David S. Milch (born March 23, 1945) is an American writer and producer of television series. He has created several television shows, including NYPD Blue (co-created with Steven Bochco) and Deadwood.

Milch graduated summa cum laude from Yale where he won the Tinker Prize in English and was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter, along with future U.S. president George W. Bush. He earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. To avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, Milch enrolled in Yale Law School, but was expelled for shooting out a police car siren with a shotgun. Milch then worked as a writing teacher and lecturer in English literature at Yale. During his teaching career, he assisted Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks in the writing of several college textbooks on literature. Milch's poetry and fiction have been published in The Atlantic Monthly and the Southern Review.

In 1982, Milch wrote a script for Hill Street Blues which became the episode "Trial by Fury." This began his career in television. He worked five seasons on Hill Street Blues as executive story editor and then as executive producer. Milch earned two Writers Guild Awards, a Humanitas prize, and an Emmy while working on that show. He created NYPD Blue with Steven Bochco and served as Executive Producer of that series for seven seasons. Milch co-created the patrol police drama Brooklyn South with Bochco, Bill Clark, and William S. Finkelstein in 1997 while still working on NYPD Blue. After NYPD Blue, Milch created a CBS series called Big Apple.

David (Hebrew: דָּוִד, דָּוִיד, Modern David Tiberian Dāwîḏ; ISO 259-3 Dawid; Strong's Daveed; beloved; Arabic: داوود‎ or داود‎ Dāwūd) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel and, according to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, an ancestor of Jesus. David is seen as a major Prophet in Islamic traditions. His life is conventionally dated to c. 1040–970 BC, his reign over Judah c. 1010–1003 BC,^{[citation needed]} and his reign over the United Kingdom of Israel c. 1003–970 BC.^{[citation needed]} The Books of Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles are the only sources of information on David, although the Tel Dan stele records "House of David", which some take as confirmation of the existence in the mid-9th century BC of a Judean royal dynasty called the "House of David".

David is very important to Jewish, Christian and Islamic doctrine and culture. In Judaism, David, or David HaMelekh, is the King of Israel, and the Jewish people. Jewish tradition maintains that a direct descendant of David will be the Messiah. In Islam, he is known as Dawud, considered to be a prophet and the king of a nation. He is depicted as a righteous king, though not without faults, as well as an acclaimed warrior, musician, and poet, traditionally credited for composing many of the psalms contained in the Book of Psalms.

Michael David Rapaport (born March 20, 1970) is an American, actor, director and comedian. He has acted in more than forty films since the early 1990s. For his television credits he's best known for his roles on the television series Boston Public, Prison Break, Friends, and The War at Home.

Rapaport was born to a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, the son of June Brody, a New York radio personality, and David Rapaport, a radio program manager. As a teenager he idolized actors, and fellow New Yorkers, Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken. He was expelled from high school and moved to Los Angeles, California to try stand-up comedy.

Rapaport has appeared in both dramatic and comedic roles on film and television. His movie roles include starring alongside Eddie Murphy in Metro, as a wisecracking marine biologist in Deep Blue Sea, and as a naive college student whose loneliness drives him to become a racist skinhead in Higher Learning. Many credit his breakout role with the independent film Zebrahead. His other best known film role was in True Romance as Dick Ritchie. Rapaport costarred in the Fox sitcom The War at Home, in which he played an "average Joe" type dealing with the everyday challenges of family life. The sitcom debuted in September 2005, and was cancelled in May 2007.

Jay Ferguson Cox Mohr (born Jon Ferguson Mohr; August 23, 1970) is an American actor and stand up comedian. He is known for his role as Professor Rick Payne in the TV series Ghost Whisperer, the title role in the CBS sitcom Gary Unmarried, which ran from 2008 to 2010, as a featured player for two seasons on the long running sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and the back-stabbing sports agent Bob Sugar in Jerry Maguire. Mohr could also be known for his near-identical impersonation of actor Christopher Walken.

Mohr was born in Verona, New Jersey. His mother, Jean (née Ferguson), is a nurse, and his father, Jon Wood Mohr, is a marketing executive. He has two sisters, Julia and Virginia.

Mohr appeared as a featured player for the 1993-94 and 1994-95 seasons of Saturday Night Live. His 2004 memoir, Gasping for Airtime: Two Years in the Trenches of Saturday Night Live (ISBN 1-4013-0006-5), details this tumultuous period of his life, including his battle with chronic panic attacks. Though his potential was appreciated by SNL creator/producer Lorne Michaels, Mohr was impatient with his progression to full cast member, and left the show on bad terms. He has since reconciled with Michaels.

Craig Ferguson (born 17 May 1962) is a Scottish-American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, and producer. He is the host of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, an Emmy Award-nominated, Peabody Award-winning late-night talk show that airs on CBS. In addition to hosting that program and performing stand-up comedy, Ferguson has written two books: Between the Bridge and the River, a novel, and American on Purpose, a memoir. He became a citizen of the United States in 2008.

Before his career as a late-night television host, Ferguson was best known in the United States for his role as the office boss, Nigel Wick, on The Drew Carey Show from 1996 to 2003. He also wrote and starred in three films, directing one of them.

Ferguson was born in the Stobhill Hospital in the Springburn district of Glasgow, Scotland to Robert and Janet Ferguson, and raised in nearby Cumbernauld, growing up "chubby and bullied". When he was six months old, he and his family moved from their Springburn apartment to a council house in Cumbernauld. They lived there as Glasgow was re-housing many people following damage to the city from World War II. Ferguson attended Muirfield Primary School and Cumbernauld High School. At age sixteen, Ferguson dropped out of Cumbernauld High School and began an apprenticeship to be an electronics technician at a local factory of American company Burroughs Corporation.