Ilene Chaiken

Chaiken was born in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, on June 30, 1957,^[1] to a Jewish family.^[2] She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with an undergraduate degree in graphic design in 1979.^[3]

She began her career as an agent trainee for Creative Artists Agency and as an executive for Aaron Spelling and Quincy Jones Entertainment. In 1988, she was the coordinating producer for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the associate producer for Satisfaction. She then wrote the screenplay Barb Wire (1996), and the television films Dirty Pictures (2000), and Damaged Care (2002). Dirty Pictures won the Golden Globe for Best Miniseries or Television Film in 2000.^[4]

Chaiken co-created The L Word in 2004, inspired largely by her own experiences as a lesbian.^[5] Her first romance with another woman, which ended in heartbreak when the woman revealed she had a long-distance girlfriend, served as a loose inspiration for the relationship of the characters Marina Ferrer and Jenny Schecter.^[5]

In 2007, she and a group of women in the entertainment and tech industries launched a social networking site called OurChart for lesbians and their friends.^[4] OurChart was online until 2008 when it was shut down.^[6] At that time, a spin-off show of The L Word entitled The Farm was in development and two pilots were being written by Chaiken, although Showtime never bought the series.^[7][8]

Chaiken produced a documentary for Showtime in 2014 titles L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin. The film focused on multiple lesbian women, telling their experiences of being gay in the Deep South.^[9] During this time, Chaiken was also a showrunner on ABC's The Black Box, which was cancelled after one season.^[9][10]

Chaiken is credited with first developing the TV adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, which became a successful Hulu original show. Chaiken left the project during development to become the show-runner on Fox's Empire, but was still credited as an executive producer.^[11]

In January 2019, Showtime announced that it had ordered a full season of the sequel to The L Word.^[12] The show aired December 8, 2019, titled The L Word: Generation Q, and picks up where the original series ended, set ten years later.^[13]

More recently, her company, Little Chicken Productions, signed an overall deal with Universal Television.^[14] In 2020, Chaiken co-created the show Law & Order: Organized Crime, a spin-off of the long-running series Law & Order.^[15] The following year, she worked as a writer and showrunner for the series but was replaced by Barry O'Brien part-way through production of the second season.^[16][15]

Chaiken has been married to LouAnne Brickhouse, a former executive at Disney, since 2013.^[17] They live in the Laurel Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles and have nurtured more than 100 species of birds and other fauna, which they document regularly on an Instagram account.^[17]

Chaiken is co-parent to twin daughters Tallulah and Augusta with her former partner, English architect Miggi Hood.^[18]

Film

Associate producer

• Satisfaction (1988)

Writer

• Barb Wire (1996)

Television

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Writer	Producer	Creator	Notes
1991–1992	The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air	No	Yes	No
2000	Dirty Pictures	Yes	No	No	TV movie
2002	Damaged Care	Yes	No	No
2004–2009	The L Word	Yes	Yes	Yes
2010–2012	The Real L Word	No	Yes	Yes
2014	L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin	No	Yes	No	Documentary film
2015–2020	Empire	No	Executive	No
2017–2025	The Handmaid's Tale	No	Executive	No
2019–2023	The L Word: Generation Q	No	Executive	Yes
2021–2022	Law & Order: Organized Crime	Yes	Executive	Yes

Close

• List of female film and television directors
• List of lesbian filmmakers
• List of LGBT-related films directed by women