Josh Schwartz (born August 6, 1976) is an American screenwriter and television producer. Schwartz is best known for creating and executive producing the Fox drama The O.C. Schwartz recently developed The CW's teen drama series, Gossip Girl from the Gossip Girl books, and co-created NBC's comedy-drama-spy series, Chuck.
At 26, he became the youngest person in network history to create a network series and run its day-to-day production when he ran The O.C. He currently resides in Los Angeles.
Schwartz was born in 1976 in Providence, Rhode Island to Steve and Honey Schwartz. His parents were both toy inventors at Hasbro, working on the development of toys such as Transformers and My Little Pony, until they went on to start their own company. Schwartz grew up on the East side of Providence, Rhode Island with a younger brother, Danny, and a younger sister, Katie. Schwartz always had ambitions of being a writer since early childhood. When Schwartz was seven years old, he won an essay-writing contest at sleep-away camp for a review of the recently released movie Gremlins; the opening line was "Spielberg has done it again" and stood out amongst the pile of essays from the other kids. He even had a subscription to the entertainment industry newspaper Variety at age twelve. He attended Providence's private Wheeler School, a coeducational independent day school, for 11 years, graduating with the class of 1994.
On September 20, 2008, Schwartz married Jill Stonerock in Santa Barbara, California. Actress Rachel Bilson, who portrayed Summer Roberts on Schwartz's show The O.C., was the maid of honor at the wedding, while Imogen Heap performed.