--- name: "Todd A. Kessler" canonical: "https://film.one/person/todd-a-kessler" fi1m_id: "todd-a-kessler" imdb_id: "nm0450393" tmdb_id: 1223742 wikidata_id: "Q2438400" roles: ["Writer","Producer","Director"] born: "15 January 1972" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_as: "writer" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-17T17:24:54.011677+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." --- # Todd A. Kessler ## Identity Todd A. Kessler - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/todd-a-kessler - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** todd-a-kessler - **IMDb ID:** nm0450393 - **TMDB ID:** 1223742 - **Wikidata ID:** Q2438400 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_A._Kessler, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2438400, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0450393/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1223742 Writer and producer. Born 15 January 1972 in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Writer, Producer, Director - **Born:** 15 January 1972, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA - **Active:** 1999–2007 - **Titles on Fi1m:** 2: 1 directing, 1 writing - **Frequently works with:** [Allen Coulter](https://film.one/person/allen-coulter.md), [Andy Wolk](https://film.one/person/andy-wolk.md), [Dan Attias](https://film.one/person/dan-attias.md), [Matthew Penn](https://film.one/person/matthew-penn.md), [Nick Gomez](https://film.one/person/nick-gomez.md), [Steve Shill](https://film.one/person/steve-shill.md) - **Fi1m score by decade:** 1990s 94 (1), 2000s 78 (1) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_A._Kessler, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2438400, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0450393/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1223742 ## Streaming the US now - **HBO Max:** [*The Sopranos*](https://film.one/tv/the-sopranos.md) (94) - **Disney+:** [*Damages*](https://film.one/tv/damages.md) (78) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Todd A. Kessler > Todd A. Kessler writes thrillers that begin at the end and work backwards, and when the trick is new, as in the first season of *Damages*, it is hard to look away. Repeated across seasons and series, it starts to look like a habit. Minutes into the pilot of *Damages* (2007), Rose Byrne's Ellen Parsons is out on the street half-dressed under a raincoat and covered in someone's blood, and we have no idea whose. We have only just watched her get hired. The rest of the first season lives between those two points, the job offer and the ruin, and every episode edges closer to both. Kessler and his co-creators, his brother Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman, treat that structure as the main character. Glenn Close's Patty Hewes is the other one, the most frightening lawyer we have seen on television, and she works partly because the programme keeps us half a step behind her. He came to it from the theatre, as a playwright working with David Rabe, before Spike Lee hired him as a screenwriter. Then came *The Sopranos* (1999), where he wrote across the second and third seasons and shares the credit with David Chase on the second-season finale, 'Funhouse'. Our review of that series does not single him out, and we will not pretend to know which lines were his. *Damages* followed in 2007, *Bloodline* in 2015 with the same two partners, and *The New Look* in 2024, a biographical drama, which we have not reviewed. The method has a price. Told forwards and backwards at once, a story can only close on a secret, so each new season needs a fresh body and a fresh question hanging over it, and by the fifth year of *Damages* the trick had worn thin. *Bloodline*, which Kessler said was meant to 'dig into the earth that is family', moved the same shape from a law firm to a family; we have not reviewed it and will not judge it here. But we will own this: the first thirteen hours of *Damages* gave us a dread we did not expect from a legal drama, and it came from Kessler's refusal to tell us how much Ellen knows, so that Byrne can play her, for a whole season, as victim, accomplice or both. He also appears in *Damages* himself, as Perry the doorman, a small recurring part he has kept. It suits him: the man at the door who sees everyone come and go and says nothing about it. Start with that first season, and if the mechanism begins to show in the second, you have our permission to stop. ## Biography Todd A. Kessler is an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer and director. He began his career as a playwright working with David Rabe before moving into film and television. He wrote and produced episodes for the second and third seasons of the HBO series *The Sopranos* (2000–2001), including co-writing the season two finale *Funhouse* with David Chase. Kessler is the co-creator, head writer and executive producer of the FX series *Damages* (2007–2012), which he developed with his brother Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman. He later created the Netflix series *Bloodline* (2015–2017) and has worked on *The New Look* (2024). He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and has received multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) ### Directed (1) - *Damages* (2007), Fi1m 78, Writer, Executive Producer, Director, Creator — [page](https://film.one/tv/damages.md) ### Wrote (1) — the average rests on these - *The Sopranos* (1999), Fi1m 94, Producer, Story, Co-Producer, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-sopranos.md) ## Complete filmography (8) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The New Look* (2024), series, Director, Writer, Executive Producer, Teleplay, Story, Creator - *Bloodline* (2015), series, Director, Writer, Story, Producer, Executive Producer, Creator - *Damages* (2007), series, as Perry the Doorman · Writer, Executive Producer, Director, Creator — Fi1m 78, [page](https://film.one/tv/damages.md) - *Blue's Room* (2004), series, Creator - *Robbery Homicide Division* (2002), series, Writer - *The Sopranos* (1999), series, Writer, Story, Co-Producer, Producer — Fi1m 94, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-sopranos.md) - *Providence* (1999), series, Writer - *Blue's Clues* (1996), series, Creator --- © 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/todd-a-kessler