EXCLUSIVE: Prolific director-writer Paris Barclay has signed with Innovative Artists Entertainment for literary representation.
Barclay has directed nearly 200 episodes of television, including episodes of NYPD Blue, ER, The West Wing, Lost, The Good Wife, CSI, Sons of Anarchy, House, Glee, In Treatment, Scandal, Empire, Pitch and Station 19.
Barclay won two Emmy Awards for his direction of NYPD Blue and has received seven additional Emmy nominations for producing and directing, including three for directing episodes of Glee, one for The West Wing and one for Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
He has also earned ten Directors Guild nominations for his work on In Treatment, Weeds, House, Glee and The West Wing, and won once for NYPD Blue. He also became the first director in the history of the Guild to receive a comedy and drama nomination in the same year, two years in a row, in 2008 and 2009.
A DGA member since 1992, Barclay was the first African-American and the first openly gay president in the Guild’s history. In spring 2021, he was named an Honorary Life Member of the DGA, one of the Guild’s highest honors, recognizing his career achievements and leadership in the industry.
Barclay directed the feature films Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, and The Cherokee Kid, starring Sinbad, James Coburn and Burt Reynolds, as well as TV movie The Big Time for TNT, with Christina Hendricks, Molly Ringwald, and Christopher Lloyd.
Barclay co-created the series City of Angels, and co-wrote and directed the pilot Hate for Showtime. He’s received three NAACP Image Awards, for producing, co-creating, and directing City of Angels, and for directing Cold Case and Smash. In 2014, Barclay was inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame, joining luminaries including Sidney Poitier, Oprah Winfrey, and Gordon Parks.
Barclay directed the pilot, and for the first four seasons served as executive producer of Shondaland’s Station 19.
A frequent collaborator of Ryan Murphy, in addition to Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Barclay worked with Murphy as director/EP on The Watcher and FX’s American Horror Story.
Last year Barclay helmed two episodes of Murphy’s new series for FX/Hulu, American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, as well as two episodes of Monsters: The Erik and Lyle Menendez Story. He spent the remainder of the year directing the pilot and executive producing Murphy’s ABC series, Doctor Odyssey, starring Joshua Jackson and Don Johnson. He also shot two episodes of Season 3 of Shawn Ryan’s hit Netflix series, The Night Agent.
On the film side, Barclay most recent wrote, directed and executive produced Billy Preston: That’s The Way God Planned It, a feature documentary about the life of the iconic keyboard and recording artist, which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festive and DOC NYC.
Earlier in his career, Barclay directed music videos for some of music’s biggest stars including Janet Jackson, Bob Dylan, and LL Cool J.
Barclay is managed by Steve Lovett and represented by attorney Jim Hornstein.
