---
name: "Jen Statsky"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/jen-statsky"
fi1m_id: "jen-statsky"
imdb_id: "nm4278387"
tmdb_id: 1356008
wikidata_id: "Q23761812"
roles: ["Writer","Producer","Director"]
born: "19 November 1985"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 4
average_fi1m_score: 82
average_as: "writer"
average_over: 2
updated: "2026-09-17T18:57:54.708934+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Jen Statsky

## Identity

Jen Statsky

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/jen-statsky
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** jen-statsky
- **IMDb ID:** nm4278387
- **TMDB ID:** 1356008
- **Wikidata ID:** Q23761812
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jen_Statsky, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23761812, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4278387/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1356008

Writer and producer. Born 19 November 1985 in Milton, Massachusetts, USA.

## Details

- **Work:** Writer, Producer, Director
- **Born:** 19 November 1985, Milton, Massachusetts, USA
- **Active:** 2009–present
- **Also known as:** 젠 스타스키
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 4: 1 acting, 1 directing, 2 writing
- **Frequently works with:** [Aisha Muharrar](https://film.one/person/aisha-muharrar.md), [Joe Mande](https://film.one/person/joe-mande.md), [Alan Yang](https://film.one/person/alan-yang.md), [Amy Poehler](https://film.one/person/amy-poehler.md), [Andrew Law](https://film.one/person/andrew-law.md), [Beth McCarthy-Miller](https://film.one/person/beth-mccarthy-miller.md), [Dave King](https://film.one/person/dave-king-1298804.md), [David Hyman](https://film.one/person/david-hyman.md)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 82, as writer, over 2 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 2000s 83 (1), 2010s 82 (2), 2020s 83 (1)
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jen_Statsky, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23761812, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4278387/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1356008

## Coming up

- *The Catch* (2027-05-21), Screenplay

## Streaming the US now

- **Disney+:** [*The Good Place*](https://film.one/tv/the-good-place.md) (84)
- **HBO Max:** [*Hacks*](https://film.one/tv/hacks.md) (83)
- **Peacock:** [*Parks and Recreation*](https://film.one/tv/parks-and-recreation.md) (83)
- **Apple TV:** [*Broad City*](https://film.one/tv/broad-city.md) (80)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Jen Statsky

> Jen Statsky wrote on *Broad City* and *The Good Place* before co-creating *Hacks*, where her voice is easiest to hear: two women who make each other better and worse at the same job, funniest when the argument stops being about work.

In *Hacks* (2021) a note on a joke never stays a note on a joke. Deborah Vance, the veteran played by Jean Smart, tells Ava Daniels, the young writer played by Hannah Einbinder, that a line does not land, and within four exchanges they have stopped discussing the line and started discussing each other. That slide from the professional to the personal is the thing Statsky and her co-creators, Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs, are best at, and it is the reason the series is more than a comedy about show business.

She came up as a staff writer rather than on pilots of her own. There was *Late Night with Jimmy Fallon* from 2011, two episodes of *Parks and Recreation*, then *Broad City* (2014) and *The Good Place* (2016), the last under Michael Schur. On a staffed comedy nobody but the writers knows whose joke is whose, and we will not pretend to. What we can say is that the shows she chose share a habit. The people in them are trying to become better and cannot manage it alone: Chidi and his ethics chalkboard, Abbi and Ilana phoning each other every ten minutes from different boroughs. Both sets of writers, in our reviews, knew how long a half hour was and how many ideas fit in it.

*Hacks* is where the habit becomes hers, and where its weaknesses show too. Our review found the poorer exchanges leaning on the women's ages, so that their disagreements were predictable before either had finished speaking, and Ava sometimes written to illustrate a complaint about younger people. That is a real limit. The generational joke is the easy one, and the scripts reach for it when a sharper objection about the work would have served Einbinder better. Statsky has described the aim as "this kind of complex, dynamic, sometimes dark, sometimes fraught relationship between these two characters", and the series gets there most often when nobody mentions a birth year.

When it does get there, it got to us. We were moved, more than we expected from a comedy about writing jokes, by how quickly the ground shifts under these two: a quarrel about a punchline turns, in a single line, into an admission neither woman meant to make, and Smart and Einbinder play the silence after it without reaching for the laugh. That is writing that trusts its actors, and it is rarer than it should be.

Statsky has now co-created one series, and it has made her case. Whether the case is hers alone or belongs in equal parts to Aniello and Downs is a question the credits do not settle, since the three of them have written together across five titles. We would like to see what she writes without them. Until then, start with *Hacks*, and watch for the scenes where the age gap goes unremarked.

## Biography

Jen Statsky is an American television writer and producer. She was born on 19 November 1985 in Milton, Massachusetts.

She has written for *Late Night with Jimmy Fallon*, *Parks and Recreation* (2009), *Broad City* (2014), *The Good Place* (2016) and *Forever* (2018). She is co-creator and co-showrunner of the series *Hacks* (2021), on which she has also written episodes and directed one.

Statsky has received three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award and multiple Writers Guild of America Awards.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (4)

### Performed in (1)

- *The Good Place* (2016), Fi1m 84, as Susan — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-good-place.md)

### Directed (1)

- *Hacks* (2021), Fi1m 83, Director, Executive Producer, Creator, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/hacks.md)

### Wrote (2) — the average rests on these

- *Broad City* (2014), Fi1m 80, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/broad-city.md)
- *Parks and Recreation* (2009), Fi1m 83, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/parks-and-recreation.md)

## Complete filmography (12)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *The Catch* (2027), Screenplay
- *The Studio* (2025), series, as Jen Statsky — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-studio.md)
- *Chris Fleming: Hell* (2023), Executive Producer
- *Hacks* (2021), series, Executive Producer, Writer, Director, Creator — Fi1m 83, [page](https://film.one/tv/hacks.md)
- *A Parks and Recreation Special* (2020), Writer
- *Forever* (2018), series, Supervising Producer, Story
- *Why You've Never Met the 4th Haim Sister* (2017), Writer
- *The Good Place* (2016), series, as Susan · Writer, Producer, Co-Executive Producer, Supervising Producer, Co-Producer — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-good-place.md)
- *Another Period* (2015), series, Writer
- *Broad City* (2014), series, Writer — Fi1m 80, [page](https://film.one/tv/broad-city.md)
- *Parks and Recreation* (2009), series, Writer — Fi1m 83, [page](https://film.one/tv/parks-and-recreation.md)
- *The Rachel Incident*, series, Executive Producer

## Gallery

- ![Photo of Jen Statsky (2021)](https://film.one/media/person/22428/gallery-2b2cfcca6de6.jpg) Photo of Jen Statsky (2021) — Voilaiguess, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Jenstatsky.jpg/1280px-Jenstatsky.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Photo of Jen Statsky (2021)](https://film.one/media/person/22428/gallery-8dce0d0b21eb.jpg) Photo of Jen Statsky (2021) — Voilaiguess, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Jenstatsky_2021_%28cropped%29.jpg/1280px-Jenstatsky_2021_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Jen Statsky](https://film.one/media/person/22428/gallery-d91424b7a1d0.jpg) Jen Statsky — Image via TMDB

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/jen-statsky