The Writer Behind 'Girlfriends Guide' Divorced Too

Bravo may be adapting a book for its first original scripted series, but even though the show is scripted, the book version had a real-life inspiration that would have made for a great reality show. The author who's written all of the Girlfriends' Guide books, Vicki Iovine, based Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce on her own life experiences getting divorced from Jimmy Iovine, her husband of 24 years.

Like Lisa Edelstein's Abby, Iovine wrote for years about how to maintain a happy marriage and family only to have everything go through a huge shift when a divorce arose. But there are a few creative liberties that Bravo has taken with Iovine's life to add even more complications to Abby's life. After all, they are hoping to get seasons of drama out of the show, while when Iovine wrote about her experience, she detailed that getting over divorce can be a long but overall subtle process… not the stuff of TV drama unless tweaked and turned up a little.

The show's creator, writer, and showrunner, Marti Noxon, who's worked on a lot of different television shows from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Private Practice, says she's planning on using the template of divorce as a jumping off point to explore all types of sexual politics. That might have something to do with some of the changes and additions she made to Iovine's book.

From Mogul Ex-Husband, To Stay-At-Home Dad

For example, unlike the Bravo adaptation, Iovine's husband, Jimmy Iovine, wasn't a stay at home dad — he is a record producer and is still hugely successful working in the music industry. But the show can now play with the inversion of stereotypical TV expectations, with a high powered woman and a dad who takes care of the kids, rather than the sort of real-life ordinariness of two working parents. Also axed? Jimmy's hundreds-of-millions fortune, which is sized down to a mere "rich" in the show.

Did Vicki Also Wish Her Ex Husband Was Dead... Aloud... To a Crowd of People?

And while Iovine's career didn't tank after she got divorced, like Abby's after the TMI incident we see in the trailer, things did come to a halt for her book series once she split from her husband. But it was an early end for her writing career, which took off pretty much immediately with The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy and got Iovine gigs on Huffington Post and Child Magazine as a motherhood and marriage guru. And she was burned a little by TMZ for filing for divorce on her ex's birthday… I'm hoping that makes it into the show, because it's a killer detail.

Being married for over twenty years is a one-of-a-kind experience, and it's not surprising that with a show that turned out so well the real life Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce is mined from has a great deal of similarities with the onscreen adaptation. While every detail isn't exactly identical, the emotional vulnerability, seismic changes, and complete confusion could all be lifted exactly from Iovine's life.

Image: Carole Segal/Bravo