From ‘Nancy Drew’ to ‘Vampire Academy’ Golie Mark

One of a kind storytelling. Many of Us Weekly‘s favorite TV shows have been brought to life because of the women behind the scenes.

Julie Plec worked her way up through Dawson’s Creek and Kyle XY until she got her first opportunity to step up as a showrunner in 2009 alongside Kevin Williamson (who later stepped down, giving Plec full control.)

The writing team opened up about dividing their work to initially develop The Vampire Diaries for The CW.

“I would say this of our partnership. Much to our detriment, we are very codependent and we like to make all the decisions together,” Plec told Deadline in 2010. “I always say we should be two people doing two people’s jobs creatively. Instead, we’re two people doing one person’s job. Instead of having an extra brain, we share a brain right now.”

She continued: “But I think that’s going to be true of any first season show when you are really just trying to get a shared sensibility, and one person wouldn’t necessarily know the right look or tone or vibe or attitude right off the bat. So, the two of us can duke it out, fight it out. And as far as the process goes, we both sign off on everything – we write together, we break story together, we do everything together.”

After wrapping up production on the epic vampire series in 2017, Plec continued to expand the bloodsucking genre with Peacock’s Vampire Academy, which debuted in 2022.

The series, based on books of the same name by Richelle Mead, reunited the screenwriter and Marguerite MacIntyre on their next writing project. MacIntyre played Sheriff Forbes on TVD and was a writer on the the show’s spinoff The Originals.

“The thing with Marguerite is that she’s a beautiful writer and a beautiful brain. She knows everything about everything, and she has such an interesting perspective on life. She has a nuanced, layered, intelligent perspective on all the themes that I like to play in, probably much deeper than the way I look at life,” Plec gushed to Collider in September 2022 after working with MacIntyre on the TVD franchise. “I get to have this partner who is so intelligent and so talented, and who also has this gift for understanding the big picture. Having looked at it from the point of view of an actor for so many years, and as a writer, and ultimately as a director and filmmaker, if not in this moment, in the future, she has that whole big picture approach to being a good leader.”

Meanwhile, Noga Landau and Melinda Hsu Taylor have also left their mark with their collaboration on The CW’s Nancy Drew and Tom Swift. Ahead of Nancy Drew‘s premiere, the duo discussed how they approached recreating the story for the small screen.

“I think it’s age appropriate in this day and time to show what we show on screen. I also think that we have an opportunity with Nancy Drew,” Landau told KSite TV in 2019. “To show a girl who is not only smart, brave, driven, complicated, fraught — all the things on all the spectrum, but also that she has healthy, consensual, good sex with people that she cares about and that you can have all those things and still be the hero of the show. And I think that’s just important for girls and boys, everyone to see up on screen.”

Scroll down to meet the women who were at the helm of our favorite TV shows: