Women Behind the Scenes Spotlight: Emily Kapnek

Today’s Women Behind the Scenes spotlight is focused on writer and executive producer Emily Kapnek.

Emily first got her start in writing for television with episodes of Hercules and the animated series Rocket Power in the late 1990’s, but her first big break came when she won a contest run by Nickelodeon. She won first place for a pilot script she wrote, which resulted in a 60 episode run of the animated Nickelodeon series As Told by Ginger. She wore many hats during the long run of that series, including writer, story editor, voice director, consulting producer and executive producer

In 2006, Emily created the short-lived drama Emily’s Reason Why Not that starred Heather Graham in the lead role. The following year she worked as a writer and consulting producer on the short-lived comedy Aliens in America.

She then worked as a writer and co-executive producer in 2009 on the dark comedy Hung followed by working as a writer and consulting producer on the popular NBC comedy Parks and Recreation.

But her biggest claim to fame is the current comedy Suburgatory for which she created and acts as showrunner/executive producer and writer. The sitcom is now in its third season on ABC; and that has given Kapnek the opportunity to work on yet another potential comedy for the network: this one called Selfie and is inspired by My Fair Lady.

Selfie will tell the story of a self-obsessed twentysomething woman who is more concerned with “likes” than being liked. But after suffering a public and humiliating breakup, she becomes the subject of a viral video and suddenly has more social media followers than she ever imagined. She then enlists the help of a marketing expert at her company to help repair her tarnished image.

Emily is a three-time Emmy Award nominee for the animated series As Told by Ginger. She has been married to writer and producer Dan Lagana (best known for the MTV comedy series Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous) since 2008 and they have two children.

She can be followed on Twitter @EmilyKapnek.