Berg and Harberts

Biography of Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg

Aaron Harberts has a long and impressive career as a writer and producer for popular TV shows. Since a very young age, he has been focused on expanding his creative writing skills to help advance his career as a screenwriter. His love of writing has helped him to create storylines and worlds that defy imagination and characters that are relatable and well loved. Due to his love of writing and ability to create these amazing worlds, he has been able to work on some of the best TV shows of the last few decades. Along with his writing partner, Gretchen Berg, Harberts has worked on some very memorable shows and has gained quite the reputation in the entertainment industry.

From a young age, Aaron Harberts loved to write. He loved the ability to create whole new worlds using words. When he was younger, he was constantly daydreaming. He has always had a huge imagination and would oftentimes be caught gazing off in the distance and daydreaming. Before he started writing the stories down, he would invent characters and worlds entirely in his head. His creativity knew no bounds and what started as an outlet as a child turned into a lifelong passion that led to a career in the entertainment industry.

Aaron Harberts was born on January 20th, 1973 in the small, rural town of Waterloo, Iowa. Incorporated in 1868, the town was not known for its creative arts but instead for its agricultural roots. However, over the last decade the arts scene has grown but when Harberts was born, the focus in the community was on agriculture. Located in the Upper Midwest, it has grown to be mid-sized town but still retains a lot of that small mid-western charm. During the 70's the town had grown exponentially, to its largest size yet. Harberts was born into this mid-west town to religious parents but he bounced around between three different states growing up.

He mostly grew up spending time in South Florida, Iowa and Indiana. He had family in all three so he would split his time between these states as a child. His father is a Presbyterian minister and so Harberts spent a lot of time in church listening to his father's sermons that were filled with religious imagery and vivid retellings and interpretations of the bible. During these sermons, his imagination would go wild. He recalls this time during the sermons as the inspiration for his writing career. As he sat in the pews of the church, he would create entire stories in his head that he would later write down.

After he graduated high school he then went back to the mid-west to attend college. He attended Northwestern University located in Evanston, Illinois. The private research university was founded in 1851 and has had former faculty members and alumni that have included 19 Nobel Prize laureates, 16 Rhodes Scholars, 6 MacArthur Genius Fellows, 38 Pulitzer Prize winners, 65 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2 Supreme Court Justices, and a multitude of Academy Award winners, Emmy and Tony winning actors, actresses, writers, directors, and playwrights. [View IMDb]

It was amongst this background that Aaron Harbets began his education and first serious and guided foray into creative writing. It was during his freshman year that he met his future writing partner and creative counterpart, Gretchen Berg. The pair originally met though the Creative Writing for the Media course and the university. This course is designed to help encourage and perfect the craft of writing for screen, stage, television, and all other forms of narrative media. Students learn the mechanics of creative writing and the importance of creative collaboration with other students. There is also a component of studying business acumen to help navigate the professional side of a creative writing career. This program brought two very imaginative people together and ultimately this partnership would spawn multiple projects over the last few decades.

Gretchen Berg was a junior when Aaron first met her. She was directing a student film in 1992 and Harberts began working on it as a PA. They working in close capacity but didn't really develop a friendship at that time. They enjoyed working together and they had mutual friends but their friendship did not take off until a few years later. After Gretchen graduated from university in 1993, she moved to Los Angeles to the hub of the entertainment world. Soon Aaron moved to LA too after he graduated in 1995. He was slated to live with other people but when his housing fell through, he remembered that Gretchen was living in LA and looked her up. She offered him a place to crash under the wet bar in her apartment.

As he worked to get his career off the ground, Gretchen was working on a sitcom spec. She found that she was struggling with it. She was working solo on this project and found she was having trouble with the comedic aspect of the writing. She would find that she would write something at 2 in the morning and think it was hilarious. However, the next day in the harsh light of morning, she would realize it maybe wasn't that funny after all. She wanted another person to bounce ideas off of and she turned to Aaron for help.

They worked solidly for six months and they both universally hated the final product. They referred to it as a very terrible version of the popular sitcom Friends. They ended up burning the script but they moved forward and decided to become a writing team. Those early days were spent hustling day in and day out trying to break into the industry. They were determined to make a it and they knew it was going to take a lot of hard work.

As they were busy chasing down any and every opportunity, they would also spend hours studying, analyzing, and criticizing other movies and TV shows to help sharpen their own methods and writing skills. Through this exercise, they learned the best practices and techniques for pacing, comedic timing, plot construction and character development. They were also writing a lot during this time. They wrote constantly and they also wrote a variety of different types of screenplays that ranged from comedies, dramas, to science fiction. This dedication helped both of them to launch their career as a writing team. It was soon that an agent came across one of their scripts and the two were quickly signed on in a matter of weeks.

Aaron Harberts first break was for the popular smash hit show Beverly Hills, 90210. He is credited as an executive story editor for 27 episodes from 1999 until 2000. Although, that was the start of his career, he got a huge career boost from the next show that he worked on with Gretchen. Later from 2000 until 2002, he wrote 9 episodes and was a producer and co-producer for 39 episodes for the very popular science fiction show, Roswell. The show ran for 3 seasons. Roswell is considered the show that helped Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg to become one of the most sought after producing and writing teams in Hollywood.

After their run writing and producing for the show, Roswell, they started working on the show Wonderfalls as both writers and producers. During his time working on this show, he met famed writer and producer Bryan Fuller. He hired both Aaron and Gretchen to work on Pushing Daisies. This show was a fantasy comedy-drama television series created by Bryan Fuller. They were writers and co-executive producers for Pushing Daisies from 2008 until 2009. During this time they were also working on other series as writers and producers. They created a comedy drama called Pepper Dennis, starring Rebecca Romijn as Pepper Dennis, a television reporter in Chicago. The show premiered on the WB network but did not transfer over to the CW network and so the show only ran for a year.

From 2009 until 2010, the pair, Berg and Harberts, were showrunners and executive producers for the show Mercy, which only lasted a year. Then in 2011 Berg and Harberts worked on the show Off the Map and in 2012 the show GCB. From 2013 until 2015, they were executive producers for the hit show Revenge. This hit drama series, inspired by the Alexandre Dumas novel, The Count of Monte Cristo, became the highest rated series for ABC in Wednesday's 10pm slot. The show is about a young woman who returns to her childhood home to get revenge on individuals who wronged her and her father. From 2015 until 2016, Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg worked on the historical romantic drama called Reign as writers and executive producers.

Their latest writing and producing job was for the new reboot of the Star Trek series. Star Trek: Discovery is set about a decade before the original Star Trek series. Bryan Fuller created the series for CBS had asked Aaron and Gretchen to join his writing team. This new series made history for being the first in the franchise to introduce gay characters. Aaron, who is a gay man himself, encouraged this LGBTQ representation within the series. Aaron has been with his spouse for over 22 years and he wanted to make sure that the gay characters in the show had storylines that were authentic. Growing up in the mid-West, he did not see a lot of diversity and he wanted to make sure that the show represented different types of individuals.

Due to their extensive talent and career spanning decades, Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg have won the Peabody Award Nomination, the Saturn Award, Logo's NewNowNext Award, and a GLAAD Award Nomination. This talented writing team has been mum about their latest venture but since they are known for their diligent work ethic and love for their craft, it shouldn't be long before they announce their latest and greatest project.

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