April 2023 | Eric I. Lu AB'09 MD'16

by Laura Frustaci

Eric I. Lu AB'09 MD'16 is a Taiwanese American writer, producer and director. Recently, he developed a TV show with CBS about EMS workers in New York City. Previously, he wrote five seasons on a hit Fox medical drama called THE RESIDENT. Eric concentrated in social anthropology at Harvard College and holds a medical degree from Harvard Medical School, which is where he decided to become a full-time filmmaker after helping to start a Youtube channel called Jubilee Project that has amassed over a billion views online. After moving to LA, Eric directed a documentary called LOOKING FOR LUKE about Harvard College student Luke Tang who had died by suicide, in order to raise awareness about mental health in the Asian American community. Today, Eric is passionate about collaborating and telling meaningful stories that make an impact.
“Growing up, I didn’t even know you could write for TV,” says Eric I. Lu, who was a writer/producer for five seasons on the hit Fox medical TV show The Resident. “There was no one around me who was a TV writer. It wasn’t fathomable or imaginable in my mind.”

Eric was born in Taiwan and raised by his grandparents. At age three, he moved to Dallas, Texas to find his parents. He went on to grow up in the South and then attend Harvard. “For most of my life growing up, I lived a sheltered life in a bubble,” recalls Eric. “At a very young age, I was thinking that I had to be a doctor, so I went into Harvard thinking that would be my path.” However, Eric found himself compelled to try something totally new once he arrived at college, where so many new doors were opened. 

“When I first started at Harvard, an upperclassman concentrating in Anthropology invited me to a class, and it seemed really cool, so I went,” Eric explains. He ended up as a Social Anthropology major. “From Anthro, I fell in love with storytelling.” Eric spent a lot of his time while at Harvard in Dorchester listening to drug addicts tell their stories. “I spent a summer in Taiwan with recovering addicts, and post-grad worked in a prison for addicts in Taiwan.” After that, Eric did in fact end up attending medical school. But somewhere along the way, he fell into creating what would become a multi-million subscriber YouTube channel. “I had fallen in love with filmmaking. It became a calling for me,” Eric reflects. The shorter version of Eric’s story? “I started making films, moved to LA, and one day out of the blue, got an opportunity to write for TV, and that changed the trajectory of my entire life.”

Here’s the longer version. “When I was going to medical school, I never would have said I could write for a medical TV show. I felt like I was living in one, so I avoided medical TV shows altogether,” Eric laughs. Right before entering med school, Eric and his friends started their YouTube channel, the Jubilee Project. “I had done short videos in college with my camcorder, and found it interesting and fun,” Eric says. “One of our short films got 2 million views in the first month, and that blew us away."
Bros.jpg“At the beginning, it wasn’t something that crossed our minds, but we were three Asian American guys fresh out of college who had no business getting into filmmaking, but YouTube was a place where your voice could be heard. You could make your own content, and create stories that you resonate with, and reach millions of people,” Eric explains. “During the week I would be in class, and on the weekends I would make videos in LA, Boston, NY, DC, even Spain. We were partnering with different nonprofits and organizations and trying to tell entertaining stories that could also make a positive impact. Storytelling felt like it had this potential to make an impact because of the way it can generate empathy and inspire change. We were seeing people respond to our videos and seeing the tangible impact we could make on peoples’ lives.”

This is how storytelling, TV, media, and medicine intersect for Eric. “There are many ways that you could impact medicine, not just practicing, but through storytelling.” By his second year in medical school, the Jubilee Project had blown up so much that Eric actually ended up taking time off to focus fully on YouTube. Eric says he and his friends just knew it was the right thing to do. “Now is the moment. Now is the time when we go all in. Let’s take that leap of faith,” Eric recalls. “One friend was working at Bain in NYC and one at the White House. We packed our belongings into a car and drove cross country to move in with my parents and create content full time. I fell in love with storytelling and filmmaking and it became this calling for me where it was a bigger sense of purpose. Greater than myself.”


Eric and his friends were working out of his parents’ garage: “It almost felt like a startup,” Eric remembers. “Ultimately we moved out because my parents were very against it. They didn’t support my decision, but I felt like I gained a family through the Jubilee Project team. No matter the vessel for content, the platform or how you’re consuming stories, there’s always stories. People love storytelling and respond to stories that move them. Whether TikTok or a movie theater, all of it is viable as a vehicle to become a storyteller.” Eric and his team traveled around the world and even worked with professional basketball player Jeremy Lin.

“We wanted to change the world and we were foolish enough to try. Why not us? We were young and idealistic.” However, Eric did decide to go back and finish up med school in the end. “Because of my immigrant background as an only child, I respect, honor, and love my parents for the sacrifices they made. So I went back to them and told them I would go back and finish medical school and figure out my path. I will put my heart into the doctor thing.” Eric completed med school and did rotations at MGH, but he felt as though he’d been ripped away from his passion. “I remember sitting in conference rooms at MGH, looking out the window, wishing I was sitting at coffee shops writing.” That mentality is what pushed Eric away from applying for residency. “I told my dean I wasn’t applying for residency, and she looked me dead in the eye, and said, ‘Your films heal, and if we taught you how to heal during medical school, we did our job.’ I wasn’t practicing medicine, but that doesn’t mean medical school was a waste of time.” Medical school provided Eric with the framework he needed to jump into media as a means of healing. 

After graduating med school, Eric learned about and joined Harvardwood. He applied for the Harvardwood TV Writers Program (now the Jeff Sagansky TV Program). That’s how he wrote his first pilot, which landed him his first job as a writer on The Resident. A med school connection called Eric up and asked if he wanted to be involved with the show, and Eric sent over his fresh pilot. “It’s so hard to staff on a TV show. Having a medical background helped. They asked for more work, and that’s where YouTube came in. I know how to tell stories. I had been doing YouTube for ten years. So many components had to come together, and everything I had done leading up to that point did.” And that’s where he’s been writing for the past five years.

When asked what advice he had for creators, Eric responds, “You can do this. It is possible to dream bigger. The unfathomable. Even if it hasn’t even crossed your mind. You never know. Anything is possible... I’m telling you now. Your voice matters. Your stories matter.”

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