Elizabeth Hughes Meriwether is an American writer, producer and television showrunner. She is known for creating the Fox sitcom New Girl, and for writing the play Oliver Parker! and the romantic comedy filmNo Strings Attached. She also created the ABC sitcoms Single Parents and Bless This Mess.
Early life
Meriwether was born on October 11, 1981 in Miami, Florida. Her family moved from Miami to Detroit, Michigan when she was five years old, and then to Ann Arbor, Michigan, when she was 10. Her father, Heath J. Meriwether, was the publisher of the newspaper Detroit Free Press, and her mother, Patricia Hughes Meriweather, was a painter. Meriwether grew up aspiring to be an actor, but when she wrote her first play, she realized she wanted to be a playwright instead. Meriwether attended Greenhills High School in Ann Arbor.
Meriwether wrote the plays Heddatron, The Mistakes Madeline Made and Oliver Parker!. She held a showcase of her plays in Los Angeles, in which a young Emma Stone was cast. Meriwether has credited the showcase and Stone's participation as an important point in her career trajectory. Upon moving to Los Angeles, Meriwether developed a play called Sluts. As part of a program to help aspiring playwrights adapt their scripts for television, she turned the idea into a television pilot. The pilot, described as 'a raunchy, honest look at the messy dating lives of twentysomething women' was filmed for 20th Century Fox Television, but ultimately not picked up. However, it succeeded in establishing Meriwether as a distinctive comedic voice. In 2010, she wrote an episode of Adult Swim'sChildrens Hospital. Meriwether wrote the 2011 romantic comedy filmNo Strings Attached, directed by Ivan Reitman and starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher. The film's working title was Fuckbuddies. After her success with No Strings Attached, 20th Century Fox Television approached Meriwether about developing another television series. Meriwether pitched an idea about an "offbeat girl moving in with three single guys", inspired by her experience of "bouncing from Craigslist sublet to Craigslist sublet, for four years in L.A." when she was in her twenties. The show, New Girl, was greenlit in 2011 with an initial order of 13 episodes and Zooey Deschanel in the title role. It aired 146 episodes over seven seasons. It was well-received by critics and nominated for a number of awards, including five Golden Globe Awards and five Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2013, she signed a multi-year overall deal with 20th CenturyFox Television, to develop additional projects for the studio.
