Michelle Ashford

Michelle Ashford was nominated for numerous awards, including an Emmy and recognition from the Writers Guild of America, for her work on everything from episodes of the original "21 Jump Street" (Fox, 1987-91) to the ground-breaking cable series "Masters of Sex" (Showtime, 2013-), a frank period piece about human behaviorists Masters and Johnson. Ashford claimed that writing made her a perpetual student, because she was so often drawn to the kind of projects that required enormous amounts of research. While studying economics in the early 1980s, she happened to take an elective course on television. As part of the course, she worked on a documentary on hospice care and changed her career path. After the first few years of doing every job from from page to personal assistant, she moved up the ladder to writer and producer. While her early work on shows such as the Johnny Depp hit "21 Jump Street"(Fox, 1987-91) and the crime drama "Boomtown" (NBC, 2002-03) may have helped her to establish some credibility with the industry, it wasn't until she worked on the mini-series "John Adams" (HBO, 2008) followed in two years by the Emmy-winning World War II series "The Pacific"(HBO, 2010) that she began to hit her stride. Both set the stage for her most controversial project yet, the cable adaptation of Thomas Maier's biographical best-seller Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love. She not only developed the series based on the book, but collaborated deeply with the original author in addition to her own research to establish a level of authenticity. A sexy and morally complex series that maintained a strong sense of historical accuracy, "Masters of Sex" became one of the most talked-about shows on television.