#300: Mike Scully - Janitor to Simpson’s Showrunner

Funny In Failure

Episode 300! thank's so much.

Emmy, Peabody, and Writers’ Guild of America Award winning writer/producer Mike Scully has written many forms of comedy: animation, single-cam, multi-cam, hidden-cam, award shows, and live performance.

After seven years of writing for shows you’ve never heard of, he joined The Simpsons writing staff as a producer in 1993. He was promoted to showrunner in 1997 for Seasons 9 thru 12 (considered the four most consecutive seasons of the show) and co-wrote and co-produced The Simpsons Movie, released in 2007. He was a consulting producer on the show until 2021 and recently wrote a new episode.

Mike also served as writer/producer on the Emmy-winning Everybody Loves Raymond, as well as Parks & Recreation, starring Amy Poehler. (He also appeared on the show several times as a disgruntled citizen asking stupid questions at town meetings.) He was a writer/producer on the critically acclaimed NBC series “The Carmichael Show” starring comedian Jerrod Carmichael.

He co-created (with wife Julie Thacker-Scully & Amy Poehler) the animated Fox/Hulu show Duncanville starring Poehler, Ty Burrell, and Rashida Jones, which ran three seasons. He also co-created some quickly cancelled shows such as “The Pitts”, “Complete Savages”, and an animated version of Napoleon Dynamite.” He and Julie wrote the pilot for the ABC/Hulu show Shifting Gears.

He is a Consulting Producer on the upcoming second season of the Netflix series, A Man On The Inside starring Ted Danson. He has written jokes for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler when they hosted the Golden Globes and for their current live Restless Leg tour.

In 1998, he organized writing staffs of all the Fox animated shows to win Writers Guild of America union coverage for the writers, who had previously been underpaid and without healthcare and pension contributions, unlike their live action counterparts.

He has five daughters who provide him a never-ending financial reason to keep working.

We chat about the Simpsons and being a show runner, leadership style and empowerment, moving to LA, his many ‘odd’ jobs, cancelled shows and rejection, false promises, Everybody loves Raymond, creating shows, art vs the business, doing comedy after Robin Williams, point of view, working on Parks and Recreation, moving forward plus much more!

Check Mike out on:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_skullzz Twitter / X: https://x.com/scullymike -------------------------------------------

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