If you want to feel good about Hollywood again, consider paying a visit to Bill Lawrence‘s office on the Warner Bros. lot. Down a tree-lined stretch sits a two-story bungalow, where the doors to Doozer Productions’ headquarters open and any nagging worries about contraction and mergers all but melt away.
Lawrence’s company is behind five current TV series, more than half of them shooting here in Burbank, and at least another two projects on deck. “I worry sometimes that I look like I’m trying to do everything in the world,” says Lawrence, when we meet in early May. “But when people are dumb enough to let me make things, I try to make as much as possible — because it’s not just me. It is so fun helping other people through this system when you can pull it off.”
People have been “dumb enough” to let Lawrence make things for more than three decades, though he clearly is the only one who sees it that way. A sitcom wunderkind, he was running the Michael J. Fox comedy Spin City at only 27 years old when mentor and co-creator Gary David Goldberg handed him the reins. From there, he created Scrubs, which ran for nine seasons, and Cougar Town, which ran for six. And while some swings and misses prompted a few dark years of the soul, his segue into streaming has propelled him to the apex of his Hollywood power.
