Frank Rich
Frank Hart Rich Jr.[1] (born 1949) is an American essayist and liberal op-ed columnist,[2][3] who held various positions within The New York Times from 1980 to 2011.[4] He has also produced television series and documentaries for HBO.
For the English architect, see Frank West Rich.
Frank Rich
Frank Hart Rich Jr.
June 2, 1949
Washington, D.C., U.S.
- Writer
- television producer
1971–present
-
Gail Winston(m. 1976; div. 1987)
-
Alex Witchel(m. 1991)
Rich is currently writer-at-large for New York magazine, where he writes essays on politics and culture and engages in regular dialogues on news of the week for the "Daily Intelligencer".[5] He served as executive producer of the long-running HBO comedy series Veep, having joined the show at its outset in 2011, and of the HBO drama series Succession.
Early life and education[edit]
Born on June 2, 1949, Rich grew up in Washington, D.C. His mother, Helene Fisher (née Aaronson), a schoolteacher and artist, was from a Russian Jewish family that originally settled in Brooklyn, New York City, but moved to Washington, D.C., following the stock market crash of 1929. His father, Frank Hart Rich, a businessman, was from a German Jewish family long-settled in Washington.[6][7][8] He attended public schools and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1967.[9]
Rich attended Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At Harvard, he was editorial chairman of The Harvard Crimson,[10] the university's daily student newspaper. Rich was an honorary Harvard College scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and received a Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellowship. He graduated magna cum laude in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American history and literature.[4]
Television[edit]
Since 2008, Rich has been a creative consultant for HBO, where he has helped initiate and develop new programming and was an Executive Producer of Veep, the long-running comedy series created by Armando Iannucci and starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. He was also an Executive Producer of Succession, the HBO drama series created by Jesse Armstrong that debuted in June 2018 to critical praise.[21][22]
Rich was also an Executive Producer for the HBO documentaries Six by Sondheim (2013), directed by James Lapine, and Becoming Mike Nichols (2016), directed by Douglas McGrath.
Awards[edit]
Rich's journalistic honors include the George Polk Award for commentary in 2005[23] and, in 2011, the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard University (also his alma mater). In 2011, Rich was awarded an honorary doctorate from The New School.[24] In 2016, he received the Mirror Award for Best Commentary from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. He was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2015.
Rich was twice a Pulitzer Prize finalist, in 1987 and 2005.[25] In 2010, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Silurians Press Club.[26]
Rich received Emmy Awards in 2015, 2016, and 2017 for Veep, which was named Outstanding Comedy Series, and in 2020 for Succession, which was named Outstanding Drama Series.[27] He also received a Golden Globe in 2020 for Succession, which won the Best Drama Series prize.[28] He has won three Peabody Awards: for Succession in 2020, for Veep in 2017, and, in 2013, for Six by Sondheim,[29] which was also honored with the ASCAP Deems Taylor Television Broadcast Award.
Criticism[edit]
In 2011, The New Republic included him along with Rachel Maddow, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, etc. in an editorial roundup of the "Most Over-Rated Thinkers" of the year, calling him "an utterly conventional pundit of the old salon liberal variety".[3]
Personal life[edit]
Rich lives in Manhattan with his wife, Alex Witchel, an author and journalist; they married in 1991.[7] He has two sons from his previous marriage to Gail Winston,[30][31] Simon Rich, a novelist and short story writer who created the television series Man Seeking Woman and was a writer for Saturday Night Live, and Nathaniel Rich, who is a novelist, journalist, and essayist.