Women Behind the Scenes Spotlight: Kelly Souders

Kelly Souders

Today’s Women Behind the Scenes spotlight is focused on TV writer and executive producer Kelly Souders.

Like many other women working hard to break into the industry, Kelly got her start working on a seven-minute film in 2001 called Stuck for which she wrote the screenplay. The focus of the short is on an elderly lesbian couple living in Death Valley, preparing to go to a friend’s house to play bridge. They argue over the speed of driving and a dessert they get in the truck; but an encounter with a girl (played by then unknown actress Eden Sher who stars in the ABC comedy The Middle) dressed as a butterfly will change their relationship for good.

It was a couple years later that Kelly landed a position that would change her career. In 2003 she started working as a story editor for a little TV show called Smallville and the next year she was promoted to executive story editor.

Over the next few TV seasons she gradually moved up the ladder within the Smallville crew, working as a producer then a supervising producer, co-executive producer, writer and eventually as executive producer with her production partner Brian Peterson as well as Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer. She also had the opportunity to direct one episode in 2010. For the last two seasons of Smallville, Kelly and Brian were the primary showrunners of the long-running series.

The following TV season (2011-2012), Kelly was brought onto the short-lived CW series The Secret Circle, working as a consultant along with her partner Brian. Unfortunately, this series – that was created by Scream writer and The Vampire Diaries co-showrunner Kevin Williamson – was not renewed for another season on the network, allowing Kelly (and Brian) the opportunity to work with Greg Berlanti (the man behind Everwood, Brothers & Sisters and the new CW TV series Arrow) on the USA Network mini-series Political Animals. She (and Brian) worked as a consulting producer and writer on the acclaimed mini-series that starred Sigourney Weaver and Carla Gugino in a complicated story of a powerful political family reminiscent of The Kennedys.

Now Kelly (and Brian) is working on the brand new CW series Beauty and the Beast – the remake of the classic 1980’s series of the same name. She will serve as co-showrunners with writers and executive producers Jennifer Levin and Sherri Cooper. This new series has just gotten its start in the 2012-2013 season so it is too soon to determine if it will last longer than The Secret Circle or even one-fourth of the time of Smallville, but she is wished well with her career.