Women Behind the Scenes Spotlight: Lizzy Weiss

Lizzy Weiss

Today’s Women Behind the Scenes spotlight is shone on screenwriter, TV writer and producer and series creator Lizzy Weiss.

Lizzy was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Growing up she always knew she wanted to be a writer. She attended and graduated from Duke University in 1992 with a degree in Sociology and Women’s Studies. She then went to graduate school at New York University, earning her M.A. in Communications the following year.

She then spent the next five years working random day jobs while writing at night, but in 1999 she wrote the MTV original film called Holding Patterns. This was the first time she was paid for her writing; and while the film did not end up airing, she was hired by MTV to write for the network’s comedy Undressed.

It was during this time that she was given an article called “Surf Girls of Maui” from Outside Magazine; and she wrote a script for a film that was similar to the article, which eventually led to her being chosen to write the script for the box office film Blue Crush. This film gave her the opportunity to work with director John Stockwell, who she later teamed with to write the 2005 potential series Rocky Point, a pilot for The CW that was not picked up, but would have starred Travis Fimmel (Tarzan) and Chyler Leigh (Grey’s Anatomy).

A few years later she was writer and co-producer for the short-lived series Cashmere Mafia and now she is the series creator, executive producer and writer for the popular ABC Family series Switched at Birth.

She is also the writer of the upcoming box office film called Bumped that will star Kellan Lutz (from the Twilight franchise), Camilla Belle (Push) and Katie Cassidy (Melrose Place and Supernatural). The film is a comedy-drama set at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, centering on five distinct twenty-somethings who all get bumped from the same flight and subsequently get to know one another.