Ilene Chaiken

 ( 1957 Births ) 

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 .

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Early life and education Chaiken was born in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania to a American Jews family. Jewish Journal: "The Jewish writer and actor who's 'the voice of black America'" by Curt Schleier September 11, 2015 She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with an undergraduate degree in graphic design in 1979.

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Career 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.

Chaiken co-created The L Word in 2004, inspired largely by her own experiences as a lesbian. 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.

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. OurChart was online until 2008 when it was shut down. 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.

Chaiken produced a documentary for Showtime in 2014 titles . The film focused on multiple lesbian women, telling their experiences of being gay in the Deep South. During this time, Chaiken was also a showrunner on ABC's The Black Box, which was cancelled after one season .

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.

In January 2019, Showtime announced that it had ordered a full season of the sequel to The L Word. The show aired December 8, 2019, titled , and picks up where the original series ended, set ten years later.

More recently, her company, Little Chicken Productions, signed an overall deal with Universal Television. In 2020, Chaiken co-created the show , a spin-off of the long-running series Law & Order. 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.

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Personal life Chaiken has been married to LouAnne Brickhouse, a former executive at Disney, since 2013. 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.

Chaiken is co-parent to twin daughters Tallulah and Augusta with her former partner, English architect Miggi Hood.

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Filmography

1988	Satisfaction	Associate Producer
1996	Barb Wire	Screenwriter
2000	Dirty Pictures	Screenwriter
2002	Damaged Care	Screenwriter
2014		Producer

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Television

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
2017–2025	The Handmaid's Tale	Executive producer
2019–2023		Co-creator and executive producer
2021–2022		Co-creator, writer and executive producer

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Awards

1997	17th Golden Raspberry Awards	Worst Screenplay	Barb Wire
2000	58th Golden Globe Awards	Best Miniseries or Television Film	Dirty Pictures
2008	20th GLAAD Media Awards	Davidson/Valentini Award	The L Word
2016	73rd Golden Globe Awards	Best Television Series- Drama	Empire
2017	69th Primetime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Drama Series	The Handmaid's Tale
	PGA Awards 2017	Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Drama
	Writers Guild of America Awards 2017	Drama Series
	Writers Guild of America Awards 2017	New Series
2018	70th Primetime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Drama Series
	PGA Awards 2018	Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Drama
	Writers Guild of America Awards 2018	Drama Series

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See also

• List of female film and television directors
• List of lesbian filmmakers
• List of LGBT-related films directed by women

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External links

Categories: 1957 Births, Living People, 20th-century American Screenwriters, 20th-century American Women Writers, 21st-century American Screenwriters, 21st-century American Women Writers, American Television Directors, American Women Television Writers, Television Writers From California, American Women Screenwriters, American Lgbtq Screenwriters, American Lesbian Artists, American Lesbian Writers, Glaad Media Awards Winners, Lgbtq Television Directors, Lesbian Screenwriters, American Showrunners, American Women Television Directors, American Women Television Producers, Jewish American Screenwriters, Lesbian Jews, Lgbtq People From California, American Television Show Creators, Television Producers From California, People From Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, Lgbtq People From Pennsylvania, Television Producers From Pennsylvania, People From Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island School Of Design Alumni, Empire, Screenwriters From Pennsylvania, Writers Guild Of America Award Winners

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