ANI-US |
Updated: September 3, 2024, 08:28 IS

Los Angeles (USA), September 3 (ANI): Writer Eric Gilliland, famous for his comedy projects, has passed away.

According to the US news portal Variety, Eric died on September 1st from the effects of his battle with cancer.

Gilliland, a native of Illinois and a graduate of Northwestern University (1984), wrote for the ABC comedy from 1992 to 1996. In 2019, he served as a consultant for “The Conners.”
His first major writing job on television was on Who’s the Boss? He went on to write for Living Dolls, The Wonder Years, Boogie Howser, M.D., That ’70s Show and My Boys. His most recent project was the podcast The Cinnamon Bear: A Holiday Adventure.
He was nominated for a WGA Award in 1994 for Roseanne. In 2019, he received a Daytime Emmy nomination for the screenplay for the children’s show The Was Was? Show.

After learning of his death, several members of the entertainment industry expressed their heartfelt condolences on their respective social media channels.

Steve Levitan, co-creator of Modern Family, wrote on Facebook: “I know this is weird, but this morning I was thinking that Eric Gilliland would have taken perverse pleasure in knowing that Dick Van Dyke, of all people, outlived him. That’s one of the ways Eric and I bonded in 8th grade, over our shared love of The Dick Van Dyke Show. And Monty Python, Jack Benny, The Carol Burnett Show, SNL, and bad puns. (Yes, folks, we started a pun club.)”

Steve added, “Eric was just smart and funny. In high school, we did plays, musicals and comedy shows, even co-writing parts of them. Somehow he managed the impossible feat of being snarky and sweet at the same time. When I did a comedy show called ‘Little Bucky’ with our friends Thalia Kalodimos and Betsy Brennan for our local radio station in Glenview, I was so bad at doing accents that Eric nicknamed me ‘The Man with a Thousand Voices.'”

Gilliland’s Roseanne co-writer Stan Zimmerman also mourned Eric’s death. (ANI)