David Jenkins

Life and career

Jenkins was born in Minneapolis and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He received undergraduate degrees in political science and philosophy from Boston University, and an MFA in acting from New York University. While working as an actor in both New York and Chicago, Jenkins began writing plays. He founded a theater company called "Human Animals" through which he could produce his own work.

Plays

Jenkins' plays include middlemen, Post Office, and Small Claims. Post Office was named one of the top 10 off-Broadway shows of 2011 by Paper Magazine. middlemen has been translated into several languages and produced internationally, including productions in Chile, Belarus (by the Belarus Free Theatre) and Norway. Huffpost called the play "fantastically inventive" and described it as "a darkly humorous allegory that might have been written by Samuel Beckett if he worked for Enron."

Television

When Jenkins wrote the pilot for People of Earth (originally titled The Group) on spec, he hadn’t met Wyatt Cenac, Conan O’Brien or Greg Daniels. He wrote the pilot with Cenac in mind, having been a fan of his work from The Daily Show. The script eventually made its way to Conan O’Brien, who said the spec was ’My favorite script that I've read in memory.’ Because Jenkins described the show as a “Greg Daniels’ style human comedy mixed with a J.J. Abrams magic box show,” O'Brien passed the script onto Greg Daniels, who was “impressed with the world that David created and all the possibilities.”

The pilot was shot in Toronto in September 2015, and the show was ordered to series by TBS in January 2016 where it became a critical and commercial success. The Hollywood Reporter said People of Earth was "wholly original and distinctive, thanks in large part to Jenkins’ writing.” The series was subsequently renewed for a second season.