Women Behind the Scenes – Meredith Lavender and Marcie Ulin

Today’s Women Behind the Scenes spotlight is shone on the writing and producing team of Meredith Lavender and Marcie Ulin.

Meredith is a Chicago native who came to Los Angeles, after college in Massachusetts, to “ply her trade” as a singer-songwriter while Marci hails from Chattanooga, Tennessee and is a Harvard grad who came west for a graduate degree at USC.

They met in the early 2000’s while working “lower-rung” showbiz jobs at MGM. Meredith worked as an assistant to MGM Pictures president Michael Nathanson while Marcie worked the desk of executive VP of production Elizabeth Ingold. Being in the some workplace, they became friends, having lunch together most days, spending their free time together and developing a circle of mutual friends.

Meredith Lavender

After her stint at MGM, Meredith worked as an assistant to her brother, Jay Lavender and his partner, Jeremy Garelick, who wrote the screenplay for the box office film The Break-Up (which starred Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston) while Marcie worked for producer Mike Karz before forming their own partnership.

In 2006, the two voluntarily became unemployed in order to focus on writing together and that fall, they sold the first pitch they ever shopped to the CW Network and CBS Paramount Network Television. That pitch was for a comedy called Eight Days a Week, which was to be a mid-season series for the 2007-2008 TV season. But, the dreaded writer’s strike affected their first big project and it never got off the ground.

It should be noted that the comedy was to star Justin Hartley (Smallville), Anna Chlumsky (My Girl and Veep) and singer-actress Christina Milian and was to be produced alongside Hazy Mills Production (the banner run by former Will & Grace star Sean Hays and his partner Todd Milliner, who are the men behind the NBC fairytale drama Grimm).

Undeterred, the ladies went on to collaborate in the creation of the 2009 online series The Lake – under the CW banner – which was directed by Jason Priestley (from Beverly Hills 90210 fame) and produced by Jordan Levin. The cast included Elisa Donovan (the original box office film Clueless), Mark Totty (Joan of Arcadia), Erica Dasher (star of the ABC Family series Jane By Design) and Drew Van Acker (Tower Prep and Pretty Little Liars).

Marcie Ulin

That same year the team was involved in the short-lived ABC space drama Defying Gravity, working as story editors and writers.

In 2010, they worked as co-producers and writers for the popular USA Network spy drama Covert Affairs before moving over to work as producers and writers for the short-lived (and sadly, much-maligned) ABC reboot of Charlie’s Angels.

This TV season they have been working as co-producers and writers for the ABC spy drama Missing, which stars Ashley Judd; and their latest project, a scripted drama which was just announced by E! – who, yes, is getting into the scripted programming market. The as-yet untitled drama has the following tagline: Ambition bordering on insubordination fuels the lives of a group of executive assistants who are seemingly loyal minions to their high-powered bosses. However, when their superiors are out of the office, the gloves come off as these aspiring titans plot their way up the corporate ladder.

Sounds like their beginnings of working in the industry is coming back to bear fruit.