Gilmore GirlsandGolden GirlsWriter Stan Zimmerman on His Hollywood Career: 'I Was Lucky' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Photo:Indigo River Publishing; Braden Davis

Indigo River Publishing; Braden Davis

Indigo River Publishing

Zimmerman, who grew up in Michigan, was always interested in show business. He set out to become an actor, attending a theater program at New York University, where he met journalism student James Berg. After graduation, the future writing partners moved to Los Angeles to try their hand at television writing.“We looked at [scripts] like snarly hair,” Zimmerman says. “We would just comb it out and [it would] get smoother and smoother.” After brief stints on other shows, includingFameandGeorge Burns Comedy Week, the two were eventually hired as writers on a new NBC sitcom about four older women living together in Miami. That show, of course, becameThe Golden Girls.

“When I was onGolden Girls, I was just consumed with doing a good job, keeping the job, learning,” Zimmerman reflects. “It was really, for us, ‘Writing 101.’ I didn’t think I was a very funny writer. And then they would say, ‘Go pitch a bunch of jokes for the end of the scene for Bea Arthur.'”

Zimmerman and Berg, who worked on the show’s first season, were the brains behind some of the sitcom’s most beloved gags, including character Dorothy Zbornak’s withering stare.

The cast of ‘The Golden Girls’.Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank

Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank

“We wrote [the phrase] ‘Dorothy shoots her a look,'" Zimmerman says. “And that’s become a thing in writing now, ‘shooting a look.’ But that’s something very few actors could do. Bea Arthur could nail a look, and you knew exactly what she meant.”

The cast of ‘The Golden Girls’.Joseph Del Valle/NBCU Photo Bank

Joseph Del Valle/NBCU Photo Bank

“Only Estelle Getty figured it out rather quickly and said that she would have our back and keep our secret,” he says, of the late actress who played Sophia. “She was an early ally for the LGBTQ community and I respect her so much.”

Lauren Graham (right) and Alexis Bledel in ‘Gilmore Girls’.Richard Foreman / The CW / Courtesy Everett Collection

Richard Foreman / The CW / Courtesy Everett Collection

“They said that Alexis was very reserved,” he says. “She was so open with me. One day at a table read, I don’t know why, but she picked me up and carried me around the room. She’s little. How did she pick me up?”

“Something in those shows still speaks to this new generation,” he says, of their enduring popularity.

Zimmerman still remains a self-proclaimed “theater nerd," and one of his recent projects is an adaptation of Wendy Kesselman’s play,The Diary of Anne Frank.Zimmerman chose to cast his version with Latinx actors, in response to the Trump administration’s family separation policy. Philip Rosenthal and Monica Horan, ofEverybody Loves Raymondfame, helped to bring school groups in to see the show through The Rosenthal Family Foundation. After some performances, the theater hosted a conversation with Holocaust survivor Gabriella Y. Karin.

Stan Zimmerman.Braden Davis

Braden Davis

“It’s been really intense, but, I think, important for kids to [be] making the connection that this is going on still, the persecution and othering of people,” Zimmerman says.

source: people.com