Raelle Tucker is an American playwright, television writer, producer, and showrunner, best known for her work on HBO's True Blood, Netflix's Jessica Jones, and for the Facebook Watch seriesSacred Lies, which she created based on Stephanie Oakes's novel The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly.
Early life
Tucker was raised by her fashion and costume designer mother, Joy Borne, in Ibiza, Spain. Her mother was briefly involved in the Rajneesh movement featured in the Netflix docu-series Wild Wild Country. Her father was playwright, , who died from AIDS in 1995. Growing up on a rural island without a TV, Tucker founded a theater company and began writing and directing plays to entertain herself and her hippie community.
Career
After moving to Los Angeles as a teenager, Tucker spent several years supporting herself as a waitress and exotic dancer while she wrote and produced plays like and Eve Of Paradise, before attending the American Film Institute's prestigious Directing Workshop for Women, where she directed a short film The Clay Man, based on Jewish folktales of the Golem. In 2003, a script co-written by Tucker and Sera Gamble was one of three finalists in Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's HBO filmmaking competition, Project Greenlight. She then found her first job in television writing for John McNamara’s Eyes, an ABC series about a team of dysfunctional private investigators. Tucker wrote for the first two seasons of the CW's Supernatural, winning a Constellation Award for Best Science Fiction Teleplay, before joining Alan Ball to work on HBO's breakout series True Blood. She wrote and produced on True Blood for six seasons, rising to executive produce the show in 2013. Her work on True Blood was nominated for a Producers Guildaward, a Writers Guild award, a Primetime Emmy, and multiple Golden Globes. In 2015, Tucker executive-produced A&E's adaptation of the original Canal+ series The Returned with Carlton Cuse. Her writing on the show was nominated for a Women's Image Award. Tucker went on to write and executive-produce season two of Jessica Jones on Netflix, alongside creator/showrunner, Melissa Rosenberg. In her free time Tucker optioned the rights to Stephanie Oakes' novel The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly, inspired by the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale The Handless Maiden. Tucker developed the pilot, before bringing on executive producerScott Winant and they sold a ten-episode order of the series to Facebook Watch. Sacred Liesseason one premiered on Facebook Watch in 2018, as the platform’s first premium original series. Tucker is currently in pre-production on Sacred Lies Season Two: The Singing Bones.
