Quinta Brunson, Damon Lindelof, Erin Foster and More Hitmakers Celebrated at THR’s Top TV Producers Dinner

With just a few days until the Emmys, the minds behind TV’s biggest and best shows came together for a celebration of the people who brought those hits to life: the producers.

The Hollywood Reporter threw its TV’s 50 Most Powerful Producers Dinner, sponsored by Lilly, on Wednesday night, timed to the publishing of THR‘s annual 50 Most Powerful TV Producers of 2026 list. The event took over Marea Beverly Hills and welcomed heavy-hitters including Quinta Brunson, Damon Lindelof, Widow’s Bay showrunner Katie Dippold, Hacks trio Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky, Courtney A. Kemp, Erin Foster, Jenni Konner and The Morning Show showrunner Charlotte Stoudt.

The evening began with cocktails and mingling, then guests slowly made their way into the Marea dining room for several courses of staple Italian dishes, accompanied by some producer-centered programming. THR editor-in-chief Maer Roshan kicked things off with welcome remarks, followed by Annenberg Inclusion Initiative founder Dr. Stacy Smith joining Lilly senior vp and chief marketing officer, consumer, Lina Polimeni for a conversation about accurate disease representation in entertainment.

Smith explained how Annenberg and Lilly teamed up for a study about how health is portrayed in film and television and found “the first major headline is it isn’t.” While “The Pitt is great,” she continued that in looking at 100 films, 100 TV shows and more than 8,000 speaking characters, there was very little portrayal of cancer, for example, and 50 percent of those affected characters died.

Polimeni emphasized that she could create a thousand PSAs about various aspects of health, but “really none of that is going to help as much as when you see yourself portrayed into a story that entertains you and that engages you.” When it came to the study, she added that “what surprised me wasn’t the absence, because we knew that likely that was going to happen. The inaccuracies really worried me.”

Polimeni referenced that stat about characters with cancer, and pointed out that “it’s not just 50 percent of the characters die, but typically they get diagnosed and they die in the same episode.” For most on a cancer journey that speed is inaccurate, and “it creates a fear for you to go find out whether you do have cancer,” she said. “We know that early screening is the very best thing that we can do to actually have a chance against the disease. And so as a result of that [fear], less people are getting screened. And so it’s not just about depiction, it’s also about action that is tied to that.”

After some more bites and table chatter, the main event came as THR‘s Mikey O’Connell moderated an off-the-record chat with 20th Television president Karey Burke and Netflix head of scripted series, U.S. and Canada, Jinny Howe, featuring some juicy tidbits that had the crowd laughing along.

Rounding out the guest list were Sterling Point showrunner Josh Schwartz, Abbott Elementary showrunner Justin Halpern, The Pitt producer Cynthia Adarkwa, Hello Sunshine’s Lauren Neustadter and writer/producer husband Scott Neustadter, The Gilded Age showrunner Sonja Warfield and Cape Fear showrunner Nick Antosca.