“Jim is much more comfortable with his flaws than most of the characters I've played in the past,” revealed Jon Cryer about his role on Extended Family, NBC’s newest sitcom. Extended Family was in production prior to last summer’s strikes, which helped it become one of the first new shows to air this season. While the rest of NBC’s Tuesday night comedy lineup is just getting started, Extended Family already has an audience eager for something new. And while the role is certainly in Cryer’s wheelhouse, the star and executive producer opened up about the new opportunities the series offers him during the TCA Winter Press Tour. “He's not trying to disguise [his flaws]. That's fun for me. That's a new kind of guy. He lives his life out a little louder than everybody else. And we're going to have a lot more fun with that.”
(Todd Williamson/NBC)
Extended Family’s showrunner and executive producer is another familiar face, Mike O’Malley, best known to my generation as a host of Nickelodeon game shows and as Kurt’s dad on Glee. “George Geyer [and Emilia Fazzalar] had this idea of our life is a sitcom, and they came to Tom Werner, who I had worked with on Survivor's Remorse,” Mike O’Malley recalled about the initial conversations to create a sitcom about a divorced couple, one of whom is engaged to the owner of an NBA basketball team. “Abigail [Spencer]'s character starts dating the owner of the Celtics, and this guy, George Geyer, is the biggest Celtics fan you've ever met. I mean he has a piece of the parquet floor from the old Garden in his house. And, so, it was like couldn’t you be dating anyone other than the owner of the Boston Celtics? Nope.”
“Mike O’Malley is a genius writer,” bragged Abigail Spencer, who plays Jon Cryer’s ex-wife Julia. While production was on hiatus, a previous project of Abigail’s went viral – Suits – a drama that let her explore her comedic side, one that is set free on Extended Family. “I get to learn from these guys every day. I feel like they just welcomed me into the club. I’d always wanted to do a sitcom. This is my dream, and a lot of the shows [I’ve done], Mad Men was written with a sitcom rhythm, Rectify was as well… I was bringing comedy to that space, and I think part of it is that we’re bringing the drama to this stage.”
Donald Faison rounds out the core trio as Trey Taylor, Abigail’s fiancè and owner of the Celtics. “I’ve been waiting for this forever,” Faison revealed, echoing Abigail’s dream of being on this kind of sitcom. “Scrubs was a single-cam sitcom. I grew up on multi-cam sitcoms like A Different World, The Cosby Show, and Cheers. Those were the shows I grew up on and I remember as a youth. I always wanted to be on NBC on a sitcom. And when I was young, Cosby was the only one in New York City that I can remember that had young Black characters on it. And so to now be on NBC a few years later, it’s amazing. This is the dream. I’m living it.”
Extended Family airs Tuesdays at 8:30/7:30c on NBC, and is also available to stream on Peacock.