Maureen Ryan

Maureen "Mo" Ryan (born June 29, 1966) is an American film and television critic, writer and reporter. In 2015 she became the chief TV critic for Variety.

Ryan was born on June 29, 1966. She grew up in both Chicago's South Side and South Holland, Illinois. She attended the Chicago Heights Marian Catholic High School and then went to Washington University in St. Louis and graduated in 1988 with a double major in Psychology and English. In 1993, she graduated from Northwestern University with a Master's Degree in Journalism.

Ryan has contributed to various entertainment magazines, including Rolling Stone. Maureen began contributing to the Chicago Tribune in 1992, and became one of their film and TV critics in 2004 when she created and headed the Tribune's popular blog "The Watcher," which was nominated for an Espy Award.

In 2010, Ryan became a board member of the Peabody Awards. She started writing critiques for the Huffington Post in the same year. In 2015 she became the chief TV critic for Variety. Her work has been included in Slate, Entertainment Weekly, Broadcasting & Cable, MSNBC and NPR.

Ryan revealed in 2017 in the wake of #MeToo and the Harvey Weinstein scandal that she had been sexually assaulted in 2015 by a television executive, though for legal reasons she did not name him. Ryan said he was investigated after it happened, but continued to harass other women before he was hired by a different network. Ryan states this incident is what caused her two-month hiatus in 2015.

She lives with her husband and son.