When Futurama returned to Hulu in 2023, Molly Ariel Shepherd-Oppenheim was among the writers shaping its revival. By the end of that year, her episode had earned a nomination for the Writers Guild of America Award for Episodic Animation. She was co-writing with Matt Groening and David X. Cohen — the people who created the show. Today she is 38, holds a supervising producer credit on Futurama’s still-running revival, and goes by Ariel Ladensohn, the name she took after her 2019 marriage.
Her mother is Cybill Shepherd. That will always be the first thing mentioned about her. At this point in her career, it is also one of the smaller parts of her story.
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Birth, Family, and the San Fernando Valley
Molly Ariel Shepherd-Oppenheim was born on October 6, 1987, in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of actress Cybill Shepherd and chiropractor Dr. Bruce Oppenheim. They married in 1987, the same year Ariel and her twin brother Cyrus Zachariah were born, and divorced in 1990.
Cybill raised her children in the San Fernando Valley on purpose. “I just thought the Valley was a better place to raise kids,” she said. “The Valley is down to earth and my kids went to school here.”
Ariel’s older half-sister is actress Clementine Ford, Cybill’s daughter from her first marriage to David Ford. Clementine is known for The L Word, The Young and the Restless, and Bring It On. She has two children: son Elijah and daughter Welles. Ariel’s twin brother Cyrus works as a high school teacher in Los Angeles today, covering history and maths, following a stint with Teach For America. On her father’s side, Ariel’s stepmother is Jenilee Harrison, who married Bruce Oppenheim after the divorce.
Cybill has been a prominent LGBTQ+ rights advocate for decades, partly shaped by the experience of her late sister, Gladys Terry Shepherd, who was a lesbian and never came out publicly.
Yale, Playwriting, and Getting Into the Industry
Ariel attended Yale University, where she studied playwriting. She interned at the Yale Cabaret and stage managed student productions during her time there, graduating around 2010.
She spent her first years after Yale working in theatre. In 2012, she wrote the stage play “Phantoms Go Down,” which starred Clementine Ford. She also directed short films during this period under her birth name, Ariel Shepherd-Oppenheim — including Fuck You from LA (2015) and Dear Sister (2018).
By 2013, she was working as a Hollywood assistant, a standard starting point for writers trying to break into television. Her first TV writing credit came after she met co-executive producer Joe Purdy in 2015. He read her playwriting work and brought her in on Llama Llama (Netflix), which aired in 2018.
From Children’s Animation to Solar Opposites
Between 2018 and 2020, credited as Ariel Shepherd-Oppenheim, she wrote for several children’s television series:
- Llama Llama (Netflix, 2018-2019)
- Rainbow Rangers (Nick Jr., 2019) — 5 episodes
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (2019) — episode “A Horse Shoe-In”
- Vampirina (Disney Junior, 2019-2020) — 3 episodes
- Clifford the Big Red Dog (PBS Kids, 2020)
In 2020, she moved into adult animation with Solar Opposites on Hulu. She came in as a staff writer and left as executive story editor, with credits across 17 episodes over two seasons. Her written episodes include The Rad Awesome Terrific Ray, The Apple Pencil Pro, The Earth Eraser, and A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special. A co-producer credit on Amazon’s Fairfax followed in 2022, where she was still credited under her birth name on the writing credit.
Futurama, the WGA Nomination, and Writing With Groening
The defining stretch of Ariel Ladensohn’s career so far has been the Futurama revival on Hulu. Since 2023, she has written four episodes of the show and held a supervising producer or producer credit across more than 30 episodes of the revival.
Her most significant written episode is “I Know What You Did Next Xmas” (Season 11, Episode 6, aired August 28, 2023). She co-wrote it with the show’s own creators, Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. The episode focuses on Bender and Zoidberg traveling back in time to confront Robot Santa, featuring guest performances from Mark Hamill as Chanukah Zombie, Cara Delevingne, and Kevin Michael Richardson.
The episode carries a specific weight. Voice actor Coolio, who played Kwanzaa-Bot in the series, recorded his lines for this episode just weeks before his death on September 28, 2022. The episode was dedicated to him. It holds a 7.4/10 rating on IMDb from more than 1,600 ratings.
For her work on that episode, Ariel received a nomination for the 2024 Writers Guild of America Award for Episodic Animation — her first known industry nomination.
She also appears in the series as a head-in-a-jar, one of Futurama’s long-standing traditions for members of its writing and production staff.
Hazbin Hotel: Season 1, Two Episodes
In 2024, she wrote two Season 1 episodes of Hazbin Hotel (Prime Video/A24), a show that recorded the largest global debut for a new animated series on Prime Video at the time of its release. Both were directed by series creator Vivienne Medrano:
| Episode | Air Date | IMDb Rating |
|---|---|---|
| “Scrambled Eggs” (S1, Ep. 3) | January 19, 2024 | 7.4/10 |
| “Hello Rosie!” (S1, Ep. 7) | February 2, 2024 | 7.9/10 |
Eliza Ladensohn: Wharton Graduate, Sloane & Tate Founder, Wife
Eliza Ladensohn is a Wharton School of Business graduate who moved to Los Angeles in 2000 to pursue entertainment. She worked first in Universal Pictures’ consumer promotions division, then at a small independent casting office, before founding Sloane & Tate in 2008 — a women’s intimates line built on a menswear-inspired aesthetic, made entirely in Los Angeles using Supima cotton. The brand was worn by Miley Cyrus in Rolling Stone and Mila Kunis, featured in Vogue, and carried at Barneys. She later moved from the clothing line into fashion photography and creative direction.
Her father, David, chairs the board of directors of Broadway Bank in San Antonio, Texas. Her mother, Claudia, served as former chair of the Texas Commission on the Arts.
How Ariel and Eliza met: In early 2010, a few weeks before Ariel finished at Yale, she came back to Los Angeles to visit family. Clementine took her out to a Hollywood nightclub that night to introduce her to people in the LGBTQ+ community. That is where she met Eliza, who was about 32 at the time. Other guests that same evening asked how long the two had already been together.
A few days later, they met for drinks at the Palihouse hotel in West Hollywood. “I was ordering a vodka club soda, but Ariel was ordering all these really fun drinks off the cocktail menu,” Eliza recalled to The New York Times. “I remember thinking this is cool, she’s adventurous.”
Ariel returned to Yale to finish her degree. They stayed in contact by phone. Eliza flew out to Connecticut to visit her. When Ariel moved back to Los Angeles in fall 2010, they became exclusive. By 2013, Ariel had moved in with Eliza. On the roughly nine-year age gap between them, Eliza said: “There’s so much overlap in the challenges we face and the goals we have for ourselves. Navigating that together is something that we have in common and has bonded us.”
The Proposal, the Wedding, and a Name Change
After eight years together, they began talking about marriage. In 2018, Eliza planned a spa getaway outside Los Angeles. Ariel expected a proposal. She looked through Eliza’s bag, found no ring, and spent the following hours unsettled. Eliza proposed the next morning over breakfast in bed.
The wedding: October 26, 2019, at the Stone Eagle Golf Club in Palm Desert, California, before 100 guests.
Ceremony details:
- Officiated by Rabbi Heather Miller
- Jewish traditions observed: the Sheva Brachot (Seven Blessings) and the breaking of the glass
- Ariel wore a white gown; Eliza wore a black tuxedo
- Ring bearer: Elijah (Clementine’s son); flower girl: Welles (Clementine’s daughter)
- Notable guests: singer Melissa Etheridge and wife Linda Wallem; poet Naomi Shihab Nye
- Both sets of parents attended and gave toasts
- Covered by both The New York Times and the Daily Mail
In her vows, Ariel quoted Nat King Cole: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and to be loved in return. Because of you, I know that’s true. I love you, and I always will.”
After the ceremony, she took her wife’s surname. Molly Ariel Shepherd-Oppenheim became Ariel Ladensohn.
Where She Stands in March 2026
Now 38, Ariel continues as supervising producer on the Futurama revival, which is still running on Hulu as of 2026. She and Eliza have one child together. In March 2022, she was at Cybill’s side at the 94th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
The writer who started on children’s television in 2018 now holds a WGA nomination and more than 30 producing credits on one of adult animation’s most-watched revivals. She got there by writing her way through eight years of television, from Nick Jr. to Hulu, one credit at a time.
