An email on her phone let her know that she’d be awarded $10,000 from the Johnny Carson Endowed Student Support Fund. She forgot to tell her parents about it.
In all fairness, Valencia 21-year-old Kyla Jones had just been on a summer church trip to North Carolina. Storms cancelled returning flights, she and her friends had slept on airport floors, they’d rented cars, took side flights, and upon their return home, many in the group got sick, including Jones.
Nonetheless, according to her parents, Jones isn’t one to brag about anything.
“We’ll usually find out from other people,” said her dad, Graham Jones.
Her mom, Sherrey Jones, added, “This is who she’s been.”
Jones sat down with her parents and The Signal at Starbucks on Newhall Ranch Road and Bouquet Canyon Road in Santa Clarita to share her story. She’s studying screenwriting at the University of Southern California in the cinematic arts program, focusing on TV writing, and doing an internship with the Jim Henson Co., which, she said, is her dream company. She grew up always interested in the arts.
Born in Toronto, Jones spent her early days in school in French immersion programs. In 2013, when she was 10 years old, her parents moved the family to Southern California. Jones’ dad, who worked in the Canadian television industry, said he wanted to come to Los Angeles because there was more room there to grow. Jones said she quickly found herself deep in the English language with so much to learn.
She began attending Valencia Valley Elementary School during the middle of her fifth-grade year. In Canada, she was in her last year of elementary school and preparing to move on to the next grade in a new school. At Valencia Valley, she found she had another year and a half before she could move on to Placerita Junior High School — that’s how the schools were set up here.
Never the one to look back, Jones’ parents said their daughter never complained or became bitter over change. For instance, when Jones arrived at Valencia Valley, she was tasked with remembering all 50 of the United States of America and their capitals in less than a week’s time, even though the rest of the class had been working on it all year.
According to her parents, Jones was one of only five students in that class to get them all right.
“She’s never been entitled,” her mom said.
And her dad: “She’s always focused, always attentive.”
Both parents said their daughter is present with the task at hand and present with the people she’s with. A longtime Valencia friend of hers, Nicole Felici, said Jones is an in-the-moment kind of individual, and someone who, when she’s with you, makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the room.
“Kyla definitely has an awareness of the present moment,” Felici said in a phone interview. “She’s aware of what other people are experiencing as well, not just herself. I think part of what gives her that amazing presence is, when you talk with her or you’re spending time with her, whether you’ve known her for 10 years or you met her that day, she’s thinking about how she can help you. So, if she sees someone by themself, she’ll come talk to you. Or, if she knows you’ve had a hard day, she’ll try to make you laugh.”
Since she was a child, Jones has always explored her creativity. She grew up loving books and loving imaginary worlds. She still regularly attends comic book and television conventions, like San Diego Comic-Con and Anaheim’s WonderCon. Some of the things her family, friends and co-workers know her for are her artistic greeting cards. She hand-makes cards for people to say happy birthday or hello, to cheer people up or offer thanks.
“She’s been like that since she was very young,” her dad said. “She doesn’t just create stuff. She creates it for people.”
According to Jones’ mom, everything her daughter does is very, very personal.
“She’s very intuitive to people’s likes and needs,” she said. “That’s who she is. So, when she does a card, she does it specifically for them.”
Felici has been on the receiving end of Jones’ card-giving many times.
“She’s very heartfelt,” the friend said, “and she wants you to know how much you mean to her.”
At one point in her life, Jones thought about a career as a concept artist in film, but as she explored that possibility, she said she realized she couldn’t draw on command.
“Art is more like therapy for me,” she said. “I’m able to expel energy and get my ideas out, but writing is something that I’m comfortable with doing as a job. It’s like the midpoint between an academic rigor and the same kind of freeing therapy that art is for me.”
As a student, Jones’ parents said their daughter continuously excelled. She’s worked hard to do so. Just the same, she equally applied herself to creative endeavors at school.
At Placerita, she took part in the TV production program, trying her hand as a Miner Morning TV anchor, camera operator, editor and more. She enjoyed the work in production. However, that wasn’t her introduction to the field.
“I was into it a bit earlier than that,” Jones said, “partially because my dad, at the time, was a reality TV editor. He still is, but he does other work, too. But I was able to see a lot more behind-the-scenes than I would have otherwise. So, it led to an understanding of, ‘Oh, this is something that’s within reach. This isn’t some far-off fairy-tale land, it’s fairly achievable, even if it takes a lot of work and sacrifice.’”
During her time at Hart High School, Jones began to lean more into her writing. She wrote and performed speeches and competed in the school’s speech and debate club for all four years, even picking up a second-place trophy her junior year. She became president of the club her senior year and went to state finals twice and nationals once. She said she also wrote her first television pilot during the COVID-19 pandemic. This she did just for the sake of doing it. After that, she just kept writing.
Then, when it was time to go to college, she applied to just two schools — USC or the University of California, Los Angeles, both known for their film programs.
“I was so set on doing TV that I was like, ‘Any other college is small potatoes,’” she said. “If I didn’t get in, I’d much rather just go into the industry and get practical experience than a college degree.”
But Jones got accepted into USC. Unfortunately, there was no space in the cinematic arts program, so she went in as a narrative studies major.
The following year, Jones reapplied to the cinematic arts program. According to her parents, applicants at the time had under a 3% chance of getting in. Jones made it in, and last month, she started her final year in the program.
Over the summer, Jones sought out and earned an internship in the Jim Henson Co.’s feature films division, where she helped with project development and script coverage. When the internship ended and it was time to move on, she did what she often does and that was to hand draw and write thank-you cards to those she worked with, each individual receiving a very personalized, very “Kyla Jones” form of appreciation.
That wouldn’t be the end.
“I’m actually coming back to Jim Henson,” she said before she returned for the second internship. “You’re not allowed to do the same internship twice, but I’m switching divisions to TV. So, I’m going to be returning as an intern in a slightly different division and continuing to develop their projects and help them in that way.”
In the world, there are those people who, upon finally working a dream job at a dream company, are crushed when they realize no place could live up to expectations they’d built up over the years. For Jones, that was not the case at all.
“It’s the opposite for me,” she said. “It’s been better than I expected. The thing about Jim Henson is that their brand is exactly what I want to do. Because I love science fiction, I love fantasy, but more than that, I love using genre to reveal stuff about life that we wouldn’t be able to get through realism. Being able to use puppets or cool magic in order to speak to the truths about identity are the things Jim Henson specializes in.”
Perhaps more important, the company, Jones added, created a very family-oriented atmosphere, and the projects have been fun and educational.
Before her internships with Henson, Jones also did others with smaller companies. One was an international film distribution company called Film Mode Entertainment, which, she said, dealt with licensing and distribution for independent films, and which also produced some of its own projects. In all of these exposures to the business, Jones has been like a sponge, absorbing everything she can.
Going into her senior year this fall at USC, Jones is focused on a thesis project that she’s quite excited about. She’s developing a science fiction adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s story about Peter Pan involving time travel and an island full of amnesiacs, she said, and it’ll be a pilot for a television series that perhaps she can even pitch to studios after college.
But the time is fast approaching when Jones will have to put her passion, education, experience and talent to work in hopes of getting that dream job. Growing up with a dad who experienced adversities of his own in a business that can and often does shatter spirits, she’s under no illusion it’ll be easy.
“I do expect a lot of difficulty,” Jones said, “but I know that I have people in my corner. I can say my parents are one of the biggest reasons why I’ve been able to do this. Having such a strong support system, knowing from an early age, watching my dad go through all this, we’ve experienced times of hardship.”
As for her plans to realize her dreams after college, Jones said she’s really not there yet. She might be a dreamer, but she’s still that person who lives in the present. While telling her story at Starbucks, she never once looked at her cell phone, if she even had one with her at all. She’s yours for the time she’s with you. What has come before or what will come after is not what’s on her mind. For the time being, she said she’s only thinking of what she’s working on now.
“I know the ultimate goal is to become a television writer for a fantasy or science fiction show — that’s the evening star I’m charting toward,” she said. “But I think in terms of smaller steps to get there, I mean, obviously there’s the traditional route of becoming an assistant for either a development executive or agency or writer and that kind of thing, but the world is changing a lot, and more than anything, the most updated advice I’ve received has been to make stuff and put it online. Really, I’m going to wait and see.”
Know any unsung heroes or people in the SCV with an interesting life story to tell? Email [email protected].
