Jeff Greenstein got his first job on the HBO series Dream On, and he stayed with that show for five seasons, garnering several industry awards including a CableACE. He then signed on for the first year of NBC’s Friends, earning two Emmy nominations, including one for co-writing the show’s first Thanksgiving episode. That same year, he co-created Fox’s late, lamented Partners, starring Jon Cryer and Tate Donovan, which won plenty of critical plaudits but, alas, no second season.
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Rex Sikes’ Movie Beat chats with director Jeff Greenstein
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After that, he joined the staff of NBC’s Will & Grace early in its inaugural year. He spent six years as a head writer and the fifth and sixth seasons as showrunner, picking up an Emmy for Best Comedy Series, six nominations, and a writing nomination (the only one in the show’s history) for the one-hour flashback episode “Lows in the Mid-Eighties.”
After leaving Will & Grace, he joined the staff of ABC’s Desperate Housewives, where he remained for three seasons and was part of the team credited with the show’s creative resurgence. Then, after a year spent launching NBC’s acclaimed series Parenthood, he returned to Housewives as not only a writer and executive producer but also director, helming the Season 7 Halloween show and two more episodes in Season 8.
More recently, Jeff directed and executive produced the 11-episode web series Husbands, co-created by Jane Espenson, which garnered a rave review in The New Yorker and was voted TVLine’s Best Web Series of 2011. He’s currently developing a pilot for ABC based on the partnership of Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, the celebrated chefs behind City Restaurant, Ciudad and Border Grill. The show is set on Melrose Avenue in 1985, so imagine the haircuts.
He grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and attended Tufts University in Boston, where he started out as a computer science major, careened through the art history department, and ended up with a degree in film and dance. This proved the ideal prelude to a glorious career in television comedy.
Jeff is married with one son; his wife, Lisa Ritter, is co-owner and pastry chef at Big Sugar Bakeshop in Studio City.
