Terry_Louise_Fisher

Terry Louise Fisher

Terry Louise Fisher (born 1946 in Chicago, Illinois) is an Emmy Award-winning American television producer, screenwriter and novelist.

Early career

Fisher attended UCLA School of Law in 1968. She later worked for the Los Angeles District Attorney's office and moved from that into Entertainment Law. While a Los Angeles lawyer, Fisher wrote two novels, both published by the Warner Publishing Company. The first, entitled A Class Act, was published in 1976. The second, entitled Good Behavior, was published in 1979. Both are no longer in print. After ten years in the law field, Fisher decided to pursue her true passion of writing full-time and quit practicing law.

Television career

Early years

She began her television career as a writer and producer for the new CBS police procedural Cagney and Lacey in 1982. Between 1983 and 1987, she wrote for other series and television films. In 1985, she left Cagney & Lacey, but returned to the production the series' reunion films Cagney and Lacey: The Return and Cagney and Lacey: Together Again as a writer.

L.A. Law

However, her most notable series was L.A. Law, which she co-created with famed Hill Street Blues producer Steven Bochco. She served as a supervising producer and writer for many of the series early episodes. Her writing for the series won her a shared Primetime Emmy Award in 1987, and two additional shared nominations in 1988.

In 1988, a legal battle with Steven Bochco led to her departure from the series, when a negotiation for her to take over Bochco's role as the series' executive producer failed, and she was banned from the set. In 2002, however, she returned to L.A. Law's sequel television film L.A. Law: The Movie, similar to Cagney and Lacey, as a writer.

Post-L.A. Law

Fisher took part in the production of a highly anticipated primetime soap opera pilot, entitled Daughters of Eve, to star Sophia Loren, during the 1995-1996 television season. However, the series was not picked up. She also worked on the afore-mentioned television films Cagney and Lacey: The Return (1994), Cagney and Lacey: Together Again (1995), and L.A. Law: The Movie (2002).