Thomas Duncan-Watt
Career[edit]
TV writing[edit]
Duncan-Watt began his career as a writer on Australian comedy series Good News Week.[14] His series credits include Dennis & Gnasher, Pirate Express, Winston Steinburger & Sir Dudley Ding-Dong,[15] Beat Bugs, Alien TV. In 2018, Duncan-Watt was brought on as one of the writers on sci-fi action series Space Nova,[16] for which he also wrote the pilot.[17] The series was subsequently nominated for two AWGIE Awards, with Duncan-Watt winning the award for his episode Ghost Station. In 2019, Duncan-Watt, and collaborator, Suren Perera won Best in Show[18][19] at the Asian Animation Summit in Seoul for their 'original concept', Escape from Pirate Asylum.[20][21] Duncan-Watt and Perera were also the first international winners of the Ottawa Animation Festival’s ‘Pitch THIS’ competition, for their original series, Owl & Cloud.[22][23][24]
Plays[edit]
Duncan-Watt is the co-creator of two comedy plays, Thank You For Being a Friend[25][26] and That Golden Girls Show: A Puppet Parody,[27][28] both of which use Muppets-style puppets to parody the 1980s television series The Golden Girls.[29] Thank You For Being a Friend toured Canada, where it won ‘Best Independent Theatre Production’ at the Broadway World Awards.[30] That Golden Girls Show: A Puppet Parody debuted in 2016 Off-Broadway. The show commenced a US tour in 2019.[31][32]
Thank You For Being a Friend lawsuit[edit]
In 2016, Duncan-Watt, with the producers of the show Thank You For Being a Friend, Neil Gooding and Matthew Henderson, sued long-term collaborator Jonathan Rockefeller and his companies in New York state court over his puppet parody "That Golden Girls Show!"; alleged breaches of the license agreement, fraud, tortious interference with contract, defamation, other claims.[33] The complaint by Duncan-Watt and his producers claimed that Rockefeller "stole the show"; deprived them of royalties; and harassed them.[34] The suit was only partially dismissed in 2018 with presiding Judge Justice Andrea Masley allowing several complaints against Rockefeller to proceed.[33]
In a separate case in Australia filed in 2017, Rockefeller and his company sued Duncan-Watt for defamation. In 2020, the Federal Court of Australia dismissed Rockefeller's defamation claims.[35][36] In his ruling, Justice Thomas Thawley concluded that the Gooding's post was not defamatory because it was "substantially true" that Rockefeller had stolen the show from Duncan-Watt.[35][37][38]