Gary Kott

Gary Kott is a television writer and producer whose career peaked with his work on "The Cosby Show" in the second half of the 1980s. He got his start in 1979, writing two episodes of the Ken Howard-starring drama, "The White Shadow," about a mostly-black inner-city high school basketball team and its white coach. That year, Kott wrote an episode of the comedy "Angie," and then in the early '80s, he went on to write an episode each for such '80s-vintage shows as "Fame," "Remington Steele," and "Punky Brewster." Then, in 1985, Kott landed what would become his career gig, as a writer on the iconic 1980s comedy "The Cosby Show," a show known for its success reaching white audiences even with a mostly black cast. Kott wrote 55 episodes of the show, from 1985 to 1990. He also was the story editor for five episodes in '85 and '86, was a supervising producer for seven episodes from 1988 to 1990, and even made a cameo appearance, on the episode "Cliff's Nightmare," in 1990, an episode for which he also wrote the teleplay and was supervising producer.