When we spoke with Nan Bernstein Freed, she was sheltering in place in Los Angeles, where, as a TV producer, she has spent much of her time. Born in a small town in Pennsylvania, she’s lived and worked all over the country as she worked on TV shows, but Tyringham, Mass., is really the place she considers home. With 35 years in the entertainment industry, she has been involved in nearly every facet of production. She has won many awards and was nominated for an Emmy for producing the television series "Friday Night Lights." Since all production has stopped in the entertainment industry, she is on hold with her next project, and she can’t wait to get back to the Berkshires.

I was a social work student, but I liked film and music and knew I wanted to be in the entertainment business. After I graduated from Boston University I went to Manhattan and got a job as a receptionist at United Artists, then became a publicist (I said sure to everything). After some other jobs in New York I ended up in LA for six years,  became a location manager for 11 years, and then a production manager. The first thing I did in that role was a documentary, “The Making of Tootsie.” I’d never done a documentary before, but I learned, and it got me into the Directors Guild.

I became a producer about 10 years ago. It’s like being a general contractor — you’re responsible for budgets, hiring the crew, staying on schedule, making sure the electric and plumbing go in before the walls go up. It’s being a bridge between the creative and on-set crews.

I’m most proud of my work on “Friday Night Lights.” People are just discovering it now, even though it ran for five seasons. NBC never understood it, and people watching it now say they didn’t realize what it was. It’s not just about football. It was one of the first network shows that dealt with high school pregnancy without preaching about abortion or having the baby, and it was about so many other things.

What I’d like to do eventually is teach what they don’t teach in film schools. It’s important to learn how to hustle, how to connect the dots to manifest what you want.

Here in West Hollywood I’ve been cooking and cleaning a lot, taking walks and staying in touch with family. At least I don’t have to wake up at 3:30 in the morning to be on location. To do something for the pandemic, I called up the movie caterers — they have all this food that they can’t use — and  have been packaging up the food and delivering it to food banks.

We’ve been in Tyringham for almost 39 years. The first time I visited the Berkshires, when I was in college, there was something about the Berkshires that just totally wrapped around my heart. I felt something really special energetically and knew I needed to move there one day. I feel so grounded in the Berkshires. I just miss home.

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The Rural We