Women Behind the Scenes Spotlight: Moira Walley-Beckett

Today’s Women Behind the Scenes spotlight is shone on actress turned producer, writer and series creator Moira Walley-Beckett.

Moira was raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada where she attended the Banff School of Fine Arts. At the tender age of three, she started learning ballet where she spend the next 20 years of her life. Her time in that world of dance would come in handy later in her life (but more on that shortly).

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Moira guest starred in a wide variety of different TV shows, including Stingray, 21 Jump Street, MacGyver, Wiseguy, Jake and the Fatman, Highlander, Diagnosis Murder, The Pretender, Chicago Hope, Mike Hammer, Private Eye and ER.

During the first half of the 2000s, she also appeared in episodes of Seven Days, Higher Ground, The Practice and NYPD Blue as well as several made-for-TV movies.

It was in 2007 when she joined the writing staff of the short-lived NBC detective drama Raines that starred Independence Day star Jeff Goldblum. In the following year, she was part of the writing staff for the fan favorite legal drama Eli Stone.

Everything changed for Moira in 2009 when she took a job on the AMC drama Breaking Bad, starting out as story editor, which lead to her eventually becoming a writer on the show and then being promoted to supervising producer on the acclaimed series. In 2014, Moira was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for the episode entitled “Ozymandias” – which has since been called one of the greatest episodes of TV ever broadcast. She won the award, becoming the first solo woman to win the award in that category since Ann Biderman won in 1994.

It was thanks to her time on this award-winning series that her latest creation – the Starz’s ballet series Flesh & Bone – that the lead character and premise of this new series came to fruition. The original plan was for the show to be a continuing series, but due to production costs it was limited to an 8-hour mini-series, which just aired its final episode this past weekend.

The show won’t go off without a bang, though, as it recently received Golden Globe nominations not only for its lead actress Sarah Hay but also for Best TV Limited Series. Let’s wish them good luck and look forward to Moira’s next project (whatever it may be).

Fans can follow Moira on Twitter @YoWalleyB.