Ilene Chaiken was a successful screenwriter and television producer for years before she had the chance to develop material close to her heart into a successful show, The L Word. Chaiken began her career as an executive for Aaron Spelling and Quincy Jones before becoming producer of the hit sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel Air in 1988. She followed this with a stint as a screenwriter for the 1996 comic book movie Barb Wire and the Golden Globe-winning 2000 docudrama Dirty Pictures, about accusations of child pornography triggered by a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit. She then pitched an idea to Showtime for a show about lesbians in LA, mirroring the lives of Chaiken and her friends, but the network was afraid it would be too far outside the mainstream. After the success of a similar show about gays, Queer as Folk, Chaiken tried again, and The L Word finally aired from 2004 to 2009. She later helped create the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale but left during its development in 2015, drawn by Empire’s storylines of gay and straight characters struggling to juggle careers, relationships, and identities in the world of hip-hop music. She was executive producer of the series, which was one of Fox’s most-watched television shows during its run. Chaiken was still credited as executive producer of The Handmaid’s Tale, which premiered in 2017, winning eight Primetime Emmy Awards later that year and a Golden Globe the next . In 2020, she co-created a Law & Order spinoff, Law & Order: Organized Crime. In 2019 Showtime ordered a sequel to The L Word, The L Word: Generation Q, which she co-created and executively produced until its cancellation in early 2023. As the show ended, news circulated that Chaiken was working with Showtime on a New York-set reboot of the original series.