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Stacy A. Littlejohn boasts a highly successful, 15-plus-year career as a writer and producer in the entertainment industry. She is one of a select few African American women to bear the distinguished title of Showrunner. Some of Littlejohn's writing credits include The Wanda Sykes Show, Will Smith's All of Us, Barbershop, Cedric the Entertainer Presents, Life with Bonnie, and The Hughleys. In her latest project, Single Ladies (now in it's 2nd season), Stacy serves as Creator, Head Writer and Executive Producer. Queen Latifah also serves as an Executive Producer on the show.
Littlejohn was born and raised in the Bay Area. Even at an early age her aptitude for entertainment was evident. Though predominantly known as the class clown for eliciting laughter from her schoolmates, Littlejohn's penchant for finishing assignments ahead of schedule had her English teacher challenging her creativity with daily, additional writing assignments, at which she excelled.
Stacy grew up watching the legal drama Perry Mason, convinced she would become a criminal defense attorney in the years to come. But when the strain between her smart mouth and mother's hot temper could withstand no more, Stacy found herself on the street left to fend for herself. Her quick-witted solution to her housing and educational dilemma: The University of California, Berkeley, in which she enrolled immediately.
While working four jobs to ensure her degree in Political Science, the attorney-in-training one day realized that to excel in criminal defense, which she knew she would, would inevitably involve setting a number of criminals free. This weighed heavily on her conscience and prompted a reevaluation. And it was at this point in her life when she realized it was actually the storytelling aspect of those Perry Mason episodes that she had loved so much, thus causing her to re-direct her focus into the field of Mass Communications.
Stacy relocated to Los Angeles, and in response to the seemingly ubiquitous suggestions that she work as a PA, spent the next several months scouring the yellow pages and calling every studio in town while sleeping on friend's couches and in her car. She finally landed a job as a PA on Fox's The Last Frontier - a show which she never even saw since she couldn't afford a television. But after a mere 3 months, having had her fill with PAing, Stacy pushed forward in the direction of writing and secured the gig as a Writer's Assistant to Matt Wickline and John Bowman on The Show.
Stacy next moved on to Moesha, but the impression she left on Wickline had him asking her back to work on a show he was creating for D.L. Hughley. The break marked Stacy's first official foray into writing for the small screen, on which her name would now appear - just as it had for those writers she had awed as a child on Perry Mason.
Stacy soon became known around town for her "punch up" on pilots and joke-writing skills, and after One on One, Life with Bonnie, Half & Half, Platinum, Cedric the Entertainer Presents and Barbershop, a significant turn came about when she found herself working for the multi-talented Will Smith on All of Us, who was so impressed by her work that he flew her to New York to help him on re-writes for the blockbuster Hitch.
The much-publicized Writers' Strike of 2007-2008 marked the first time Stacy had been unemployed since the age of 16; it also marked the first time in her life she was pitching shows and being met with "noes." Concerned she had lost her magical touch, and with some unexpected time on her hands, Stacy dug into a script she had been writing called Modern Love. VH1's Maggie Malina read the script and was so impressed with Stacy's writing style that she asked her to create a show about modern women with differing ideas on the subject of love. Stacy responded with Keisha and Val, the sexy and ever-opinionated divas of VH1's first-ever hour-long scripted series Single Ladies.
When it comes to producing, Littlejohn relishes the creative control. As she says, "I like it to go my way." And when it comes to writing, she loves taking that emotional journey to evoke conversation amongst viewers while touching millions of people's lives.
