Dennis Hensley Email & Phone Number

Los Angeles, California, United States

In the fall of 2017, I joined forces with professional game designer Jeb Havens to create a party game based on the offbeat interview questions I developed over my years as an entertainment journalist. The result is YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE!, which has been described as if Cards Against Humanity and your diary got drunk together and had a baby. We did a crowd-funding campaign to get our first batch of games produced in time for Christmas in 2018. We got up on Amazon soon after. 2019 brought us write ups in The New York Times, Parade and Star Magazine and when the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, we created an online Virtual Game Night experience that we host for people over Zoom. A TV producer happened to be a guest at one of those virtual game nights, fell in love with it and now YDKML is in development as a TV show. The boxed game is available on Amazon and the Virtual Game Nights are ongoing.

Greater Los Angeles Area

I've written multiple 6000-word scripts for Imagined Life, a podcast from Wondery hosted by Virginia Madsen and Robbie Daymond. Each episode takes you through the life of a well-known person as if you are that person...but you don't find out who you are until the end. The podcast was named Best New Podcast of 2018 and Most Life-Affirming Podcast by the website Quartzy.com

Greater Los Angeles Area

Lifecast by Dennis Hensley is a new business I launched in late 2017 where I take someone's life stories and add podcast technology to create a one-of-a-kind audio heirloom that lives online and is as easy to share with loved ones as a favorite podcast. www.getalifecast.com

Los Angeles, Ca

Dennis Anyone? is a weekly podcast available for free on iTunes where I talk to other creative types about the ups and downs of their creative lives and how they keep it going. Guests include: writers, actors, musicians and reality contestants. Everyone has a story and I love discovering it. It's like your a prospector panning for gold.

Greater Los Angeles Area

I conceive, produce and often appear in entertainment projects like Dennis Hensley's The MisMatch Game (which to-date has raised over $115,000 for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center), the TV pilot scripts Rhapsody, Screening Party and Misadventures in the (213) and the films Rubdown, Reunion and If We Took a Holiday.

Greater Los Angeles Area

I partnered with Pembrook's founder Scott Williams to create live interactive entertainment programs for places like cruise ships, dance studios, corporate retreats, etc. Our premier project Hollywood Screen Test was commissioned by Princess Cruises and is currently playing on their two biggest ships,. We're currently developing a follow-up show, Murder on the Dance Floor.

Greater Los Angeles Area

I contributed ideas and wrote scripts for TV promos for shows like Empire, Knock Knock Live, The Rocky Horror Picture Show Live, The Great American Dog-athon, Miss USA, the Teen Choice Awards and others. A definitely highlight was writing sassy recap videos for Season 1 of Empire starring the irrepressible Ta’Rhonda Jones who plays Cookie's assistant on the show.

Greater Los Angeles Area

As a Consulting Producer on the show's first season, my job was to take part in brainstorming sessions about the show's format; what segments should be called, how the game should flow, etc. as well as write questions for the game and jokes for RuPaul and the celebrity panelists.

Regal Princess And Royal Princess

I conceived and wrote the murder mystery comedy show "The Dangerous Hour" for the launch of the Royal Princess cruise ship then went to the ship and directed it in May of 2013. I rewrote the script with a new murderer for the launch of the Regal Princess and mounted it on the ship in May of 2014. The shows run on an ongoing basis on both ships. A new show "The Love Ahoy Mystery Hour" is in development for late 2014.

Bunim-Murray Productions

I was the showrunner on this hip-hop flavored green screen comedy show which aired on the BounceTV network as was based on the popular webseries BRKDWN. My job as Executive Producer was to figure out how to take what was great about the web version of BRKDWN and make it work for television.

E! Entertainment

As one of two full-time writers on the show, I crafted the scripts for each episode, including intros and teases and jokes for host Joan Rivers. I helped produce field shoots, prepped guests for the show and games and segments like "Starlet or Streetwalker" and "Postcard from Crazytown."

Greater Los Angeles Area

My career as a writer began when I auditioned for Madonna's Blonde Ambition tour as a dancer in 1990 and was promptly rejected by the Material Girl herself. I wrote a story about my audition, sent it to every magazine I could think of and, luckily, Edward Margulies of Movieline liked it, published it and started giving me assignments. Since then, I've written for such magazines as TV Guide, Detour, Glamour, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Us Weekly, In Style, The Advocate, Out, Esquire, British Premier, Hollywood Life, Instinct and scores of others. I interviewed Celine Dion on her way to Oscar rehearsal, Charlize Theron in a bowling alley (we each won one game) and Carrie Fisher in her very own bed.

I was honored to work as a staff writer on Season 3 of this show, which aired on Logo and was Executive Produced by Rosie O'Donnell (who was one of my first-ever celebrity interviewers). I wrote an Ann Coulter for Cover Girl makeup commercial (starring Kate McKinnon who's since blown up on SNL) where Ann literally turned into a horse. I'm also quite proud of the sketch I wrote for the brilliant Nicol Paone where she played Glenn Close trying to deliver one line for a Cadillac voice-over and not being able to do it without over-emoting. My favorite memory of the job, though, was walking with all the actors and writers through Times Square to our first table read of the season for the network. It's like we were this small but mighty comedy army and we were storming the Bastille.

I was the L.A.-based host of the nationally-syndicated weekly show Radio with a Twist, which featured a music countdown (Who doesn't love a music countdown?), advice segments and interviews with everyone from Beyonce to Congressman Barney Frank. Best memory: Interviewing Janet Jackson in a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel and telling her that her song "Together Again" had just been played at a memorial for a friend who had died of AIDS. Weirdest memory: Being co-Grand Marshalls with Cyndi Lauper in the Provincetown Pride Parade, riding next to her in a convertible and her not talking to us at all.

I am very proud to say that I am the author of two novels. The first is "Misadventures in the (213)" a comedic novel about a group of friends in L.A. and the ridiculous things they do to try and make their dreams come true. It was released in the summer of 1998, made the L.A. Times bestseller list and led to a national book tour and an appearance on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The audio version, featuring Hensley and actors Kathy Griffin, Jack Plotnick, Rachel Harris and Gregg Rainwater, was nominated for an Audio Book Award in 1999.My second book is called "Screening Party" and it's based on a series of columns I penned for British Premier magazine about a group of friends and the movie parties that bring them together. Each chapter is a different movie--Jaws, The Sound of Music, Flashdance--and the themes of the movies resonate in the different characters' lives. It was published in 2002 and I created a filmed version of it in 2006 that is available for viewing on YouTube.

Bachelor Of Science - Graduated Cum Laude, Broadcasting / Theater

College was about performing for me. Rarely was there a night when I wasn't appearing in a musical like Pippin, Cabaret, Anything Goes.

Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Broadcasting