Biography

Well established as a leading storyteller working in unscripted television, five-time Emmy Award winner Bill Pruitt began his career working for Robert Redford's Sundance Institute in the mountains above his home in Utah where he grew up. He followed one of the founders of Sundance to the Columbia University School of the Arts where he studied screenwriting and directing, was awarded several academic fellowships to develop the producing curriculum and graduated with honors. He wrote and directed award winning short films including "Bolo" which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. His feature screenplay, "Dry Cycle" was produced by Newmark Films.

After receiving his MFA from Columbia, he took to the road, producing television all around the world for CBS, NBC, MTV, Nat Geo, History, Animal Planet, Discovery, Vice, Magnolia and Amazon Prime filming on nearly every continent on the planet.

He created and developed "Weed Country", a six-part series for Discovery that profiles growers and distributors of medical marijuana in the Northern California Emerald Triangle as well as the law enforcement agencies looking to shut them down. Hailed by critics as "groundbreaking" and "similar to The Wire in its complexity", the series enjoyed solid ratings and developed a huge cult following back in 2012.

Pruitt has been nominated four times by the Producers Guild of America as Outstanding Non-Fiction Producer and won the Excellence Award from the Factual Entertainment Forum as Showrunner of the hit Discovery series "Deadliest Catch". The American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences nominated him six times for the Primetime Emmy Award, twice in one year, and he won the Emmy four years in a row as Supervising Producer of "The Amazing Race". His first-ever digital series for Amazon Prime, "Eat the World with Emeril Lagasse", was nominated for the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award, the Realscreen Award, five Daytime Emmy Awards including Best Directing and Best Editing and won the Emmy for Best Culinary Series in 2017.

Pruitt divides his time between California, New York City and Utah while raising his sons, filmmakers Jackson Stratton and William Wyler Pruitt.
- IMDb mini biography by: Bill Pruitt