David Samuel Rosenthal is an American writer and TV producer, best known as the executive producer of season seven of the popular comedy-drama Gilmore Girls and co-creator of the original Ellen TV series. He has also been known to work on The Middle and Jane the Virgin .
Rosenthal is from Lawrenceville, New Jersey. His father is Anti-Defamation League Latin American Affairs director and human rights activist rabbi Morton Rosenthal. [1] [2]
Shortly after moving to Hollywood, Rosenthal was hired as a writer's assistant on the ABC sitcom Anything but Love . [3] He began to write on his own and got a job on the show Nurses. [3] Rosenthal was later hired as a staff writer on Anything but Love. When the show ended, he wrote for Laurie Hill, a program created by Neal Marlens and Carol Black, who also produced The Wonder Years . [3] With Marlens and Black, Rosenthal helped develop a sitcom for Laurie Hill co-star Ellen DeGeneres. The show, entitled These Friends of Mine, became Ellen . [3]
After a ten-year stint developing sitcoms for Jeffrey Katzenberg, Rosenthal was hired as a writer on the sitcom Spin City and was quickly promoted to showrunner. [3]
In April 2006, it was announced that Gilmore Girls executive producers Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband, Daniel, could not come to an agreement with The CW and would be leaving the show when their contracts expired that summer. [4] Rosenthal, who worked on the show as a writer and producer for season six, was selected by Sherman-Palladino to replace her as showrunner. [5] Though the season was considered uneven compared to the previous six, Rosenthal's writing and direction received praise. [6] [7]
Rosenthal was married to fellow Spin City writer Sarah Dunn. They divorced in 2001. He later quit his job on Spin City to focus on writing a controversial play about supermodel Heidi Klum. [8] He married comedy writer Gracie Glassmeyer in 2015. [9]