Snakkle Chats with the Creator and Cast of NBC’s One Big Happy
By Kerensa CadenasNBC’s latest sitcom to hit the air, One Big Happy, has a seemingly familiar premise—two single best friends Lizzy (Elisha Cuthbert) and Luke (Nick Zano) decide they want to have a child together. The twist? Nick meets Prudence (Kelly Brook) and the two fall instantly for one another and get married right as Lizzy (who is a lesbian) finds out she’s pregnant.
Creator and showrunner, Liz Feldman has worked in television for a long time and this is her first series of her creation which she’s excited about. “It’s been an incredible road for me. To work on really successful shows like Two Broke Girls, The Oscars with Ellen, even way back when I was on a show called All That [Yes, that one]. I really have been doing this a long time and I’ve been waiting a long time for this. For me, it was really exciting to not just be able to share something very personal that I hope and feel that will connect with people but to also be able to foster a work environment that’s positive, loving, familial.”
Snakkle got to speak to Feldman and the cast of One Big Happy over lunch at West Hollywood staple, Cecconi’s. And that positive, loving, familial environment that Feldman has fostered came across while talking to the stars of the show who have nothing but lovely things to say about one another, Feldman and their experience filming the show (the pilot was shot almost a year ago).
For Elisha Cuthbert, after Happy Endings, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do next. She got the script and felt connected to the character immediately but was nervous about going back into the sitcom format—especially multi camera—which terrified her. “Even though I know I know it but the amount of dialogue I have to memorize…and I’m afraid what if we get to a scene and I just draw a blank. It’s just that stage fright in front of an audience—250 people—staring at you to be funny and entertaining there’s a lot of pressure. You also want to be able to convey that for people who are watching at home. You are playing for two audiences.” Playing Lizzy has been great for Cuthbert, especially having the blessing of Feldman and Ellen DeGeneres who is an executive producer for the show. For an actress who is so funny, comedy wasn’t Cuthbert’s first goal, she wanted to be Meryl Streep and pursued mostly dramatic work at first. “After 24 was over, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, I know I love being on television and the process of it. How am I going to top 24? So, I decided to do everything in my power to try to get a comedy. I wanted to push myself into doing a comedy and when I got Happy Endings, I said to David Caspe, ‘Just give me one joke a week.’ In season two, I was getting jokes everywhere.”
Zano, who suggested Cuthbert for the show, is no stranger to the sitcom world but admitted that the short series order (six episodes to start with) and the multi camera format could be intimidating at times. “There was a moment before every episode, we were all standing behind the curtain going ‘Alright, well we’re about to shoot 38 pages in front of 200 people tonight.’” For Kelly Brook, she was drawn to One Big Happy, the minute that she read the script. “I read the script and there was so much warmth and heart in it. I loved the character of Prudence. I’ve always wanted to work on a sitcom in American television—the sitcom is such an American genre, so I thought it’d be such an amazing opportunity. I thought it was a once in a lifetime thing.”
Be sure to catch One Big Happy premiering on NBC tonight at 9:30/8:30c
October 14, 2015 at 1:39 am, Loanemu said:
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