Women Behind the Scenes Spotlight: Michelle Lovretta

Today’s Women Behind the Scenes spotlight is shone on television writer, producer and series creator Michelle Lovretta.

Michelle’s first credited project, written under the name of MA Lovretta, was the screenplay for the 1998 independent film called The Fishing Trip, which chronicled the troubled life of a young college student who confronts an abusive father during a trip home.

A few years later she worked as a writer for one season on the syndicated series Relic Hunter that starred Tia Carrere as a university professor who traveled the globe after lost, stolen and rumored-of artifacts and antiquities.

In 2001, she worked for one season as a story editor and writer on the Canadian TV series The Associates that focused on five junior associate lawyers at a Toronto law firm. Then she followed that up with working as a writer on the last season of the syndicated U.S. series Mutant X.

The following year she was a writer on the Canadian mini-series Snakes & Ladders that starred Amy-Price Francis as a woman who took a job as an executive assistant to a cabinet minister at Parliament Hill. It was that same year – 2004 – that she was an executive producer and writer on the popular, but short-lived, Canadian TV series Instant Star.

The next year she wrote the teleplay on the Canadian TV movie called Hunt for Justice that starred Wendy Crewson and John Corbett in a story about the struggle of Louise Arbour, the Chief War Crimes Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal battling to indict Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity.

In 2006, she wrote the screenplay for the comedic made-for-TV movie called Playing House that starred Joanne Kelly, Lucas Bryant and Colin Ferguson in a story that sounds very much like the box office film Knocked Up where a young, ambitious editor finds out she’s pregnant just as she lands her big break.

NOTE: It’s quite ironic that the three leads in this film are now or were recently stars of popular Syfy series – Kelly on Warehouse 13, Bryant on Haven and Ferguson on the recently defunct Eureka.

The next year, Michelle was the writer of the made-for-TV Lifetime movie To Be Fat Like Me that starred Kaley Cuoco from The Big Bang Theory and Caroline Rhea in a story about a physically fit teenager who wears a fat suit as part of a film project to experience the hardships of her overweight schoolmates.

She followed that project with another made-for-TV movie for Lifetime called Sorority Wars where she was the co-executive producer and writer. The film starred Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars) as a prized legacy candidate for a college sorority co-founded by her mother who ends up at the rival sorority instead.

In 2010, she created the Canadian series Lost Girl, that has become a hit on Syfy, working as an executive producer and writer for the first season and a co-executive producer and writer for the second season. She split her time during the second season of Lost Girl working as a writer and producer on the short-lived CW series The Secret Circle. Reportedly, she will be back for the third season of Lost Girl that will start to air here in the States on Syfy this coming January.

NOTE: The season finale of the current season of Lost Girl will air on Syfy next Friday, September 14 at 10 PM.