Ilene Chaiken | |
---|---|
![]() Chaiken at the White House in 2023 | |
Born | |
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Television director, producer and screenwriter |
Years active | 1988–present |
Known for | The L Word |
Partner | LouAnne Brickhouse |
Children | 2 |
Ilene Chaiken (born June 30, 1957) is an American television producer, director, writer, and founder of Little Chicken Productions. Chaiken is best known as being a co-creator, writer and executive producer on the television series The L Word , and was recently an executive producer on Empire , The Handmaid's Tale, and Law & Order: Organized Crime .
Chaiken was born in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania [1] to a Jewish family. [2] She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with an undergraduate degree in graphic design in 1979. [3]
She began her career as an agent trainee for Creative Artists Agency, and as an executive for Aaron Spelling and Quincy Jones Entertainment. In 1988, she was the coordinating producer for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the associate producer for Satisfaction. She then wrote the screenplay Barb Wire (1996), and the television films Dirty Pictures (2000), and Damaged Care (2002). Dirty Pictures won the Golden Globe for Best Miniseries or Television Film in 2000. [4]
Chaiken co-created The L Word in 2004, inspired largely by her own experiences as a lesbian. [5] Her first romance with another woman, which ended in heartbreak when the woman revealed she had a long-distance girlfriend, served as a loose inspiration for the relationship of the characters Marina Ferrer and Jenny Schecter. [5]
In 2007, she and a group of women in the entertainment and tech industries launched a social networking site called OurChart for lesbians and their friends. [4] OurChart was online until 2008, when it was shut down. [6] At that time, a spin-off show of The L Word entitled The Farm was in development and two pilots were being written by Chaiken, although Showtime never bought the series. [7] [8]
Chaiken produced a documentary for Showtime in 2014 titles L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin. The film focused on multiple lesbian women, telling their experiences of being gay in the Deep South. [9] During this time, Chaiken was also a showrunner on ABC's The Black Box, which was cancelled after one season. [9] [10]
Chaiken is credited with first developing the TV adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, which became a successful Hulu original show. Chaiken left the project during development to become the show-runner on Fox's Empire, but was still credited as an executive producer. [11]
In January 2019, Showtime announced that it had ordered a full season of the sequel to The L Word. [12] The show aired December 8, 2019, titled The L Word: Generation Q , and picks up where the original series ended, set ten years later. [13]
More recently, her company, Little Chicken Productions, signed an overall deal with Universal Television. [14] In 2020, Chaiken co-created the show Law & Order: Organized Crime , a spin-off of the long-running series Law & Order. [15] The following year, she worked as a writer and showrunner for the series, but was replaced by Barry O'Brien part-way through production of the second season. [16] [15]
Chaiken has been married to LouAnne Brickhouse, a former executive at Disney, since 2013. [17] They live in the Laurel Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles and have nurtured more than 100 species of birds and other fauna, which they document regularly on an Instagram account. [17]
Chaiken is co-parent to twin daughters Tallulah and Augusta with her former partner, English architect Miggi Hood. [18]
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
1988 | Satisfaction | Associate Producer |
1996 | Barb Wire | Screenwriter |
2000 | Dirty Pictures | Screenwriter |
2002 | Damaged Care | Screenwriter |
2014 | L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin | Producer |
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
1991–1992 | The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air | Producer |
2004–2009 | The L Word | Co-creator, writer and producer |
2010–2012 | The Real L Word | Creator and producer |
2015–2020 | Empire | Executive Producer |
2017–present | The Handmaid's Tale | Executive producer |
2019–2023 | The L Word: Generation Q | Co-creator and executive producer |
2021–2022 | Law & Order: Organized Crime | Co-creator, writer and executive producer |
Year | Nominated work | Award | Category | Result |
---|---|---|---|---|
1997 | Barb Wire | 17th Golden Raspberry Awards | Worst Screenplay | Nominated |
2000 | Dirty Pictures | 58th Golden Globe Awards | Best Miniseries or Television Film | Won |
2008 | The L Word | 20th GLAAD Media Awards | Davidson/Valentini Award | Won |
2016 | Empire | 73rd Golden Globe Awards | Best Television Series- Drama | Nominated |
2017 | The Handmaid's Tale | 69th Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Drama Series | Won |
2017 | The Handmaid's Tale | PGA Awards 2017 | Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Drama | Won |
2017 | The Handmaid's Tale | Writers Guild of America Awards 2017 | Drama Series | Won |
2017 | The Handmaid's Tale | Writers Guild of America Awards 2017 | New Series | Won |
2018 | The Handmaid's Tale | 70th Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Drama Series | Nominated |
2018 | The Handmaid's Tale | PGA Awards 2018 | Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Drama | Nominated |
2018 | The Handmaid's Tale | Writers Guild of America Awards 2018 | Drama Series | Nominated |
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is an American police procedural crime drama television series created by Dick Wolf for NBC. The first spin-off of Law & Order, it stars Mariska Hargitay as Detective Olivia Benson, now the commanding officer of the Special Victims Unit after originally having been Stabler's partner in a fictionalized version of the New York City Police Department, and Christopher Meloni as Detective Elliot Stabler. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit follows the detectives of the Special Victims Unit as they investigate and prosecute sexually based crimes. Some of the episodes are loosely based on real crimes that have received media attention.
Jennifer Beals is an American actress. She made her film debut in My Bodyguard (1980), before receiving critical acclaim for her performance as Alexandra Owens in Flashdance (1983), for which she won NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.
Clea Helen D'Etienne DuVall is an American actress and filmmaker. Her film appearances include The Faculty (1998); But I'm a Cheerleader; Girl, Interrupted ; Ghosts of Mars (2001); Identity;21 Grams ; The Grudge (2004); Zodiac (2007); and Argo (2012). On television, DuVall starred as Emma Borden in Lizzie Borden Took an Ax (2014) and its miniseries spinoff, The Lizzie Borden Chronicles (2015). Her other credits include Carnivàle (2003–2005), Heroes (2006–2007), American Horror Story (2012–2013), Better Call Saul (2015–2017), Veep (2016–2019), and The Handmaid's Tale (2018–2022). She also voiced Elsa on Fox's HouseBroken, which she co-created, from 2021 to 2023.
The L Word is a television drama series that aired on Showtime in the US from 2004 to 2009. The series follows the lives of a group of lesbian and bisexual women who live in West Hollywood, California. The premise originated with Ilene Chaiken, Michele Abbott and Kathy Greenberg; Chaiken is credited as the primary creator of the series and also served as its executive producer.
Leisha Hailey is an American actress and musician known for playing Alice Pieszecki in the Showtime Networks series The L Word and The L Word: Generation Q. Hailey first came to the public's attention as a musician in the pop duo The Murmurs and has continued her music career as part of the band Uh Huh Her.
Katherine Sian Moennig is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Shane McCutcheon on The L Word (2004–2009), as well as Jake Pratt on Young Americans (2000). Moennig played the role of Lena in the Showtime series Ray Donovan from 2013 to 2019. She played a recurring role on Grown-ish on Freeform as Professor Paige Hewson in seasons 2 and 3. She reprised her role as Shane McCutcheon in The L Word: Generation Q in 2019. Moennig currently hosts the podcast PANTS with close friend and L Word co-star, Leisha Hailey.
Richard Anthony Wolf is an American film and television producer, best known for his Law & Order franchise. Since 1990, the franchise has included six police/courtroom dramas and four international spinoffs. He is also creator and executive producer of the Chicago franchise, which since 2012, has included four Chicago-based dramas, and the creator and executive producer of the FBI franchise, which since 2018, has also become a franchise after spinning off two additional series.
Ever Dawn Carradine is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Tiffany Porter and Kelly Ludlow on the ABC television series Once and Again and Commander in Chief, and as Naomi Putnam and Janet Stein on the Hulu original series The Handmaid's Tale and Runaways, respectively.
Jennifer "Jenny" Diane Schecter is a fictional character from the American Showtime television drama series The L Word, played by Mia Kirshner. Jenny debuted on-screen during the pilot episode and remained until the series' final episode. Jenny became well documented in the media for her outlandish plots. Jenny was created by series creator Ilene Chaiken, based on herself as a younger woman living in the lesbian community. Chaiken implemented a series of changes to the character, one of which being the inclusion of a sexual abuse story line and self-harm, which some critics observed as being attempts to make her likable in the LGBT community. One storyline that gained mainstream attention was adopting a homeless dog, only to have it put down for personal gain. Other story lines include stripping, writing novels, coming out, directing a film, affairs, and her possible murder. The final season is based around the lead-up to her death, during which Jenny made herself extremely unpopular with her friends, who became suspects.
Jenji Leslie Kohan is an American television writer and producer. She is best known as the creator and showrunner of the Showtime comedy-drama series Weeds and the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black. She has received nine Emmy Award nominations, winning one as supervising producer of the comedy series Tracey Takes On....
The Real L Word is an American reality television series aired on the cable station Showtime, where it premiered on June 20, 2010. The show was created by executive producer Ilene Chaiken and Magical Elves Productions, following the success of the television drama The L Word also created by Chaiken. The Real L Word follows a group of lesbians in their daily lives in Los Angeles, and as of the third season, Brooklyn.
Chaiken is a surname of Yiddish origin. Notable people with the surname include:
David Herbert Caspe is an American film and television writer. As a writer-producer, he is best known for his work in television as creator of sitcoms such as ABC's Happy Endings, the Showtime comedy Black Monday, and the NBC sitcoms Kenan and Marry Me. Other work includes writing the 2012 film That's My Boy and co-creating the YouTube Premium series Champaign ILL.
The Handmaid's Tale is an American dystopian television series created by Bruce Miller, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The series was ordered by the streaming service Hulu as a straight-to-series order of ten episodes, for which production began in late 2016. The plot features a dystopia following a Second American Civil War wherein a theonomic, totalitarian society subjects fertile women, called "Handmaids", to child-bearing slavery.
The first season of American/Canadian co-produced drama television series The L Word premiered on Showtime on January 18, 2004 and ended on April 11, 2004, created by Ilene Chaiken, Michele Abbott and Kathy Greenberg. The series portrayed the lives of a group of lesbians and their friends, connections, family and lovers in the trendy Greater Los Angeles, California city of West Hollywood. The series was highly popular and was Showtime's highest rated series. It was renewed for a second and third season.
The sixth and final season of The L Word started airing on January 18, 2009 and ended its original run on March 8 of the same year. 8 episodes were produced instead of 12.
Marja-Lewis Ryan is an American writer, director, producer, and actress. She is best known for writing, co-starring, and co-producing the LGBT drama film, The Four-Faced Liar, which won multiple awards, including Outstanding First Narrative Feature at L.A. Outfest. She is the executive producer and showrunner for the sequel to The L Word, called The L Word: Generation Q, which premiered in December 2019.
The L Word: Generation Q is an American drama television series produced by Showtime that premiered on December 8, 2019 and ran for three seasons, ending in April of 2023. It is a sequel series to The L Word, which aired on Showtime from 2004 to 2009. Similar to its predecessor, the series follows the lives of a queer group of friends who live in Los Angeles, California.
Law & Order: Organized Crime is an American crime drama television series that premiered on April 1, 2021, on NBC. The seventh series in the Law & Order franchise and a spin-off of Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the series stars Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler, reprising his role from SVU. The show features a "single-arc" storyline that takes multiple episodes to resolve.
L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin is a 2014 American television documentary film directed by Lauren Lazin. Produced by Ilene Chaiken as part of The L Word franchise, it premiered on Showtime on August 8, 2014. The film follows the lives of various lesbians living in the Bible Belt of the United States.