Culture
OU Playwriting Alumnae Working Together on New Netflix Series
< < Back toTwo graduates of Ohio University’s Playwriting Program served as writers for a new Netflix show starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
Playwrights Jacquelyn Reingold and Laura Jacqmin were part of the writing team for the comedy Grace and Frankie, which premiered on Netflix on May 8.
The show tells the story of the two title characters whose husbands (played by Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) leave their wives to run off together.
Although Reingold and Jacqmin both earned their MFA in Playwriting from OU, the two did not overlap during their time in Athens and said the recent collaboration was a coincidence. Reingold said she first made the connection upon seeing Jacqmin’s name listed in an e-mail.
“It was thrilling,” Reingold said of learning the two would be working together. “I felt Ohio University pride.”
The two writers first met back in 2006 when Reingold served as a visiting mentor during OU’s annual Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwrights’ Festival and Jacqmin was a graduate student.
It is also a reunion of sorts for Fonda and Tomlin, who appeared together on the movie 9 to 5 in 1980. A summary on Netflix.com describes their characters as “both sparring partners and partners in crime” who “form an unlikely bond to face an uncertain future together and discover a new definition of ‘family.’”
Reingold, who lives in New York and teaches full-time at New York University, also has worked on NBC’s Smash and HBO’s In Treatment. Jacqmin’s other TV credits include the series Lucky 7.
Jacqmin, who lives in Chicago, was the recipient of the Wasserstein Prize, an award recognizing an emerging female playwright, in 2008.