In 2019, McNamara took her first leap. With just two weeks before the application deadline, she wrote a required speculative script for a Warner Bros. writing program. Although she wasn’t accepted, the studio optioned the script for three years. “It was my first time ever writing a script, and I just dove in,” McNamara said, recalling how she looked at script formatting online and recreated what she hoped would be considered a professional-looking document — this was before she found out about apps like Final Draft.

More than luck

Dogsitting and binge-watching the HBO series Succession during COVID motivated her. McNamara said the award-winning show about a family’s inner power struggle reignited her love for layered storytelling. “I was just floored by how tight the writing was,” she said. “That’s when I knew that I didn’t just enjoy watching stories unfold. I wanted to write them.”

With that insight, McNamara traveled across the Atlantic to enroll in a one-year master’s program in screenwriting at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. “I’d never been there before,” she said. “I signed a lease over FaceTime and moved to a city I’d never seen, not knowing anyone. It was a risk, but it was the right one.”

While in Scotland, she wrote and directed A Date with Destiny, her first short film. The historical drama is about students who stole the Stone of Destiny in 1950 from Westminster Abbey. It’s a story that remains a legendary act of Scottish nationalism. Originally conceived as a play, the project evolved during her studies and a birthday trip through the Scottish Highlands. Within a week, filming began in an old house outside Glasgow.

After McNamara uploaded the film to YouTube and Vimeo to fulfill a requirement for a related certificate from New York University, the film attracted attention from several international festivals, including the IndieFEST Film Awards last year. There it won multiple honors, including an award for cinematography — not as a student film, but in a general filmmaker category. That distinction helped her secure an IMDb page and gain more industry attention, including top prizes over the past two years from film festivals in Paris, London, Glasgow, and back in the U.S., in Austin, Texas.

“It all came together so fast,” she said. “Half of it is luck, but the other half is showing up prepared when that luck hits.”

Finding your niche

Now based in Los Angeles, McNamara is building a career across genres and roles. She’s worked as a background actor, been approached to produce a feature film, and is actively developing both a short and a full-length screenplay.

“At first, I dreaded the idea of directing. I didn’t want to be the one everyone came to with questions. But once I got on set, I loved it. It gave me the same high as writing, like I was flying.”

Her advice to young graduates is to embrace uncertainty. “At Richmond, I didn’t have it all figured out, and that’s okay. You think you have to have a plan, but sometimes the best thing is not knowing. That gives you the freedom to discover something amazing.”

She credits UR with giving her the intellectual foundation to move in a new direction with confidence. Her double major in leadership studies and classical civilizations might not scream future filmmaker, but McNamara explained how it supported her leap. “Leadership taught me how to adapt. Classics taught me how stories endure,” she said.

And the most important thing she’s learned? “The more that I show up for myself, and the more that I do the things I say I’m going to do, the more confidence I have in myself because I trust myself to do the things that I want to do.”