Richard Appel

Richard Appel
Appel at the 2010 Comic Con in San Diego.
Born	Richard James Appel (1963-05-21) May 21, 1963 (age 53) New York City, New York, United States
Occupation	Writer, producer, former attorney
Alma mater	North Shore Country Day School Harvard University
Period	1994–present
Genre	Humor
Spouse	Mona Simpson (m. 1993; div. ????)
Children	2

Richard James "Rich" Appel (born May 21, 1963) is an American writer, producer and former attorney. Since 2012, he has served as an Executive Producer and co-showrunner of Family Guy on Fox. Growing up in Wilmette, Illinois, Appel developed a love of comedy and dreamed of a career as a comedy writer; he attended Harvard University and wrote for the Harvard Lampoon. Following in his mother's footsteps, Appel instead became a lawyer. After attending law school he started out as a law clerk for Judge John M. Walker, Jr. before becoming a federal attorney, serving as assistant U.S. attorney for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York for three years. In 1994, he moved into comedy writing when he was hired for The Simpsons, writing seven episodes of the show including "Mother Simpson". He moved on to become showrunner and executive producer of King of the Hill before creating the sitcom A.U.S.A.. He then worked on The Bernie Mac Show, Family Guy and American Dad! before co-creating The Cleveland Show. He was married to the writer Mona Simpson.

Richard James Appel was born May 21, 1963 in New York City, to Nina (née Schick) and Alfred Appel. His mother was a lawyer and served as dean of Loyola University Chicago's law school from 1983–2004, where she continues to teach Tort Law today and his father (who died on May 2, 2009) was professor of English at Northwestern University and an expert on Vladimir Nabokov. Appel has a sister, Karen Oshman. Appel lived in California while his parents taught at Stanford University before the family moved to Wilmette, Illinois, where Appel went to North Shore Country Day School. Appel became interested in comedy from a young age, noting: "I grew up watching The Dick Van Dyke Show and always thought that what Rob Petrie did for a living was what I wanted to do." His father introduced him to the works of Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy and encouraged him to "read comic books and watch quality television", and he and a friend produced parody adverts and news pieces with a Betamax and often engaged in prank phone calls. At high school, he wrote sketches and routines and dreamt of being a comedy writer but "didn't know anyone who did it, and it didn't seem like a career that was open to me."