Power Showrunners: Inside the Minds Behind 'Walking Dead,' 'Bates Motel,' 'Arrow' and More

Ann Biderman

With more than 2 million viewers tuning into its Sept. 22 finale, Ray Donovan secured its place on the mantel as Showtime’s most successful freshman series, besting the first season of Homeland by more than 30 percent. For her saga about a morally challenged Boston family living in Los Angeles, Biderman (Southland) amassed one of the most impressive casts in years, with movie stars Jon Voight and Liev Schreiber as estranged father and son. Their magnetic performances make them — and the series — instant Emmy contenders.

Laurel Canyon Home

Biderman, 62, enjoys the peace of working solo inside her rustic 1940s home in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon while she preps to return to the writers room for season two of Ray Donovan, the Showtime drama she created that stars Liev Schreiber as a clandestine Hollywood fixer.

'Sifting for Gold'

“I know solitude well, having spent so many years as a screenwriter,” says Biderman of writing such films as Primal Fear and Public Enemies. “That’s why I enjoy the conviviality of the writers room experience. I can’t wait to get back in there.” A few moments pass as she ponders both what she’s looking for in new blood — and what she isn’t. “The minute I read ‘handsome CIA agent,’ I throw the script across the room,” she says, laughing. “This process really is like sifting for gold.”

No Sample Scripts

“I don’t want to read sample scripts for Ray,” she says, flipping through one quickly and making notes with her pencil. “I want to read original material. I need to know their personal voices because I cast the writers room as carefully as I do the series.”

Scott M. Gimple

Under Gimple, 42, The Walking Dead soared to a record-shattering 16.1 million viewers in its season premiere Oct. 13 and 10.4 million adults 18-to-49, making it the most watched series on TV in the demo. Gimple was promoted in February (after Glen Mazzara exited) and had penned some of the ratings juggernaut’s best-reviewed episodes from last season, as well as the pivotal season-two hour that featured one of the show’s most shocking deaths. 

'Remix' Approach

The first-time showrunner also wrote the season-four premiere, as the adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s long-running comic takes a “remix” approach to the source material and a slower pace.

'Walking Dead' Comics

Gimple’s office inspiration in the form of Walking Dead comics.

Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin

For a network that’s had little trouble garnering high ratings with unscripted shows like Duck Dynasty, A&E execs turned to Ehrin, 48, and Cuse, 54, to deliver something different: critical attention for a scripted series. Their modern-day Alfred Hitchcock prequel, Bates Motel, did precisely that, with heavy praise and an Emmy nomination for its lead actress Vera Farmiga. It delivered viewers, too, with 4.4 million tuning in each week, turning it into a top five show for the cable network.

'Bates Motel' Brand Managers

“Our job keeps getting bigger and bigger,” says Cuse following a 3:15 p.m. script meeting with Ehrin in late September. “We are now brand managers, with responsibility for everything that falls under the moniker of Bates Motel, from T-shirts to Bates Lego houses.” The duo, as well as their large writing staff, today also are navigating the team’s busy schedule of script notes (4 p.m.), editing and, yes, even their own makeup session (4:30 p.m.) as they prep to film a writers roundtable video for A&E.

Ehrin: 'I'm a Very Internal Person'

“The biggest part of this job is communication, which I hate,” says Ehrin with a laugh. “I’m a very internal person, and we are constantly having to communicate what’s in the writers room from this group to that group. Thankfully, Carlton is really good at that stuff.”

Armando Iannucci

With five 2013 Emmy nominations and wins for lead actress in a comedy (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and supporting actor (Tony Hale), Veep had a bang-up year. Iannucci, 49, a veteran showrunner on such cult-hit British fare as The Thick of It and Alan Partridge, brings a wry, sophisticated sensibility to HBO’s drama-heavy slate, which was sorely in need of a smart adult comedy.

'I Don't Recruit Assholes'

Iannucci and his six-person writing staff are having a blast hashing out the final arc of Veep’s upcoming season. It’s a process, he says, that works largely because of his core professional tenet. “I don’t recruit assholes,” says a laughing Iannucci of his all-British team, which on this early October afternoon in urban London is delving into the sixth, seventh and eighth episodes of the political comedy’s third season.

Jason Katims

“I depend on the writers to dig deep,” says Katims, speaking with his writing staff on NBC’s midseason comedy About a Boy.

The 'Daunting' Task of Running Two Shows

The Parenthood creator has experience with the dizzying — or “daunting,” as he describes it — act of running two shows (the final two seasons of Friday Night Lights overlapped with the first season of Parenthood). “When I was young, I wanted to be a short-order cook,” he says, seated now in his office where a sign with the FNL rallying cry, “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose,” hangs above. “I remember growing up in Brooklyn, and as a teenager I’d watch them at the grill with 10 things going at once, and somehow they all magically came out at the same time. After I became a showrunner, my wife looked at me and said, ‘You got your dream.’ ”

'Friday Night Lights' Memories

The Welcome to Dillon placard from Friday Night Lights is one of many mementos lining the hallways of Katims' offices.

Jenji Kohan

The Weeds creator wisely chose the hottest medium in TV for her next project, and it paid off: Kohan, 44, saw Orange Is the New Black, her women’s prison-set dramedy’s 13-episode first season earn universally positive reviews (Netflix’s Arrested Development reboot couldn’t claim the same) thanks to buzzy lead actress Taylor Schilling and a remarkably diverse group of female stars.

Gag Gift From Netflix

Like the Legos in Kohan's writers room, the penguin is another gag gift from Netflix’s execs.

Treadmill Desk

“What I’ve found is that I can’t actually write when I’m on it, though I’ve been told I should really try,” she says of her treadmill desk.

Jeff and Jackie Schaffer

The Schaffers’ (husband-and-wife team Jeff, 43, and Jackie, 39) fantasy football comedy The League removed all doubts about retaining its audience when it moved to new network FXX. It held on to an impressive 94 percent of its viewership from last season’s premiere, even though the new network had launched just three days earlier in nearly 20 million fewer homes.

Little Arwen

It’s the second season the Schaffers have had to balance caring for little Arwen with their series’ “street-fight-like” production schedule. “Last year was much easier,” admits Jackie, peeking her head around the corner to see if Arwen has finished eating. “We’d just strap her on our chest and go to set. Now she is ambulatory! Thankfully, she’s had her hep C and hep A shots, so it’s not as dangerous for her to visit the scary places we shoot in downtown L.A.”

Stephen Nathan and Hart Hanson

Over late-morning coffee and biscuits (with pancakes and scrambled eggs on the way), Hanson and Nathan went over the latest Bones script at John O’Groats on Pico Boulevard, a few blocks west of the Fox lot where they’ve made the procedural for nearly a decade. Their giggling (or whatever you call the infectious laughter of two bubbly middle-aged men) likely would concern fellow diners if they saw what was on the pages before them: a gory description of a dead body, the latest of Bones’ notoriously comical and gruesome opening sequences.

'Old-Man Shorthand'

“We have 70 years of doing this between us,” says Hanson, who admits that scheduling usually requires that their morning meetings take place at the studio. “There’s an old-man shorthand for us. If we talk through things with the other writers around, it would take forever.” Adds Nathan, “And when we meet in the office, 25 people will come in and interrupt us.” Such is their friendship and the creative process that has kept the series on the air for 171 episodes. 

Greg Berlanti

The Warner Bros. headquarters of Berlanti Productions is a homey and spacious bungalow in the shadow of the studio’s famous water tower. 

Berlanti With His 'Arrow' EPs

Joined by Arrow EPs Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg (right), Berlanti sat near a familiar campaign poster from USA’s Political Animals.

'The Tomorrow People'

Berlanti ran down story points for the new CW series The Tomorrow People, a retelling of one of his favorite childhood series.