@Work How I Found Then Split From My Work Wife

Sitcom writer and producer Liz Astrof, whose credits include 2 Broke Girls and Last Man Standing, started her career with a partner. Then it all imploded. In an excerpt from her memoir, Don’t Wait Up, she shares her truth: Work wives aren’t for everyone.

- Liz Astrof

My first marriage was a work marriage. Samantha and I met in a sitcom-writing class at the New School in Manhattan in 1996. I gravitated toward Samantha right away because she had features similar to my childhood best friend Rachel’s: thick brown hair cut in a short bob, green eyes, and the overall appearance of a college futon—sort of generally soft and messy but comfortable. After class, we would walk to the subway together, decompressing and debating whether our teacher had really written for the greatest sitcoms of all time, as he had claimed. This was long before Google, so we decided he was definitely lying. No one had a résumé like the one he boasted.

The last night of class, Samantha and I said our goodbyes and good lucks and went our separate ways at the top of the subway steps. Halfway down the stairs, just as the 4 train was pulling into the station and I was about to make a run for it, Samantha called out, “Elizabeth—would you want to be writing partners?!”

When I’d first decided to embark on a career in TV writing, my brother, Jeff, suggested I get a writing partner. It would help me get a job on a show, he said. Jeff had a partner, and it worked for him. At the time, they were writing for this new show called Friends, which seemed like it might stay on the air for a couple of seasons. I figured that if Jeff needed a writing partner, then I certainly did too.

So I said, “Sure, why not?!”