William James Royce is an American playwright/director, screenwriter, and novelist.
William Royce began his television career writing for the NBC television series In the Heat of the Night, starring Emmy Award winning actor Carroll O'Connor as Chief William O. Gillespie and Academy Award nominee Howard Rollins as Detective Virgil Tibbs. Royce wrote 22 episodes while serving as Executive Story Editor, a position he inherited from writer Matt Harris (Carroll O'Connor). In 1991, Royce wrote the screenplay, as well as the music and lyrics, for the award winning episode entitled, Sweet, Sweet Blues, inspired by the real life saga of Medgar Evers. That season In the Heat of the Night won its first NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Dramatic Series. In 1994, after the seventh season, Royce left the show to write for Dick Van Dyke on the mystery series Diagnosis: Murder, and later for the Emmy Award winning mystery series Murder, She Wrote starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher.
