Story

The initial creative spark for Little Miss CEO emerged from a spring 2006 meeting between Todd Senturia (Co-Creator), Marty Jones (Producer), and a then-thirteen year-old Shelbie Bruce, who had played Paz Vega’s daughter in Spanglish.  Todd and Marty had submitted one of Todd’s original screenplays for Shelbie’s consideration, and Shelbie and her agent, Cindy Osbrink, invited them in to discuss the project.

Cindy arranged the room so that Shelbie sat in the huge chair behind a large partner desk, while Cindy and Laura Bruce, Shelbie’s mother, sat behind and to the side, clearly positioning it as “Shelbie’s meeting.”   Todd and Marty sat in the visitor chairs in front of the desk as Shelbie led the discussion, across topics ranging from the lack of meaty dramatic roles for young actresses to the challenge of keeping her younger brother Robby in line.   Within minutes of leaving the room, Todd called Marty with the idea for a TV sitcom: “Little Miss CEO—a young girl behind a big desk…somehow in charge of something more typically led by adults.”

Todd continued to develop the initial idea, writing a short treatment  based on the premise that “A young girl inherits her family’s toy business.”  With no TV-sitcom experience, Todd sought a writing partner, and was ultimately introduced in to Mitch Klebanoff (The Jersey, Beverly Hills Ninja), who liked the basic idea, but improved upon the concept by suggesting the business be an Hispanic TV station rather than a toy company.  With that as the revised platform, Todd and Mitch together fleshed out an expanded treatment and co-wrote a pilot script for the series, which they submitted to Shelbie and her team at the end of the 2007.

By the spring of 2008, given all the chaos in traditional development caused by the writers’ strike, Todd, Mitch and Marty had decided that a visual presentation of the pilot would help elevate the project above the thousand of other ideas running around, and set about recruiting a full cast and crew, and, importantly, looking for an experienced sitcom director to lead the shoot.  At the last minute they were introduced to John Bowab (Facts of Life, The Cosby Show and countless others), who graciously agreed to come on board, bringing his crew to the party as well, and the creative team was complete.  After a whirlwind few weeks of casting and pre-production, the presentation pilot was shot over the course of one long weekend in July.