Lona Williams
Lona Williams is an American television producer, writer, and actress.
Early life and education
Williams was raised in Rosemount, Minnesota, where her father, Les, was a middle school math teacher. Williams participated in a number of beauty pageants as a child and was crowned Minnesota's Junior Miss in 1985, before becoming the runner up in the year's America's Junior Miss, winning a $10,000 scholarship. She graduated from Rosemount High School shortly thereafter.Williams attended the University of Minnesota and after she took a screen-writing course there, her teacher encouraged her to move to California to find work.
Career
After working as an assistant on one show, Jerry Belson at The [Tracey Ullman Show], helped her get a job as a writing assistant on The Simpsons. She occasionally provided voices for the show, including that of Amber Dempsey, a single-episode character from "Lisa the Beauty Queen". She noted: "I really was only a typist for the show. But by working on the script, I learned how the scripts were put together. I would go to work and type all day, and come home and work on my spec scripts for The Simpsons and Roseanne."Bruce Helford hired Williams as a writer on the short-lived Someone Like Me before in 1995 signing her up as a writer and producer on The [Drew Carey Show]. She stayed for three seasons and wrote the screenplay Dairy Queens which was retitled and released in 1999 as Drop [Dead Gorgeous |Drop Dead Gorgeous]. She also wrote the original script for the 2001 film Sugar & Spice. She co-wrote the script of Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.