Join multi-Emmy award-winning unscripted TV producer Bill Pruitt, '92 GS, for a discussion about why we can't look away from Tiger King, and how living during the pandemic makes us all the subjects of our own reality TV shows.

Bill received his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts, where he studied screenwriting and directing, where was awarded several academic fellowships to develop the producing curriculum and graduated with honors. He then took to the road, producing television all around the world for CBS, NBC, MTV, Nat Geo, History, Animal Planet, Discovery, Vice and Amazon Prime filming on nearly every continent on the planet. He followed contestants racing around the globe, candidates vying for a job working for Donald Trump, truckers in the High Himalayas, perpetrators of the Rwanda Genocide who escaped into France, crab fishermen on the Bering Sea, alleged terrorists in the Congo, fashion designers in Milan, pot growers in the Emerald Triangle, alligator hunters in the Louisiana Swamp, master chefs in Italy, Sweden, China and Korea, Border Patrol agents in Texas and Florida commercial spear fishermen diving deep into the Gulf of Mexico.

He created and developed “Weed Country”, a six-part series for Discovery that profiled growers and distributors of medical marijuana in the Northern California “Emerald Triangle” as well as the law enforcement agencies looking to shut them down. Hailed by critics as “groundbreaking” and “similar to “The Wire” in its complexity”, the series enjoyed solid ratings and developed a sizable cult following back in 2012.

Pruitt has been nominated four times by the Producers Guild of America as                 “Outstanding Non Fiction Producer” and won the Excellence Award from             the Factual Entertainment Forum as showrunner of the hit Discovery series “Deadliest Catch”. The American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences nominated him six times for the Primetime Emmy Award , twice in one year, and he won the Emmy four years in a row as Supervising Producer of “The Amazing Race”. His first-ever digital series for Amazon Prime, “Eat the World with Emeril Lagasse”, was nominated for the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award, the Realscreen Award, five Daytime Emmy Awards and won the Emmy for Best Culinary Series in 2017. 

He divides his time between New York and Los Angeles while raising his sons, Will and Jack.

This event will be recorded.