Lona Williams is an American television producer, writer, and actress known for her work on The Drew Carey Show and as the screenwriter of the 1999 comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous. A former Minnesota beauty-pageant contestant, she began her television career as a writing assistant on The Simpsons and later worked as a writer and producer on series and films.
Background
Lona Williams was born on September 26, 1966, in Rosemount, Minnesota, and was raised there. Rosemount is a community in Dakota County, south of Saint Paul. In 1964 the surrounding school district area was still dotted with only a few clusters of housing, so the community was far less built up than it later became.
Her father, Les, taught middle school mathematics. Williams participated in beauty pageants as a child, and the experience later became a source for her screenwriting. Her pageant career gave her direct familiarity with the competitive world that she would later depict on screen.
Education
Williams graduated from Rosemount High School shortly after her 1985 pageant year. Founded in 1918, the public four-year school is part of Independent School District 196, the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan district, which serves a large number of students across several communities.
She then attended the University of Minnesota, a public institution chartered in 1851 whose main campus is in Minneapolis. The university grew into one of the largest public universities in the United States and serves as the state's principal research university.
At the university she took a screenwriting course, and her teacher encouraged her to move to California to find work. That advice directed her toward the television industry in California, where her later writing career developed.
Williams's television career began as an assistant on one series. Jerry Belson, a television writer, then helped her obtain a job as a writing assistant on The Simpsons, the animated sitcom created by Matt Groening that premiered on Fox in 1989. She occasionally provided voices for the show, including the character Amber Dempsey in the episode "Lisa the Beauty Queen."
Describing her early work, she said she "really was only a typist for the show," but she added that working on the scripts taught her how they were assembled. She wrote spec scripts, which are sample scripts for existing series that show a writer's skill, for The Simpsons and Roseanne. Bruce Helford then hired her as a writer on the short-lived series Someone Like Me.
In 1995 she was signed as a writer and producer on The Drew Carey Show, the ABC sitcom that ran from 1995 to 2004. She stayed for three seasons and worked as a writer, story editor, and producer, with credits on seven episodes. Her earlier television credits also include episodes of Hardball in 1994 and Bless This House in 1995.
She wrote the screenplay for Dairy Queens, which was retitled Drop Dead Gorgeous when it was released by New Line Cinema on July 23, 1999. The satirical black comedy, directed by Michael Patrick Jann, follows a small-town Minnesota beauty pageant. She has claimed that the events in the script reflect real incidents from pageants, and the title Dairy Queens was dropped after the ice cream chain objected to its use.
She also wrote the original script for the 2001 film Sugar & Spice. Later, she received story credit on Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, a 2015 zombie comedy directed by Christopher Landon and released in the United States by Paramount Pictures on October 30, 2015.
Achievements
Wrote the screenplay for Drop Dead Gorgeous, a 1999 satirical black comedy about a small-town Minnesota beauty pageant, drawing on her familiarity with the pageant circuit.
Received story credit on Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, a 2015 comedy distributed theatrically by Paramount Pictures.
(Williams worked as a writer, story editor, and producer o...)
1995
Hardball
(Williams wrote two episodes of this television series.)
1994
Bless This House
(Williams wrote one episode of this television series.)
1995
Connections
Her father, Les, was a middle school mathematics teacher in Rosemount, Minnesota. Her Minnesota upbringing also linked her to the beauty-pageant circuit that informed her screenplay for Drop Dead Gorgeous.
Father:
Les
Taught middle school mathematics in Rosemount, Minnesota.
References
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Tim Carey's October 1998 profile of Williams, a Rosemount native, covering her television writing and the screenplay Dairy Queens.
1998
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia article summarizing Williams's upbringing, education, television writing, and filmography.
State title won in 1985 in the Junior Miss scholarship program, which led to the national America's Junior Miss competition.
State title won in 1985 in the Junior Miss scholarship program, which led to the national America's Junior Miss competition.
America's Junior Miss,
United States of America
Runner-up in the national competition in 1985, which carried a $10,000 scholarship. The program, a scholarship competition for high school seniors, was later renamed Distinguished Young Women.
Runner-up in the national competition in 1985, which carried a $10,000 scholarship. The program, a scholarship competition for high school seniors, was later renamed Distinguished Young Women.
