Liz Brixius is an American television writer and producer.

In 2008 Brixius, Linda Wallem, and Evan Dunsky, created the series Nurse Jackie, a half-hour drama about a "flawed" emergency room nurse in a New York City hospital. Starring Edie Falco of The Sopranos, the series premiered on Showtime in June 2009, with Wallem and Brixius serving as showrunners for the series and sharing executive producer duties with Caryn Mandabach.

Linda Wallem is a United States actress, writer, and producer.

Wallem was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and raised in Rockford, Illinois. She is also the sister of actor Stephen Wallem - who co-stars on her show Nurse Jackie, as a nurse named Thor.

Wallem began her career at Dudley Riggs' Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She and fellow writer-performer Peter Tolan formed a double act called Wallem & Tolan and began performing on the cabaret circuit in New York City at such venues as the Manhattan Punch Line. Broadway veteran Martin Charnin caught the act and worked with the duo to present it as an Off Broadway called Laughing Matters in 1989.

Wallem appeared in the 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle as the waitress from whom star Meg Ryan's character buys coffee from on the road. On Seinfeld Wallem played Hildy, the waitress who refuses to serve Elaine Benes her customary "big salad" in the 1994 episode "The Soup." Young viewers are likely to recognize her voice as Doctor Paula Hutchison and Virginia Wolfe and other female characters on the Nickelodeon animated television series, Rocko's Modern Life (1993–1996).

Edith "Edie" Falco ( /ˈiːdi ˈfælkoʊ/; born July 5, 1963) is an American television, film and stage actress, known for her roles in Oz as Diane Whittlesey, as Carmela Soprano on the HBO series The Sopranos, and as the titular character on the Showtime series Nurse Jackie.

Falco was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Judith Anderson, an actress, and Frank Falco, a jazz drummer. Her father was of Italian descent and her mother's ancestry was Swedish and English. Falco's siblings are Joseph, Paul and Ruth. Her uncle is novelist, playwright and poet Edward Falco, an English professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. She was raised in West Islip, on Long Island. Falco graduated from Northport High School in 1981, after playing Eliza Doolittle in a production of My Fair Lady. She attended the Acting Program at SUNY Purchase with fellow actors Stanley Tucci and Ving Rhames; she remains friends with both.

Early in her career, Falco made appearances on television shows like Law & Order and Homicide: Life on the Street. Tom Fontana, executive director of Homicide, cast Falco as Eva Thormann, the wife of an injured police officer, after watching Falco's performance in Laws of Gravity, a 1992 film directed by Nick Gomez. Fontana said of her, "She's an actress who's unadorned by any embroidery. She does everything with such simplicity and honesty, it's breathtaking." A struggling actress at the time, Falco said her salary from these television episodes paid for one month's worth of rent. Fontana cast Falco as a regular character, prison officer Diane Whittlesey, in his HBO series Oz based on her work in the Homicide episodes "Son of a Gun" and "A Shot in the Dark".