Women Behind the Scenes Spotlight: Jenna Bans

Jenna Bans

In our ongoing series saluting women behind the scenes in Hollywood, this week’s spotlight is put on the creator of the new series Off the Map – Jenna Bans.

Jenna had been accepted to the University of Chicago Law School, but deferred while trying to break into writing. Just as she ran out of deferring options, she landed a job on Desperate Housewives in 2004. Shortly before this, she was to be a staff writer for the Jerry Bruckheimer action series Fearless, which never took off the ground.

She was a writer for the ABC soap from 2004 to 2007 also working as a story editor from 2005 to 2006 and then as an executive story editor for 2006 to 2007. She then moved over to the ABC drama Private Practice, working as a writer and producer in 2007. From there she became a writer and producer on Grey’s Anatomy in 2008, moving up to supervising producer and later co-executive producer over the course of the next two years.

This past TV season she became a first-time series creator for the ABC medical drama Off the Map where she also serves as one of the writers. Off the Map came from an idea she had been “kicking around about a Doctors Without Borders-type medical series set in the jungle.” As the series Lost was ending and she knew the sets for that series would be up for grabs once it finished, the genesis of Off the Map came about. It was “a no-brainer to set it down there”.

Off the Map is about three young doctors who enlist for work at a medical clinic set in a fictional South American location and stars Caroline Dhavernas (Wonderfalls), Valerie Cruz (The Dresden Files and True Blood), Jason George (Eli Stone and Grey’s Anatomy), Zach Gilford (Friday Night Lights), Mamie Gummer (the box office film Evening and the mini-series John Adams), Martin Henderson (the box office films Torque, Bride & Prejudice and Smokin’ Aces) and Rachelle Lefevre (from the Twilight franchise and What About Brian).

Off the Map will air a new episode tonight on ABC at 10 PM.