Lona Williams | |
|---|---|
 Williams in 1992 | |
| Born | September 26, 1966 [1] Rosemount, Minnesota, U.S. [1] |
| Occupation(s) | Producer, writer, actress |
| Years active | 1991–present |
Lona Williams (born September 26, 1966) is an American television producer, writer, and actress.
Williams was raised in Rosemount, Minnesota, [2] [3] [4] where her father, Les, was a middle school math teacher.[ citation needed ] Williams participated in a number of beauty pageants as a child and was crowned Minnesota's Junior Miss in 1985, [5] before becoming the runner up in the year's America's Junior Miss, winning a $10,000 scholarship. [6] [2] [5] She graduated from Rosemount High School shortly thereafter.[ citation needed ]
Williams attended the University of Minnesota and after she took a screen-writing course there, her teacher encouraged her to move to California to find work.
After working as an assistant on one show, Jerry Belson at The Tracey Ullman Show , helped her get a job as a writing assistant on The Simpsons . [2] She occasionally provided voices for the show, including that of Amber Dempsey, a single-episode character from "Lisa the Beauty Queen". [7] She noted: "I really was only a typist for the show. But by working on the script, I learned how the scripts were put together. I would go to work and type all day, and come home and work on my spec scripts for The Simpsons and Roseanne ." [2]
Bruce Helford hired Williams as a writer on the short-lived Someone Like Me before in 1995 signing her up as a writer and producer on The Drew Carey Show . She stayed for three seasons and wrote the screenplay Dairy Queens which was retitled and released in 1999 as Drop Dead Gorgeous . [2] [8] She also wrote the original script for the 2001 film Sugar & Spice (on which she is credited under the pseudonym Mandy Nelson). [9] [10] She co-wrote the script of Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse .
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Drop Dead Gorgeous | Also actor and executive producer |
| 2001 | Sugar & Spice | written under pseudonym Mandy Nelson |
| 2004 | Shark Tale | Additional dialogue |
| 2015 | Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse | Story |
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Hardball | 2 episodes |
| 1995 | Bless This House | Episode: "If It Ain't Broke, Break It" |
| 1995–1999 | The Drew Carey Show | 7 episodes; also producer and story editor |
| 2002 | In My Opinion | Television film |
Jennifer Jane Saunders is an English actress, comedian, singer, and screenwriter. Saunders originally found attention in the 1980s, when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with her best friend and comedy partner, Dawn French. With French, she co-wrote and starred in their eponymous sketch show, French and Saunders, for which they jointly received a BAFTA Fellowship in 2009. Saunders later received acclaim in the 1990s for writing and playing her character Edina Monsoon in her sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
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