Yvette Lee Bowser Pics

Yvette

Bowser

09 July 1965

Lee

Slim

Brown - Light

Brown - Light

Yvette Lee

Philadelphia, PA

Cancer

Black

best known for writing and producing Half & Half, Living Single, and A Different World. With Living Single, she became the first African-American woman to develop her own prime-time series

American

Female

Life`s Work Yvette Lee Bowser, the creator of the hit Fox-TV sitcom Living Single, is part of a new vanguard of young, savvy African Americans on the show-business fast track who are transforming the entertainment industry. Before Bowser was thirty, she became the first African American female to develop her own television series. As a result, she has been commended--and compensated with her own company--for her efforts in bringing a fresh new side of urban life into American living rooms: that of single, professional women and men of color. Bowser, as writer and executive producer of Living Single, arrives daily at her office on the Warner Brothers lot that is home to the offices of her own production company. Bowser was born Yvette Lee in the mid-1960s to parents of mixed heritage. She grew up in the Philadelphia area, and chose Stanford University in California for college, where she studied political science and psychology. From there she moved to the set of the NBC sitcom A Different World, where she was hired as a lowly assistant in 1987. The show, a spin-off of the successful Cosby Show and set at a fictional African American college, provided a launching pad for several African American entertainment-industry personnel. As actress Erika Alexander, one of the stars of Living Single, told Jet, "A Different World was the closest show to showing the intelligent and positive side of Black women." The road it paved would lead directly to the Brooklyn apartment on Living Single. Bowser soon advanced to A Different World`s writing team, and became a producer for a time before the show left the airwaves by the early 1990s. She now had several seasons of television experience behind her--writing for a hit show with a tight ensemble cast, and managing the numerous production and budgetary details as a producer accountable to network executives--and felt confident enough to begin promoting her own concepts. A pilot called Sweet Home Chicago that she developed failed to be picked up by any of the networks; for a time she worked as a producer for Hangin` With Mr. Cooper, but admitted to having been displeased with the direction of the show. Fortunately, at this juncture the start-up Fox television network asked her if she would be interested in developing an ensemble-style sitcom with a cast of African American women. Bowser jumped at the chance. "I wanted to create a show about my life experiences," she told Ebony writer Aldore D. Collier, "about me and my girlfriends and the ups and downs of being twentysomething." She also told Collier that the success of the 1992 Terry McMillan novel, Waiting to Exhale, had helped network executives realize there was indeed a vast, untapped audience of African American women who had yet to see their hopes and concerns portrayed realistically by television characters. Bowser wrote four characters to life--Khadijah, Synclaire, Maxine, and Regine-- centered around their Brooklyn apartment and a warm, close-knit friendship. Recording artist Queen Latifah was cast to play Khadijah, publisher of her own magazine called Flavor; her fictional cousin Synclaire, played by Kim Coles, serves as her assistant; Maxine, Khadijah`s college friend, is a sharp attorney portrayed by Cosby Show alumnus Alexander, while Kim Fields rounds out the cast as Regine, ambitious in her own unique way. "There is a little bit of me in each of the four women," Bowser told Essence writer Deborah Gregory. Bowser`s characters debuted on prime-time television on the Fox network in August of 1993. Some predicted the show would not make it, but Living Single became the hit of the new fall line-up, and a few seasons later was still at the No. 1 spot in ratings with African American and Hispanic audiences. "What really separates Living Single from previous television efforts is the fact that all four are very different but still could be described as role models," noted Jet, "demonstrating the diversity that Hollywood rarely has allowed Black actresses to show." Even the mainstream press had praise for the positive portrayal of African American women Bowser had created on Living Single, but Newsweek inexplicably called it the "Booty-Shakin` Sugar Momma" show. Perplexed, but amused--"We were like, What on earth is a booty- shaking momma?," Bowser recounted in the interview with Essence-- but had a plaque made for her office that enshrined the phrase. As the show gained in popularity, Bowser was allowed more license to meet her goal--to overhaul the stereotypical images of African American women on television, though she has admitted in Essence, "I encountered my share of resistance in Hollywood about accepting the image of four upwardly mobile Black women." Living Single`s women are neither sexpots nor doormats, but exhibit the same blend of ambition and self-doubt of most unmarried, working women of their age group. Bowser wro

Stanford University

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Producer, Other Crew, Writer

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Yvette Denise Lee Bowser (born June 9, 1965) is an American television writer and producer. She is perhaps best known for writing and producing Half & Half, Living Single, and A Different World. With Living Single, she became the first African-American woman to develop her own prime-time series.

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