Marcy Carsey is a groundbreaking independent producer who has shaped network programming for twenty-five years, with an emphasis on independence: “When you share your financial risk with a studio, you give part of your creative control, too.” She and her professional partner Tom Werner are responsible for some of the defining situation comedies of the 1980s and nineties, including The Cosby Show, Roseanne, 3rd Rock From the Sun, and That ’70s Show. For Carsey and Werner, story and star go hand in hand: as network executives in the seventies, they argued strenuously for the casting of relative unknowns like Robin Williams and Tom Hanks, and later as executive producers, for Roseanne Barr and John Lithgow as comedy leads. According to Carsey, when negotiating, “The real power lies with the person who has the deep faith and creative vision.” Carsey is known for being persuasive and convincing at all levels. Case in point: if she had not persuaded Bill Cosby to play a doctor instead of a limousine driver as he originally wanted, The Cosby Show might never have taken off in the phenomenal way it did. She and Werner are also credited with reviving the dying comedy genre and the NBC network. Warren Littlefield, vice president of comedy programming at NBC in the eighties and nineties once quipped, “Without them, I would be behind a counter saying, ‘Would you like fries with that?’” Having produced two thousand episodes, Carsey-Werner has syndicated shows in over one hundred and seventy-five countries that have been translated into fifty languages.
She was born Marcia Lee Peterson and grew up in the middle-class town of Weymouth, Massachusetts, twelve miles south of Boston. Because of the cold winters, she gravitated to television, especially Father Knows Bestand Maverick. She admitted, “I was always interested in TV, but I didn’t yet understand the breadth of jobs there were.” After college, she held various positions on the periphery of the industry: NBC tour guide at Rockefeller Plaza, gofer at the Tonight show, and program supervisor at an advertising agency. She and her fiancé, comedy writer John Jay Carsey, journeyed to Los Angeles where she acted in commercials and served as a script reader.
In 1974 Michael Eisner, then-president of ABC, hired Carsey when she was pregnant—something that was unheard of at the time and still unusual today. Carsey was invigorated by the “scrappy” network where she “figured I would succeed wildly or get tossed out in a year.” By 1978, she was promoted to senior vice president for prime-time series, a job she kept until the end of 1980. During this time, she was overseeing popular shows like Mork & Mindy, Soap, and Bosom Buddies. However, Carsey was frustrated with management and was looking for other career options: “I didn’t want to run the television division of a studio and I didn’t want to work at another network, so the only thing to do was to go out and produce. If I was going to do that logically, the only way to do it was independently.” As a result, she started her own production company, Carsey Productions. A year later, in 1982, she convinced, or “harangued”—in a good way, according to him—Tom Werner to leave ABC to form an independent company with her: the Carsey-Werner Company.
The Cosby Show was their first big hit, debuting in September 1984 on NBC. Like other series to follow, Carsey and Werner built this family show around a strong, recognizable lead. Carsey did everything she had to, including mortgaging her house, to get Cosby on the air. Cosby stipulated that the show had to be taped in New York, so it was a real sacrifice for Carsey to leave her family during production. The Cosby Show certainly was worth it and became one of NBC’s most profitable shows, leading to the beginning of NBC’s dominance of Thursday night that would last for eighteen years, as well as a syndication bonanza for the producers.
A slew of successful situation comedies followed: A Different World, Roseanne, Cybill, 3rd Rock From the Sun, and That ’70s Show. Carsey has tried to continually reinvent the family genre with eccentric, non-mainstream formulas: from an aging actress whose professional and personal life is in crisis (Cybill) to a “family” of aliens studying the ways of Earth (3rd Rock From the Sun). In their heyday, Carsey-Werner were able to balance success with such notable failures as Chicken Soup with Jackie Mason and their ill-fated attempt at reviving the quiz show, You Bet Your Life, starring Bill Cosby. Carsey described what she strives for in television comedy in the New York Times: “A great series requires wonderful talent on and off camera, terrific performers, a flash of comedic brilliance somewhere. You have to have terrific writers, direction, and a vision. It should be more than the sum of its parts. It should be an original of some kind.”
In 1998 Oprah Winfrey, Geraldine Laybourne, and Marcy Carsey (as a principal of the then Carsey-Werner-Mandabach Company), along with Tom Werner and Caryn Mandabach, launched the Oxygen Network—the prominent cable channel for women, and in 2003 Carsey-Werner made a deal with Paramount Pictures for a three-year film development deal. In July 2005 Carsey and Werner announced that because of the changing environment of producing and owning shows they were scaling back development and beginning to work independently of each other. They had produced approximately two thousand hours of programming, including hit shows on all four major networks, and have received many awards for their work, including an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1985 for the series that started it all, The Cosby Show.
Let’s Go to Prison Executive Producer 2006
Grounded for Life (TV Series) Executive Producer 2001-2005
Carsey-Werner Television is the most successful independent television studio in history, delivering iconic hits like The Cosby Show, Roseanne, That ’70s Show. A Different World, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Cybill, Grace Under Fire, and Grounded for Life.
That philosophy has earned Carsey-Werner the highest accolades, receiving over 150 top awards and nominations including Emmys, Golden Globes, People’s Choice, Humanitas, DGA, Peabody and more.
Carsey-Werner had a top 5 program on multiple networks for 11 consecutive seasons, which is the longest run over the past 50 seasons.
Its programming and distribution has global impact, reaching more than 175 countries, in 50 languages, across every platform.
Producer Marcy Carsey to Chair UCLA’s Hammer Museum (Exclusive) | The Hollywood Reporter | Nov 6, 2013
The “Cosby Show” and “Roseanne” veteran takes over for former U.S. Sen. John Tunney, who’s retiring, but she tells THR she might not be done with Hollywood yet.
Producer Marcy Carsey, responsible for many of TV’s biggest comedy hits (The Cosby Show, Roseanne), will become its board chair in January, taking over from former U.S. Sen. John Tunney, who is retiring. “If I can just extend the work [Hammer director] Annie [Philbin] and John Tunney have done, I will be thrilled,” Carsey tells THR. “They’ve established the museum not only in the art it curates but also in the things it does for the community.”
Carsey and Philbin, both University of New Hampshire graduates, first met a couple of years ago at an alumni event held at the Hammer. Carsey, a longtime fan of the museum’s variety of community programs, joined its board shortly thereafter. However, she was hesitant when Philbin first approached her about assuming the chairmanship. Although Carsey co-owns a folk- and outsider-art shop, Just Folk, in Summerland, Calif., she doesn’t consider herself an art collector. “What I put in my house is lots of weathered old American furniture from the 1800s, velocipedes, pull toys, old whimsical things,” she says. “Collectors keep doing it and change their wonderful collections, I really just needed to furnish my house with stuff that made me smile. There are so many people who are avid students [of art] and have been for decades, and collectors that are deeply knowledgeable in ways I am not.”
But Philbin was confident that Carsey was the right person for the position. “She’s a fearless leader, and I will benefit from her years of being a major producer and the knowledge she has gained from that,” the director tells THR. “My measure of a great leader is that they are a great citizen of this city and have an impulse to enrich the life of the people in Los Angeles.”
At the Hammer, which is currently featuring exhibitions by photographer James Welling and painter Forrest Bess, Carsey will work closely with board president Michael Rubel, a managing partner at CAA. “Michael and Marcy are thoughtful and brilliant people for us,” Philbin says. Although she adds that it’s “who they are as leaders,” not their Hollywood connections, that make them fit to lead. Carsey and Rubel headline a board with plenty of ties to the entertainment industry, including UTA’s Peter Benedek and Jeremy Zimmer, WME’s George Freeman, Gersh’s Bob Gersh, producer David Hoberman and media investor Dean Valentine, as well as actress Susan Bay Nimoy (wife of Leonard) and auctioneer Viveca Paulin-Ferrell (wife of Will).
Carsey is unsurprised but pleased with Hollywood’s embrace of the L.A. art world. “When I came here in the ’60s, it felt like the gold rush days. Nothing had taken root and everything felt new and transient,” she says. “But something has changed. Now the movie and television industry has traditions and longstanding citizens, and I think they have a deeper pride in Los Angeles as a city that in many ways is great and in many ways aspires to be great. And a strong arts community and a strong awareness and support of the arts always make a city better and greater.”
As for her own involvement in the industry, Carsey has been inactive since That ’70s Show went off the air in 2006 and she and producing partner Tom Wernerdecided to shutter their hugely successful independent production company. “The business had shifted so that it was almost impossible to stay independent,” she says. “Now, oddly enough, it’s probably possible again, with all these extra ways to distribute product.”
So would Carsey consider a return to Hollywood, then?
“Sure, anybody who has taken great joy in any creative field never loses the love for it,” she says. “The joy of making something out of nothing that maybe gets people thinking or laughing, it’s a thrill. You never stop loving that.”
The producers behind “The Cosby Show” have weighed in on the controversy over the rape allegations levied by multiple women against Bill Cosby.
“The Bill we know was a brilliant and wonderful collaborator on a show that changed the landscape of television. These recent news reports are beyond our knowledge or comprehension,” Marcy Carsey and current Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner said in a statement Thursday.
The pair are the first prominent showbiz figures to speak out regarding the allegations from multiple women levied against Cosby.
Carsey and Werner built an independent production powerhouse, the Carsey-Werner Co., in the 1980s and ’90s on the strength of “Cosby Show’s” success on NBC in the 1980s. Werner had been attached to exec produce the NBC family comedy project that Cosby had been developing until the network pulled the plug on Wednesday. Carsey has been retired from the biz since 2005.
As the accusations against Cosby mount, there has been much discussion among industry insiders about how much Cosby associates knew about the alleged incidents, particularly for those in positions of authority. The statement from Carsey and Werner appears to be offering a measure of support to the embattled star as well as to assert that they had no knowledge of such alleged activities.
“The Cosby Show” cemented Cosby’s status as one of America’s best-lived entertainers. A week of nearly non-stop news coverage of three women recounting disturbing allegations of being drugged and raped by the comedian has already taken a huge toll on Cosby’s legacy.
Lawyers for the comedian have denied the charges as “discredited allegations” and in one case “a fabricated lie.” But Cosby himself has remained silent amid the storm.
‘Roseanne’ Producer Marcy Carsey Gives $20M To Alma Mater UNH | Business Insider | Oct 3, 2013
DURHAM, N.H. (AP) — Emmy-award winning television producer Marcy Carsey has donated $20 million to her alma mater, the University of New Hampshire.
The Carsey School for Public Policy will train future leaders in the United States and around the world to use research to solve problems.
Carsey teamed up with Tom Werner to form Carsey-Werner and produced long-running and popular shows that included “The Cosby Show,” ”Roseanne,” ”Third Rock from the Sun” and “That 70s Show.” She is frequently named as one of the most powerful women in show business.
The gift builds on her 2002 gift of $7.5 million that established the Carsey Institute, which conducts research on vulnerable children, youth, and families and on sustainable community development.
