ADVERTI ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT SHOWRUNNERS


JANINE SHERMAN BARROIS Howard University graduate Janine Sherman Barrois (Third Watch, ER) is currently an executive producer on CBS’s Criminal Minds. Barrois launched her career writing on Yvette Lee Bowser’s Lush Life after participating in the Warner Bros. Writers’ Workshop. Nominated for six NAACP Image Awards and a Humanitas Award, Barrois is a versatile scribe who has written for comedies (Eddie Murphy’s The PJ’s and The Jamie Foxx Show) as well as for dramas. She spent nine seasons honing her craft in the John Wells camp on both Third Watch and ER, where she discovered her passion for writing about the dark side. Janine recently sold a character procedural entitled Darkness Falls, along with Erica Messer and Mark Gordon, and produced by ABC productions and CBS productions for CBS network.


MARA BROCK AKIL Girlfriends opened up a dialogue among African-American women about relationships and life. Years later, people still compare their “besties” to the characters they bonded with each week and declare, “That’s something Joan would do!” Such pop culture references speak to the brilliance of its showrunner Mara Brock Akil. Akil started her career writing on sitcoms such as South Central, Moesha and The Jamie Foxx Show. Mara worked in male- dominated rooms where she often found herself wondering aloud about the absence of the black female voice. She responded by creating the NAACP Image Award-winning sitcom Girlfriends in 2000, and followed it up with The Game in 2006. Akil teamed up with her husband, writer/director Salim Akil (The Game, Jumping the Broom), and powerhouse producer Debra Martin Chase (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Princess Diaries), both Image Award recipients, to remake the 1976 movie Sparkle, which starred Jordin Sparks as a musical prodigy and the late Whitney Houston as her strict, loving mother. The Akils are an uber- talented industry couple who signed a multiyear development deal with BET Networks, where an hour-long project aptly titled Single Black Female was recently green-lit.


KATHLEEN MCGHEE-ANDERSON Another illustration of a unique African-American female voice can be found in the career of Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, who began writing for Little House on the Prairie in 1981. As a writer, she perfected her craft on some of black America’s most memorable shows — including Webster, Gimme A Break, The Cosby Show, 227 and Amen. McGhee-Anderson has an impressive resume, which highlights her versatility as a dramatic writer on such shows as Touched by an Angel and Soul Food. She was the executive producer and showrunner of the ABC Family show Lincoln Heights, an Image Award-winning one-hour drama that ran for four seasons and focused on the lives of an African-American family living in a working-class neighborhood of Los Angeles. The Detroit native used her position to explore controversial issues such as gangs, crime, drugs and violence. McGhee-Anderson can be proud of the fact that she breathed life into an African-American family with strong father-and- mother figures who kept their family in line with love amidst the obstacles.


16


JANINE SHERMAN BARROIS


MARA BROCK AKIL


KATHLEEN MCGHEE-ANDERSON Watch the 44th NAACP IMAGE AWARDS Friday, February 1, at 8/7C on NBC


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60