James Burrows

Burrows was born to a Jewish family^[4][5] in Los Angeles, California, the son of Ruth (Levinson) and Abe Burrows, a well-known composer, director and writer.^[6] James has one sister, Laurie Burrows Grad.^[7] When James was still a young child, his family moved to New York where James attended New York’s High School of Music & Art.^[8][9] Burrows is a graduate of Oberlin College and the graduate program of the Yale School of Drama.^[8]

After Yale, Burrows returned to California where he became employed as a dialogue coach on O.K. Crackerby!, a television series starring Burl Ives and created by Burrows' father, Abe.^[10] Burrows then took a job as an assistant stage manager for the 1967 play Holly Golightly, an adaptation of the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.^[11] The production was unsuccessful, but the job served as Burrows' introduction to its star, Mary Tyler Moore.^[11] Early on, Burrows also worked for the road company of Cactus Flower and the Broadway production of Forty Carats.^[12] He also went to direct the short lived Broadway play The Castro Complex. Burrows continued working in theater as a stage manager and transitioned into directing plays.^[13] Burrows directed traveling plays and a production at a Jacksonville, Florida dinner theater.^[13][14]

While working in theater, Burrows wrote Moore and her then husband Grant Tinker seeking a job at their production company, MTM Enterprises.^[11] In 1974, Tinker hired Burrows as a director for MTM Enterprises where he directed episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show.^[11][15] Tinker asked director Jay Sandrich, known for his work directing The Mary Tyler Moore Show and later The Cosby Show and The Golden Girls, to serve as a mentor to Burrows.^[16]

Burrows is best known for his comic timing, complex blocking for actors, and incorporating more sophisticated lighting in television studio shoots. He is also credited as being one of the first sitcom directors to increase the typical multi-camera television shoot from three to four cameras.^[15] During this time Burrows directed for numerous shows such as Phyllis, Rhoda, Laverne & Shirley, Busting Loose, The Ted Knight Show, The Associates, and On Our Own.

Burrows co-created Cheers with brothers Glen and Les Charles. The Charles brothers were also former employees of MTM Enterprises and served as producers on the series Taxi where Burrows worked as in-house director for 76 episodes.^[11][15][17] Burrows and the Charles brothers wanted to create a show where they could have more control.^[17] Cheers premiered on NBC on September 30, 1982.^[17] Although Cheers initially struggled in the ratings, the series became a hit, running 275 episodes over eleven seasons.^[17] Burrows directed all but 35 of those 275 episodes.^[11] During his time on Cheers Burrows also directed episodes for shows such as the NBC sitcoms The Hogan Family, Dear John, and Night Court.

Burrows then gained acclaim for directing the NBC sitcom Frasier. He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for the pilot, The Good Son in 1993. Burrows directed in total 32 episodes from 1993 to 1997. The series was a spinoff of Cheers focusing on the character of Dr. Frasier Crane portrayed by Kelsey Grammer. The series also starred David Hyde Pierce, John Mahoney, Peri Gilpin, and Jane Leeves. It received critical acclaim for its writing, directing and performances. It won five consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series (for seasons 1-5). In 1998, Burrows directed a Chicago-based production of the 1939 comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner starring John Mahoney.^[14]

Burrows also directed 15 episodes of another NBC sitcom Friends starring Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, and Lisa Kudrow. The series follows six friends living in New York City. He received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for the 1994 episode The One with the Blackout from Season 1. During this time he also received Emmy nominations for directing the pilot episodes of both the NBC sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun starring John Lithgow, Kristen Johnson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Jane Curtin, and the ABC sitcom Dharma & Greg starring Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson. He also directed episodes of the NBC sitcoms Wings, NewsRadio, Caroline in the City, and the CBS sitcoms Pearl and George and Leo.

From 1998 to 2006 Burrows directed every single episode of the NBC sitcom Will & Grace starring Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Megan Mullally, and Sean Hayes. Burrows received twelve Primetime Emmy Award nominations for the series winning for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2000. He was nominated for directing the episodes, "Pilot" (1998), "Homo for the Holidays" (2000), "Lows in the Mid-Eighties" (2001), "A Chorus Lie" (2002), "24" (2003), and "It's a Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad World" (2005). Burrows directed every episode of Will & Grace during its initial eight-year run.^[18]

In 2006 he directed the pilot of the Chuck Lorre created CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory starring Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Sara Gilbert, and Mayim Bialik. In 2003 he directed the pilot of another Chuck Lorre created CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men starring Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer. During this time he also directed episodes of shows such as the CBS sitcoms The Class, Courting Alex, and Gary Unmarried, the Fox sitcom Back to You, and the ABC sitcom Hank.

Burrows directed high profile sitcoms during the 2010s including the CBS sitcoms Mike & Molly (2010–2016) starring Billy Gardell, and Melissa McCarthy, and The Millers (2013-2015) starring Will Arnett, Margo Martindale, Beau Bridges. Burrows reunited with Matt LeBlanc with Man with a Plan (2016–2020). He also directed the sitcom B Positive (2020–2022) starring Annaleigh Ashford. Burrows directed episodes of numerous television series including the ABC sitcoms Romantically Challenged, Better with You, the CBS sitcoms $#*! My Dad Says, 2 Broke Girls, Partners, Friends with Better Lives, Superior Donuts, and The Neighborhood, the NBC sitcoms Sean Saves the World, Crowded, and the Netflix comedy series Disjointed.

By 2012, Burrows had directed over 50 pilots for television series.^[19] Burrows has directed over 1,000 episodes of television, a milestone he achieved in November 2015 with the NBC sitcom Crowded.^[20] To celebrate Burrows' achievement, NBC aired a special tribute on February 21, 2016, titled Must See TV: An All-Star Tribute to James Burrows featuring cast reunions from many of the series Burrows has directed such as Cheers, Taxi, Friends, Frasier, The Big Bang Theory, Will & Grace and Mike & Molly.^[21] In January 2020, Andy Fisher and Burrows won the Directors Guild of America Award for Variety/Talk/News/Sports – Specials for Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear's All in the Family and The Jeffersons.^[22]

In 2016, Burrows directed his 1,000th TV episode, on NBC's Crowded.^[23] Burrows took part in two revivals, Will & Grace (2017–2020) with the original cast reunited. He received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for the episode, "We Love Lucy". In 2023, he directed the first two episodes of the revival of Frasier on Paramount+.

Burrows has had cameo appearances in several of the shows for which he has directed. In the first season of Friends, Burrows appeared in the episode "The One with the Butt" as the director of the film in which the character Joey Tribbiani is cast as Al Pacino's "butt double".^[24] He also appears as a television director named Jimmy in the 2005 HBO series The Comeback.^[25] Burrows played himself on the series. An episode of Scrubs, "My Life in Four Cameras", had a character named Charles James in honor of Cheers creators Burrows and Glen and Les Charles. It was previously asserted in Sitcoms: the 101 Greatest TV Comedies of All Time (2007) that Burrows served as the silhouette of the customer who knocks on the door in the final scene of Cheers,^[15] but Burrows himself refuted this claim on episode 9 of the NewsRadio-themed podcast Dispatches from Fort Awesome, revealing that the actual "Man Who Knocks" was agent Bob Broder.^[26]

Burrows is married to celebrity hairstylist Debbie Easton; the couple lives in Manhattan.^[27] Burrows was previously married to Linda Solomon.^[28][29] He has three daughters and one stepdaughter.^[25]

Television

Film

Television

Over the course of his career, Burrows has been nominated for fifteen Directors Guild of America awards, and for an Emmy Award every year between 1980 and 2005, excluding 1997.^[48] Burrows has won eleven Emmy Awards and five Directors Guild of America Awards.^[49] The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences celebrated Burrows' forty-year career by hosting a panel in his honor on October 7, 2013.^[48]

• Burrows, James with Eddy Friedland (2022). Directed by James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories from the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, and More. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 9780593358269.
• Darowski, Joseph J.; Darowski, Kate (2017). Frasier: A Cultural History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781538113875.
• Darowski, Joseph J.; Darowski, Kate (2017). Cheers: A Cultural History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781442277960.
• Littlefield, Warren with T.R. Pearson (2012). Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must-See TV. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 9780385533744.

• James Burrows at IMDb
• James Burrows at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television