Darren Star on Board to Adapt Climbing in Heels with Universal Television

Universal Television has pre-empted the rights to Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas’s Climbing in Heels, which the author will adapt for TV alongside Emmy Award-winning creator Darren Star.

Climbing in Heels follows the rise of five ambitious secretaries navigating the glitzy world of 1980s Hollywood, offering a glimpse into the boys-will-be-boys club and the women who wanted a seat at a table where they were expected to serve. The book will be published on April 29, 2025, by St. Martin’s Press.

Star’s credits include Sex and the City, Emily in Paris, Younger, Melrose Place and Beverly Hills, 90210. Under his overall deal with Universal Television, Star develops and produces new series projects exclusively with the studio through his company, Darren Star Productions, for a variety of broadcast and streaming platforms.

“I am thrilled to be partnering with Darren Star and Universal Television to bring life to these complicated, colorful women who refused to be sidelined or silenced,” Goldsmith-Thomas commented.

Star added, “I’m excited to team up with Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas to bring Climbing in Heels—her addictive fictional account of Hollywood in the 1980s through a female lens—to the screen. It’s the ballsy and bawdy love child of Mad Men and Sex and the City. I can’t wait for audiences everywhere to meet this indomitable ensemble of female characters who broke all the rules to make their own.”