Jess Harris is an actress, writer and director best known for her comedy TV series twentysomething (ABC) which she wrote, co-produced, directed, and starred in for two seasons. The popular, hilarious and heartfelt comedy received overwhelming critical praise in addition to gaining two Australian Academy of Film and Television Award (AACTA) nominations for Best Comedy Series, and Best Performance in a Comedy Series for Jess.
In 2008 Jess became a regular cast member on Studio A, a live variety/interview program on Channel 31 hosted by Dave Thornton. Jess wrote and performed her own weekly segment for two seasons. It quickly became an Antenna Award-winning show. Through her work on Studio A, she caught the attention of the writers from the popular network 10 show ROVE, leading to Jess becoming a contributing segment writer for the live program. Eventually, Jess graduated to a regular cast member, writing and performing her own pre-recorded sketches and presenting the packages live on the show.
In 2009, as a result of the Film Victoria/ABC TV comedy initiative STITCH - designed to search for new narrative based comedy - the
twentysomething concept was selected to receive development funding, which later went on to be commissioned for ABC2. The first series aired on ABC2 in 2011 and the second aired in 2013.
Jess was a regular guest on the Network Ten comedy program Hamish & Andy’s Real Stories and appeared in the second series of Lowdown. She has given her humorous opinions on The Agony of Modern Manners, The Agony of Christmas, The Agony of New Year‘s Eve and The Agony of the Mind all for the ABC.
Jess has written for Foxtel’s Open Slather, co-written and appeared in the Peter Helliar project It’s A Date & It’s A Date - Series 2. She has spent extensive time writing in Los Angeles, where she teamed up with experienced producers Eric and Kim Tannenbaum (Two and a Half Men). While in LA Jess pitched a pilot spin-off series of twentysomething titled Last Call to the US cable network FX (Wilfred, Louie). In collaboration with showrunners Jennifer Crittenden (Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond) and Gabrielle Allen (Scrubs), Jess wrote and delivered a pilot script to the cable channel in late 2015.
Jess has been a director’s attachment for Jonathan Brough on Ronny Chieng International Student and for Mat King on The Wrong Girl, which has followed through to a successful start to her directing career. In 2018, she teamed up with Emily Taheny to create WINE (Princess Pictures) the hit web-series which Jess also wrote and directed. She was nominated for a 2019 Australian Directors‘ Guild Award for Best Direction in a Children’s TV or SVOD Drama Program, for her work on Mustangs FC. Jess most recently directed two episodes of the upcoming series of Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries and Celebration Nation, a web-series developed through Screen Australia’s Skip Ahead initiative.
In 2020 Jess was part of the inaugural Impact Australia programme, working with US-based
showrunner Sarah Heyward on Jess‘ original idea currently called The Bloomers. She also made an appearance as a guest on Spicks and Specks with the ABC.
