Meet The Female Writers Behind The Mad Men

Writers, from left, Marti Noxon, Lisa Albert, Kater Gordon, Dahvi Waller, Robin Veith, Cathryn Humphris, Maria Jacquemetton, at Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood.

Mad Men is widely considered to be the best-written show on TV, a "men's show" whose secret is its women - onscreen and off. But there's an irony at work: these women are writing about characters working in a male ghetto - and being regarded not as members of the team but as aberrations - while living it. - Sadie

Lisa Albert (Producer) – Is a veteran sitcom writer. She spent several years as a staff writer on Major Dad,and freelanced episodes for many sitcoms in the ’80s and ’90s back when freelance scripts were actually produced. (Did you know there’s still a Writers’ Guild rule that every show has to at least meet with a couple of freelance writers every season? What sad meetings those must be nowadays.) She also wrote one episode of Becker, but after Weiner left so there’s no connection there. Most recently, as network sitcom jobs have dried up and freelance jobs have become nonexistent, she apparently did what many veteran comedy writers did and wrote an episode of Hannah Montana for The Disney Channel, and now she’s a drama writer.

Bridget Bedard (Staff Writer) – This is her first TV writing job as far as I know. She is a graduate from NYU’s film department whose student film, Baby, won several prizes and was shown at Sundance.

Maria Jacquemetton (Producer) – A husband-and-wife writing team, the Jacquemettons have written for Star Trek: Enterprise, Baywatch, Relic Hunter and Highlander. In other words, if most of the Mad Men writers are refugees from sitcoms, you could say this team is a refugee from genre shows that took in a lot of freelance scripts. There aren’t a lot of genre shows out there and those that are out there have fairly closed writing staffs, which may be one reason why you find a number of genre-TV writers turning up on cable. Mrs. Jacquemetton was in TV production in her native Boston before going to L.A. to pursue a screenwriting career (in the usual way: being a writers’ assistant, entering and winning screenwriting contests); now in addition to writing, she is “head of writing for film, television and interactive media at Vancouver Film School.” 

Mad Men  Season 3 premieres tonight 10 EST on AMC. I love this show.