<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  In an age when blindingly brilliant television is happening all around us, it makes sense that we&amp;#039;re fascinated with its creators, suits, anchorwomen, talk-show hosts, writers, and stars. Which is exactly why we asked the best of them to tell us how they made the medium our nation&amp;#039;s unofficial pastime. Oh, and did we mention they&amp;#039;re all women?  Anne SweeneyCochair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney/ABC Television Group  How to Recognize a Hit: &amp;quot;I remember [Disney chairman] Rich Ross calling me from the set of the first High School Musical, and he said, `I don&amp;#039;t even know why I&amp;#039;m calling you right now. I just feel something, and the minute I have the dailies, you have to see this.&amp;#039; It wasn&amp;#039;t a conversation about `this is going to be huge and have merchandising and licensing.&amp;#039; I sat alone with the rough cut one Saturday morning, and there are times when you feel television and just know something has happened. Something different. Something that is not what you&amp;#039;ve been doing, not what everyone else is doing.&amp;quot; ELLE: Did you always want to work in TV? Anne Sweeney: Well, actually, while I was in college, I became a page at ABC. Suddenly I was working for Good Morning America, local news, national news. The page is the lowest rung of the ladder, and it&amp;#039;s the also the place where you can ask any question and not feel dumb. Any question I asked\u2014&amp;quot;What do you do?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;How did you get there?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What did you study in school?&amp;quot;\u2014whether it was a director, a producer, or talent, they answered. ELLE: What&amp;#039;s your best page memory? AS: I had a really crazy day when I worked on the Saturday morning show Kids Are People, Too where we had an unusually rambunctious group of kids up in the balcony. Pages were always supposed to be off-camera\u2014we were supposed to be invisible. But I had a moment where I saw a kid who was ready to flip himself out of the balcony, so I ran down and grabbed him and put him back in his seat. I remember the stage manager taking me aside and saying, &amp;quot;Can you please never do that again? I know you were saving his life, but we have you in the shot.&amp;quot; More Women in TV: Tina Fey on Liz Lemon, Sarah Palin, and The Real Housewives  Next: Wendy Williams - Host of The Wendy Williams Show    Wendy WilliamsHost of The Wendy Williams Show  How My Memory Serves Me Better Than the Internet: &amp;quot;Sometimes there are guests, and the [staffers] look up the regular Wikipedia stuff that maybe the kids know\u2014I said `kids&amp;#039; because they are all younger than me in terms of age. And I might say, `No, no, no, I remember back in the &amp;#039;70s when her husband tied her up on New Year&amp;#039;s Eve!&amp;#039; And I turn to David Perler, my executive producer, and say, `David, do you remember this story? Let&amp;#039;s have these kids look into it more, because when that person gets out here, I want to ask about that Easter when she was in a pool house tied up and on all fours.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; ELLE: How did you get your show, anyway? Wendy Williams: I got a phone call from Debmar-Mercury, and they said, &amp;quot;We want to take the radio show and put it on TV.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Do you want to do Ask Wendy?&amp;quot; They said, &amp;quot;Yup. Ask Wendy.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Do you want to do Celebrity Gossip?&amp;quot; and they said, &amp;quot;Yup, Celebrity Gossip.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Celebrity interviews?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yup.&amp;quot; Finally I said, &amp;quot;But do you want all the cackling and the giggling and the tears and all the weirdness?&amp;quot; They said, `Yes, yes, yes, and yes,&amp;#039; And I said, &amp;quot;Wow, you really do want me.&amp;quot; ELLE: Do you have any regrettable shows? WW: Usually around the first [of the month] I have my period, and then I might cry or something, but I say it now. I say I feel a little bit cramped, maybe it is hormonal, I don&amp;#039;t know.  ELLE: Do you ever regret crying?  WW: No. Thank God I am 20 feet tall, so my crying is never mistaken as weak. It can be mistaken as weird, but not weak. I can cry and still talk to you. Who has time to wait for you to get yourself together? You have to be fast because no one is paying attention to you after 30 seconds. Multitask. You cry and laugh at the same time, and then you keep it moving. Next: Anne Garefino - Executive producer of South Park    Anne GarefinoExecutive producer of South Park on Comedy Central  The Best Career Move I Unwittingly Made: &amp;quot;I was already working at Comedy Central on Comics on Delivery, and I met with Matt [Stone] and Brian Graden, who developed the show with Matt and Trey [Parker]. They asked me to join, and I said, `No, thanks. I really don&amp;#039;t want to do animation. I&amp;#039;m going to make a romantic comedy. Good luck.&amp;#039; Then I went on a ski vacation. When I got back, Brian came to me and said, `I&amp;#039;m not leaving this office until you say you&amp;#039;re going to work with us.&amp;#039; At the time, I liked [Matt and Trey], but I felt sorry for them because they were kind of a mess. They were brilliant, obviously, but they were taking meetings sitting in the hallway, and they used the boxes their computers came in for their desks. So I thought, I&amp;#039;ll help them get set up and then I&amp;#039;ll leave. Here we are 15 years later.&amp;quot; ELLE: Did you always know you wanted to work in TV? Anne Garefino: We were just talking about this in the writers&amp;#039; room\u2014what we want to be when we grow up. I said I wanted to be a United States senator, and Matt [Parker] goes, &amp;quot;Oh my, how far you&amp;#039;ve fallen.&amp;quot; We all had a good laugh over that, and then one of the other writers says, &amp;quot;I wanted to be a waitress.&amp;quot; So clearly none of us ended up where we wanted to be. ELLE:  What were those early days like? AG: We were mostly in a panic at all times. Matt and Trey have said that they really thought we were going to do six episodes and be done with South Park. We never thought it was going to become what it has. I flash back to that first office we had, which we&amp;#039;d be in for 24 hours a day because we had half a dozen animators. Every day was a train wreck.  ELLE: Have you ever butted heads with Comedy Central over an episode? AG: They&amp;#039;ve always been wildly supportive. The network is in on the joke. They&amp;#039;ll get their scripts and they&amp;#039;ll be laughing, but they&amp;#039;ll have to say, &amp;quot;Okay. You can&amp;#039;t do this.&amp;quot; Then the negotiation begins. I remember one conversation with Doug Herzog [then president of Comedy Central] where we talked about how many times we could say, &amp;quot;Sucky! Sucky! Five Dollars.&amp;quot; Doug said, &amp;quot;Two times.&amp;quot; And I said, &amp;quot;No, seven!&amp;quot; Finally I put my foot down and said, &amp;quot;Doug, I need to say it five times in the show,&amp;quot; and he let me have it. Next: Casey Wilson - Costar of ABC&amp;#039;s Happy Endings    Casey WilsonCostar of ABC&amp;#039;s Happy Endings  Why I Never Let Being on a Hit Show Go to My Head:  &amp;quot;Adam Pally and I were at the Grove doing this photo shoot for Extra, and a lot of people were taking our picture and asking for autographs, and I think for one second Adam and I looked at each other and said, `Hey, people like the show.&amp;#039; And then this couple from Australia came up to us, and they just grabbed me by the shoulders and said, `Who are you?!&amp;#039; And they were angry! We said, `Oh, we&amp;#039;re nobody.&amp;#039; That&amp;#039;s the truth. It made us laugh so hard. I think the most dangerous thing in comedy is to start thinking that you&amp;#039;re someone.&amp;quot; ELLE: Did you always want to be a performer? Casey Wilson:  Well, I loved performing when I was a kid. My parents once found these old red velvet curtains in the attic, so my dad used them to build a stage in our backyard. It was a beautiful stage. And then I sullied it all by directing the children in my neighborhood in plays that I wrote and starred in. One of them was called Cats 2\u2014except it was just Cats again, with nothing changed or added\u2014and I made everyone borrow fur coats from their moms so that we looked like cats. We sang &amp;quot;Memory&amp;quot; really terribly in fur coats and danced around. And I would fire kids too. I would brutally fire them. Not learning your lines was a big thing for me.  ELLE: You were on Saturday Night Live for a season but weren&amp;#039;t ask back. You always sound so positive about it, and you&amp;#039;ve said that it wasn&amp;#039;t the best thing for you anyway. Is that how you felt right away?  CW:  Honestly, I did. I felt it right away. It was an amazing experience, and I feel proud that I was on the show, but it wasn&amp;#039;t the right fit, and I&amp;#039;m happy to be doing something that is the right fit. ELLE: You and Adam Pally, who we also featured in our February issue, make such a great team on Happy Endings. In the Halloween episode, when you wore the couple&amp;#039;s costume with him attached to you as your baby\u2014that was classic. CW: That was just purely ridiculous. Adam and I actually made a pact before we shot that episode. We&amp;#039;re the kind of friends who&amp;#039;ll say anything to one another, but we decided that for once, we&amp;#039;d be a little more sensitive to each other that week. We didn&amp;#039;t want to make our normal jokes and then have something blow up while we were strapped together.  ELLE: Does it ever blow up? CW: Oh, yeah. He says things to me that make my eyes pop out of my head, but he gets away with it because he&amp;#039;s so charming and funny. One day he said, &amp;quot;Hey, Case, friend-to-friend, I think you should wear a thong instead of regular underwear. I can see lines.&amp;quot; I just looked at him in shock. But I&amp;#039;ll tell you this\u2014I&amp;#039;ve worn a thong every day since. Next: Nahnatchka Khan - Creator and executive producer of ABC&amp;#039;s Don&amp;#039;t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23    Nahnatchka KhanCreator and executive producer of ABC&amp;#039;s Don&amp;#039;t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, premiering on April 11  The Show That Made Me Want to Write for TV: &amp;quot;I loved Who&amp;#039;s the Boss? when I was a kid. I remember an episode where Tony is being wheeled into surgery and Angela&amp;#039;s there. And they&amp;#039;re holding hands, and he tells her that he loves her, and then he gets wheeled away. I remember being like, Ah! It felt so real to me, like, Holy shit, he told her he loved her.... Now what&amp;#039;s going to happen?!&amp;quot; ELLE: What was your first job? Nahnatchka Khan: I also worked in Disney TV animation as a creative...I don&amp;#039;t even know what we were called. But it was me and two other guys who had just graduated from NYU, and we got hired straight out of college. They paid us no money a week, and we shared a broom closet, but we&amp;#039;d meet with the director of development every week and he would be like, &amp;quot;Come up with ideas for TV shows based on Disney movies!&amp;quot; So it was actually a great experience.  ELLE:  You&amp;#039;re been a writer and producer on a bunch of shows, but how does it feel to be the creator of Apartment 23?  NK: When you&amp;#039;re first starting out, you&amp;#039;re like, Man, I&amp;#039;d love to get a show on the air. And then it&amp;#039;s actually happening. It takes a second to sink in. When we were beginning to shoot, I was like, &amp;quot;Okay, what time are we starting tomorrow?&amp;quot; and they were like, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s...up to you.&amp;quot; And I was like, &amp;quot;Oh, okay!&amp;quot;  ELLE: Who is your favorite female TV character? NK: I really loved Cybill Shepherd as Maddie in Moonlighting. She was pretty amazing\u2014funny and interesting in a way I had never seen before. I also loved Laverne and Shirley. I remember trying to drink milk with Pepsi, like Laverne would, and my mom being like, &amp;quot;What are you doing?&amp;quot; It tasted awful. Next: Megyn Kelly - Host of Fox News&amp;#039; daytime news program America Live    Megyn KellyHost of Fox News&amp;#039; daytime news program America Live  On Heated Debaters: &amp;quot;Just because you might have a sparring match on the air doesn&amp;#039;t mean there&amp;#039;s any personal animosity. If there were, they wouldn&amp;#039;t be invited as guests on the program. There have been a couple of people I&amp;#039;ve said I never want back on the program. They shall go nameless. There was one guest who, just as we turned off his microphone, dropped the F-bomb. He was, you know, frothing at the mouth. Angry! We were going to break, so I said goodbye. Then he started going into a long tirade of swears. Thankfully, we&amp;#039;d already turned off his microphone. He was somebody I put a ban on. My point is: It takes a lot.&amp;quot; ELLE: You didn&amp;#039;t start out as a journalist. You were a lawyer first, right? Megyn Kelly: When I was in 10th grade, I took one of those tests that&amp;#039;s supposed to tell you what you should be when you grow up. The test told me that I should be a journalist. I went to Syracuse, but I didn&amp;#039;t get into the broadcast journalism school; I got into the political science school. Then I met some other political science majors who encouraged me to pursue it and use it to springboard into a legal career, which sounded very exciting to me. ELLE: What brought you back around? MK: I was literally working 18-hour days, six days a week. I was so busy that I didn&amp;#039;t think about whether I was happy or unhappy. Then in August of 2002, I wrote a one-paragraph entry in my journal: &amp;quot;I am more interesting than this. I am more interested than this.&amp;quot; I started doing some soul-searching and remembered that 10th-grade test. ELLE: Women on television\u2014even, or perhaps especially, in broadcast journalism\u2014are often scrutinized about their looks. How do you handle that? MK: You know, I was not an attractive child\u2014I never had a cute face. I remember my parents joking, &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s gonna be with us for a long time,&amp;quot; which I still yell at my mother about! She just says, &amp;quot;Oh, Meg, those were some rough years.&amp;quot; But it helps to not place much value in those things. Obviously, I&amp;#039;m in a visual business, and people will talk to me about my appearance. Yes, it&amp;#039;s better in my industry to be perceived as attractive, but it truly isn&amp;#039;t something I have my self-worth wrapped up in, because it&amp;#039;s something I didn&amp;#039;t have for a lot of my life and wasn&amp;#039;t taught to value. ELLE: Even in some of your most contentious on-air debates, you and your guest often look like you&amp;#039;re enjoying yourselves. When you schooled Mike Gallagher on maternity-leave rights, you were both smiling! Have you ever had a debate where you didn&amp;#039;t like how it went down? MK: I had an epic discussion with Kirsten Powers that made the rounds on YouTube. She and I are friends, and there are no hard feelings. It happens. I will say this: I&amp;#039;m a passionate person and I bring that passion with me to my show. Most of the time it&amp;#039;s appropriately displayed; sometimes it gets away from me. But on the balance, I&amp;#039;d rather have it than not have it. In retrospect, I wish that I had not been as contentious with [Powers] as I was. Even though I think she misstated the facts, I like Kirsten and I should have allowed her more of an opportunity to give her opinion once the facts had been cleared up. I talked to her about that, and we both said apologies for how that went.  Next: Emily Spivey - Former SNL writer and creator of NBC&amp;#039;s Up All Night    Emily SpiveyFormer SNL writer and creator of NBC&amp;#039;s Up All Night  On Getting My Start at Saturday Night Live: &amp;quot;People do cry there a lot. Mostly it involved sketches just eating it. There was a sketch I wrote for Rachel Dratch, where she played a little-boy child-actor named David Mac Wilson. In theory it&amp;#039;s funny, but Liam Neeson was [hosting], and he thought it was mean to make fun of a kid but didn&amp;#039;t get that the kid was sort of obnoxious. And Rachel&amp;#039;s costume was all wrong\u2014she looked like a lesbian lady instead of a little boy. So the audience was confused, and it was dead silent. Lorne [Michaels] described it as Brechtian. RIP, David Mac Wilson. But I remember my first show. It was the first one after 9/11. Rudy Giuliani was there, and it was my 30th birthday. I got a sketch on\u2014Maya Rudolph playing Donatella Versace. It felt magical.&amp;quot; ELLE: Before Up All Night, you&amp;#039;d written for MADtv, King of the Hill, SNL, and Parks and Recreation, but you started your comedy career in the Groundlings. Were there any scenes or characters that you still laugh about? Emily Spivey: I did a sketch with Melissa McCarthy with her now-husband [actor Ben Falcone, Bridesmaids&amp;#039; deadpan air marshal], but they weren&amp;#039;t even going out at the time. He played a gay gentleman, and we played his beards. He was leaving one beard, which was me, for another beard, which was Melissa. We both had matching tight perm wigs and had a huge fight over this gay gentleman. And then I did a wedding scene with Will Forte where it was our wedding ceremony and our vows devolved into us spanking each other really hard\u2014and I was wearing my actual wedding dress. My mom was furious. ELLE: You&amp;#039;ve all become so big. Do you ever get nostalgic for those days? ES: Ugh, I&amp;#039;m so nostalgic. Maya was also in that group. Recently Facebook photos have surfaced from our Groundlings days. But you know what\u2014I just look at those pictures and think, Who is that girl? Oh my God, that looks so exciting. Then it&amp;#039;s like, Oh, that&amp;#039;s me! And look! Maya! We all look like babies. Next: Megan Hilty - Broadway actress and costar of NBC&amp;#039;s Smash    Megan HiltyBroadway actress and costar of NBC&amp;#039;s Smash, premiering on February 6  On Bucking TV Acting Tropes: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a huge misconception that theater people can&amp;#039;t do television\u2014that we&amp;#039;re `too big&amp;#039; and you have to make everything smaller. That kind of thinking really hinders you as an actor. So during my first TV audition, I was so in my head about being `small&amp;#039; that I wasn&amp;#039;t being real. What I found was that if I just adjusted to my audience, it would automatically change my performance. Instead of thinking go smaller, I would just think that the audience is closer.&amp;quot; ELLE: Do you think that coming from a stage background has given you any certain advantages in the TV world? Megan Hilty: With Smash, people like me and Christian Borle [who plays the play-within-a-show&amp;#039;s cocreator with Debra Messing] bring a taste of authenticity, because we&amp;#039;ve been there. We know what it&amp;#039;s like to mount a Broadway show; we know what it&amp;#039;s like to be in a rehearsal studio and do workshops. So we can say, &amp;quot;Well, we wouldn&amp;#039;t stand there. We would sit there,&amp;quot; little things that people in the Broadway community would appreciate and that show the rest of America what we can do. ELLE: Broadway legend Bernadette Peters plays your mother. That must be something else. MH: She&amp;#039;s my idol. She&amp;#039;s the person that inspired me to go into the performing arts in the first place. I met her once, when they were honoring her with an award in Pittsburgh, where I went to school at Carnegie Mellon. They had a couple of people from school sing for her. I got to go onstage and sing &amp;quot;Unexpected Song&amp;quot; from 1985&amp;#039;s Song and Dance\u2014one of her songs, to her\u2014which was so nerve-racking. Afterward, I didn&amp;#039;t want to start gushing and crying in front of her, so I wrote her a fan letter. It&amp;#039;s the only fan letter I&amp;#039;ve ever written to anybody. No return address or anything. I just wanted her to know how important she was to me. And I still haven&amp;#039;t talked to her about the letter yet! Next: Nancy Hult Ganis - Pan Am-stewardess-turned-executive-producer of ABC&amp;#039;s Pan Am    Nancy Hult GanisPan Am stewardess turned executive producer of ABC&amp;#039;s Pan Am  My Best Source Material: &amp;quot;Around Christmas 2006, several of my staffers at [Out of the Blue Productions] were complaining about how horrible their international flights were. For some reason, I just said, `It was nothing like that when I flew for Pan Am.&amp;#039; They all turned around and said, `You did what?&amp;#039; So I began telling them some of the stories, and they said, `You should make this a TV show.&amp;#039; I called up a bunch of my former Pan Am friends and I said I&amp;#039;d like to just do an interview session about Pan Am and your memories and so on. We had a little retreat; I hired a camera crew from Lucasfilm and filmed the girls while I asked a whole list of questions. We put it together and took it to Sony to pitch. In the meeting I said, `Before I say anything, let&amp;#039;s just look at this,&amp;#039; and I showed them the footage and they got it. They made the decision to go with it 12 hours later.&amp;quot; ELLE: The show boasts a colorful cast of characters and a lot of international intrigue. Is that all actually based on the real Pan Am women you interviewed? Nancy Hult Ganis: We had flight attendants from the Philippines, Malaysia, all over the world\u2014this incredible international diversity. With that came a sense of responsibility\u2014Pan Am was seen as a lifeline to many people who were either trying to escape their countries or needed supplies. We went into places that even our government couldn&amp;#039;t go, like the Soviet Union. Pan Am flew Nixon into the Soviet Union in 1959; we flew emergency rescues out of Israel at the dawn of Six-Day War. ELLE: Was there one former Pam Am stewardess whose story still sticks with you? NHG: Well, when Pan Am first started hiring in 1944, toward the end of the war, three of their first stewardesses were former WASPs\u2014women that flew the air service patrol. I interviewed one of them, but unfortunately, she passed away before I could get her on camera. She was amazing. The Air Force wouldn&amp;#039;t hire her as a pilot, and commercial airlines would never hire a woman\u2014but she was so good that when the Korean War began, she was recruited to train pilots in Okinawa. So the real women of Pan Am were a little bit eccentric too. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/interviews/a11870/tvs-wonder-women-614872/?click=smart&kw=ist&src=smart&mag=ELM&link=-SMT-ELM>