormed from the club, never to return. The club has affectionately called the elevator, “The Sarah Bernhardt Room” ever since.

The story was so funny to me, and a fascinating time capsule of the period. Things for women were changing so much then, and yet, not at all. From there, the idea of two besties going on an adventure to meet their hero at her Taylor-Swift-level of megastardom seemed only natural– but what could two such women, constrained by the expectations of their gender at that time, take away from spending an evening breaking out of them? What sort of innate power can we all find when we release ourselves from the rigid expectations of the gender binary?

Through the lens of an effervescent, joyful buddy comedy, Ladylike stimulates our cultural conversation about gender expression & performance, and the ways we can empower individuals through letting them be their authentic selves. With influences like the mission-driven buddy comedy Booksmart, the classic period piece A Room With A View, and the more modern take on a literary masterpiece The Personal History of David Copperfield, the film weaves a contemporary aesthetic into the audio-visual fabric of the film to connect this early-20th century story more viscerally with a 21st century audience.”

Lauren Sowa

PRODUCER | ACTOR

LAUREN SOWA (she/her) is a New York-based actor and filmmaker who received her BFA in Drama from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. As an actor, she has been featured on FBI (CBS), The Plot Against America (HBO), The Rainbow Experiment (Paramount+), and The Devil’s Well (Amazon Prime). She is the co-founder of Form & Pressure Films, a production company dedicated to diversity and equality on set and on screen. Their first film, Marisol, won the 2019 HuffPost Impact Award and was licensed by HBO. Other films she’s produced can be seen on DUST, Tubi, Paramount+, PBS, Amazon Prime, and at film festi- vals all over the world. Select festival credits include: Slamdance, Nitehawk Shorts Festival, San Diego Latino Film Festival, and Cinequest. She is also the co-president of Pano, a non-profit dedicated to women and non-binary filmmakers.

Producer Statement

As soon as I was introduced to Taylor’s work, I knew that her voice was special. Ladylike is exactly the movie I want to see, and frankly, the world I want to inhabit at the moment. Who doesn’t want to have the adventure of a lifetime with their bestie, even if you have to break a rule or two? My ethos as a producer is to foster creative visions that fight for a better world, while cultivating inclusive talent in front of and behind the camera. Well-being and workplace health and safety are paramount to me. Storytelling is one of the greatest gifts we can share with humanity, and I believe that a happy team creates better work. I can’t wait to make this film, and I can’t wait to share it with you!

The Team