Distinguished Alumnus 2021, Rob Edwards '81

Growing up as a self-described “quiet kid who liked to read” and a “wise guy who liked to crack jokes,” writing proved the ideal career path for Edwards. He was a student at Cranbrook when he found his earliest writing success, taking a January term class on science fiction short stories. He wrote several of his own short stories that caught the attention of the instructor, who shared one with renowned author T. Coraghessan Boyle, who praised the work. 

The next year, Edwards taught his own January term class on movie making, “mostly so I could get a bunch of other kids to help me make a movie. It went to a couple of festivals and did well.” Soon after, Dr. Charles Geroux, former Cranbrook theatre instructor, invited Edwards to direct an Oscar Wilde play. 

“It was cool because there was no one looking at whether I was going to succeed or fail,” Edwards says. “They told me just to have fun, and I did. I thought, if there’s a way to do this as a career, then I want to do it.” 

Edwards came to Cranbrook as a seventh-grade boarder. “I think I proved that seventh graders were too young to be boarders because I was the last one,” he says, laughing. Because of all of the time he spent on campus, he became fast friends with faculty kids and their parents.  

“I got a unique viewpoint of campus because I saw teachers as human beings in their daily lives,” he says. He became very close to several faculty families, including retired Upper School teachers Prospero and Fran Dagbovie. “They basically became part of my own family,” Edwards recalls. “My parents were always inviting them over for dinner.” 

Upper School English teacher Dr. Jeffrey Welch took on a special role, encouraging Edwards to pursue his dreams. “As an African American student and the only one in seventh and eighth grade—and as a young person being away from home—it was easy to feel alone,” Edwards says. “Jeff believed in me. He is one of the smartest guys I know, and I wanted to be like him.”

He adds, “At that age, it’s a good feeling if you know someone is cheering you on. There was no one prouder of me than Jeff when I wrote to him and told him to turn on his TV on a Thursday night to see my name in the credits.” 

Following graduation from Cranbrook, Edwards enrolled at Syracuse University. Despite the clear trajectory that Edwards envisioned for his career, there was still one very important person he had to convince: his physician father who had long dreamed of working alongside his son in a family medical practice. 

When Edwards graduated from Syracuse, his father gave him ninemonths to find a job in Hollywood—or he would have to come home and go to medical school. Upon arrival in Los Angeles, Edwards wasted no time in finding work. “I had to be working fast, and so I tried to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could,” he says. 

Tenacity and talent proved a powerful force and soon he was refining his natural talents on such primetime hits as A Different World, In Living Color, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. 

Working on The Fresh Prince “was the most fun I ever had because no one knew what the show was going to be but us—we knew it was going to be great,” Edwards says. “No one knew Will Smith or the rest of the cast, but we started writing for Will and realized there was nothing this guy couldn’t do. And (co-star) Alfonso (Ribeiro) had been acting since he was a zygote so they were just a great comedy duo.”  

Edwards later created his own NBC sitcom Out All Night starring Patti LaBelle and worked alongside Aaron Sorkin on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Edwards’s work in television soon led to writing for the big screen, amassing a lengthy list of credits including such latter-day Disney classics as The Princess and the Frog and Treasure Planet, both nominated for Academy Awards. He consulted, too, on Wreck-It Ralph, Tangled and Frozen, adding to a string of animation successes.  

With two films forthcoming in 2023, Edwards is adding to the rich history of Disney and now Marvel. “I’ve been wanting to do something in their world for a long-time,” he says of the superhero universe. “I’m very proud of both of these projects.”

When not working on his own projects, Edwards teaches screenwriting at Syracuse University. “Someone always had a niece or nephew whose script they wanted me to read and I’d see kids making the same mistakes over and over,” Edwards says. “Eventually I asked someone why these kids kept making these errors and they said, ‘because guys like you don’t teach.’ I realized it was time to put my money where my mouth is.” 

When it comes to sharing advice for aspiring writers and filmmakers, he encourages young people to “model success. Study people who are incredible and then work to fill those shoes, so when you get your chance, you’re ready,” Edwards says. “It’s like Steve Martin said, ‘Be so excellent they can’t deny you.’”