'Earl' writer inks deal with Universal

April 21, 2008 In one of the biggest success stories for NBC's diversity writing program, "My Name Is Earl" writer-producer Danielle Sanchez-Witzel has inked a two-year overall deal with Universal Media Studios. Once an aspiring sports broadcaster who covered the Stanford baseball team for the university's radio station while a student there, Sanchez-Witzel shifted her attention to feature producing when she enrolled in the masters program at the UCLA School of Film & Television. A sitcom-writing class in the second year changed her career path yet again, and after graduation, she took a year writing comedy spec scripts until landing a staff writer job on the freshman half-hour "In-Laws" in 2002 under NBC's diversity initiative for writers.

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