Leslie Allen Jordan (born April 29, 1955) is an American actor and playwright.

Hailing from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and at a height of 4 ft 11 in (1.50 m), Jordan has made numerous appearances in both film and television. He is most well known for his television work - including guest appearances on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Star Trek: Voyager, Caroline in the City, Reba, Boston Public, Boston Legal, Nash Bridges and his secondary role on Hearts Afire. He has recently guest-starred on the popular comedy-drama Ugly Betty as celebrity-trasher Quincy Combs. In 2007, Jordan starred as Jesse Joe in the short-lived CW television program, Hidden Palms. He also portrayed the ski patrol director in Ski Patrol.

Jordan is best known for his role of Karen's pretentious, sexually ambiguous rival Beverley Leslie on the hit series Will & Grace. For that role he received an Emmy Award for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy Series at the 58th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards in 2006.

Jordan is an accomplished stage actor and playwright. In one of his best-known performances onstage, he played "Brother Boy" in Sordid Lives, a role he took to the big screen in the popular cult film of the same name. Jordan reprised the role in the Sordid Lives: The Series, a televised spin-off of the movie airing on Logo. He wrote and starred in the autobiographical play Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel, which was also made into a motion picture. He recently toured the country performing his one-man stage comedy, Like a Dog on Linoleum, to very favorable reviews. In this show, he tells stories of the high and low points of his life, from his father's death in a plane crash when he was just 11 years old, to his battles with substance abuse and his weakness for street hustlers.

Jordan ( /ˈdʒɔr.dən/;Arabic: اَلأُرْدُنّ, Al-'Urdunn), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Arabic: اَلمَمْلَكَة اَلأُرْدُنِيَّة اَلهَاشِمِيَّة), Al-Mamlakah Al-Urdaniyyah Al-Hashimiyyah) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing control of the Dead Sea with the latter. Jordan's only port is at its south-western tip, at the Gulf of Aqaba, which is shared with Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Over half of Jordan is covered by the Arabian Desert. However, the western part of Jordan is arable land and forests. Jordan is part of the Fertile Crescent. The capital city is Amman. According to the CIA World Factbook, Jordan has the second highest life expectancy in the Middle East, after Israel. The average life expectancy is one position behind the United Kingdom, although the age remains exactly the same (80.05 years).

The precursor to modern Jordan was founded in 1921 as the Hashemite Emirate, and it was recognized by the League of Nations as a state under the British mandate in 1922 known as The Emirate of Transjordan. In 1946, Jordan became an independent sovereign state officially known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. After capturing the West Bank area of Cisjordan during the 1948–49 war with Israel, Abdullah I took the title King of Jordan and Palestine, and he officially changed the country's name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in April 1949.

Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin (born September 1, 1939) is an American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960s when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in. Her career has spanned television, comedy recordings, Broadway, and motion pictures, enjoying acclaimed success in each medium. She has won many awards including Tony Awards, Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award and has also been nominated for an Academy Award. Tomlin's humor is often sharp and insightful in the traditions of standup comedians, but also frequently endearing, slightly wacky, and generally quite "family friendly" in the tradition of television comediennes such as Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, and Eve Arden.

Tomlin was born in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Lillie Mae (née Ford), a housewife and nurse's aide, and Guy Tomlin, a factory worker. Tomlin's parents were Southern Baptists who moved to Detroit from Paducah, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. She is a 1957 graduate of Cass Technical High School. Tomlin attended Wayne State University, where her interest in the theater and performing arts began. After college, Tomlin began doing stand-up comedy in nightclubs in Detroit and later in New York City. Her first television appearance was on The Merv Griffin Show in 1965.

Del Shores (born December 3, 1957, in Winters, Texas) is an American film director and producer, television writer and producer, playwright and actor.

The first play Shores wrote was Daddy's Dyin': Who's Got the Will? which saw a 1987 debut in Los Angeles. The comedic play was adapted for the 1990 film Daddy's Dyin': Who's Got the Will?. Shores wrote the screenplay and executive produced the feature.

Perhaps Shores' best known play is his fourth, "Sordid Lives", which debuted in 1996 in Los Angeles. The comedy centered around the Texan Ingram family and touched on LGBT themes. In 1999 Shores wrote and direct the screen version of Sordid Lives. Eight years later Shores produced 12 prequel episodes of Sordid Lives: The Series which aired on American LGBT-interest cable channel Logo.

In 2010, Shores debuted his play "Yellow" at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywoood.

Shores has two daughters Caroline and Rebecca from a previous marriage to Kelley Alexander. He married his partner and co-producer Jason Dottley in 2003 and they remarried in a state where same-sex weddings are recognized in 2008. In 2011 Shores announced on his Facebook page that he and Dottley were divorcing.

Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist, best known for her work in country music. As a songwriter, she has composed over 3,000 songs, the best known of which include "I Will Always Love You" (a two-time U.S. country chart-topper for Parton, as well an international pop hit for Whitney Houston), "Jolene", "Coat of Many Colors", "9 to 5" and "My Tennessee Mountain Home". As an actress, she starred in the movies 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias, Straight Talk, Unlikely Angel and Joyful Noise. She is one of the most successful female country artists of all time; with an estimated 100 million in album sales, Dolly Parton is also one of the best selling artists of all time. She is known as "The Queen of Country Music".

She was born in Sevierville, Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children of Avie Lee Parton (née Owens; October 5, 1923 – December 5, 2003) and Robert Lee Parton (March 22, 1921 – November 12, 2000), a tobacco farmer. Her siblings are: Willadeene Parton (born March 24, 1940), David Wilburn Parton (born March 30, 1942), Coy Denver "Denver" Parton (born August 16, 1943), Bobby Lee Parton (born February 18, 1948), Stella Mae Parton (born May 4, 1949), Cassie Nan Parton (February 12, 1951), Randel Huston "Randy" Parton (born December 15, 1953), Larry Gerald Parton (born and died July 6, 1955), Floyd and Frieda Estelle Parton (born June 1, 1957), and Rachel Ann Parton (born August 31, 1959). Her family was, as she has described them, "dirt poor". She outlined her family's lack of money in a number of her early songs, notably "Coat of Many Colors" and "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)". They lived in a rustic, dilapidated one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, a hamlet just north of the Greenbrier Valley, in the Locust Ridge area of the Great Smoky Mountains in Sevier County, a predominantly Pentecostal area.