Flickr user RavenU · CC BY 2.0

Danny Strong spent his twenties as a working actor — Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doyle on Gilmore Girls — before turning to screenwriting with Recount and Game Change, HBO dramas that reconstructed disputed elections in granular, procedural detail. He went on to co-create the Fox series Empire and to write, direct, and produce Hulu's Dopesick, an unflinching account of the opioid crisis. The shift from character actor to industry-shaping writer-producer earned him two Emmys, two Peabody Awards, and a Producers Guild Award.