Eagles fan, Philly native, and Oscar-winning screenwriter Josh Singer is back with ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’

“Go Birds” impulsively rolls out of Oscar-winning screenwriter Josh Singer’s mouth as soon as I introduce myself and The Inquirer, before chatting about his new Apple TV+ drama, The Last Thing He Told Me. The series premieres today.

The man who wrote The West Wing, The Post, Spotlight, and First Man was born in Philadelphia and attended Sandy Run Middle School in Dresher, where his interest in writing initially manifested under tragic circumstances. “When I was in eighth grade, my friend Mark Ludwig passed away suddenly from an aneurysm,” Singer recalled. “I had a tough time understanding and dealing with that. So I started spending late nights at the computer, writing.”

After transferring to Upper Dublin High School, Singer continued to write but also performed in musicals, played baseball, and was a member of the math, video, and chorus clubs. There just wasn’t enough time for him to even consider becoming a writer.

“I always thought I was going to go to law school, work in politics, or try to do some good for the world.” He graduated magna cum laude from Yale and studied at Harvard Law and Business Schools, but watching the first five seasons of The West Wing inspired him to give writing a chance.

Singer moved to Los Angeles, where he landed his dream job. He joined the writing team for The West Wing and worked on its final two seasons. Having worked with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Damien Chazelle, Ryan Gosling, and most recently Bradley Cooper on his Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, Singer called The Last Thing He Told Me the most personal and important project he’s ever done.

The series revolves around Hannah Michaels (Jennifer Garner), who forms a close relationship with her stepdaughter Bailey (Angourie Rice), after Michaels’ husband Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau)disappears. It’s based on the novel of the same name by Laura Dave, Singer’s wife. The couple, who met at a reading of Dave’s second book, The Divorce Party (“I was foolish enough to fall in love with a woman who’d written a book with that title,” Singer joked), worked together on the screenplay for The Last Thing.

During their collaboration, Singer found himself repeatedly inspired by Dave’s talents. He praised her “emotional wisdom and insight that she imbues into her characters.” Admittedly, he has been “a huge fan of her work for a long time.”

While he wrote The Last Thing, Singer was also collaborating with Philly-area native Bradley Cooper on the screenplay for Maestro, a forthcoming Netflix biopic, directed by Cooper.

Singer’s Philly pride shines through as he discusses how Cooper likes to read his scripts out loud to really understand the characters. Singer says Cooper “bleeds green,” points out that Bernstein studied at the Curtis Institute, before, of course, concluding our conversation with the only appropriate send-off: “Go Eagles. Go Birds.”

“The Last Thing He Told Me” is available to stream on Apple TV+ starting April 14