Stars: Casey Wilson, Ken Marino, Tim Meadows, Dan Bucatinsky, John Gemberling, Sarah Wright, Tymberlee Hill
Team: David Caspe, Jamie Tarses, Seth Gordon
Marry Me centers on a longtime couple who gets engaged -- only to quickly realize that it's harder than it looks.
Happy Endings alums — and newlyweds — David Caspe and Casey Wilson vowed that their new semi-autobiographical NBC comedy Marry Me would not just be about planning a wedding.
The comedy stars Ken Marino and Wilson as a longtime couple who get engaged, only to learn that planning a wedding is harder than it looks.
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“The show going forward is not really about a wedding or a marriage, but about a couple and their parents,” Caspe said Sunday during NBC’s day at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour. “We’ll be doing general stories. Occasionally we’ll do stuff about the wedding. It’s not episode two is the dress and episode three is we need another dress.”
Caspe, who saw ABC’s critical darling but ratings underperformer Happy Endings conclude after a three-season run, stressed that he wanted Marry Me to feel very relatable and noted the series will fully explore Annie’s (Wilson) two gay dads (played by Tim Meadows and Dan Bucatinsky) as well as her friends (portrayed by Sarah Wright, Tymberlee Hill and John Gemberling).
While Wilson’s Annie is very similar to her Happy Endings character, Penny, the actress said she tried to make “subtle differences” between the two. “I hope Annie is slightly less desperate than Penny,” she noted.
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Marry Me, Caspe said, won’t just be Wilson’s Annie exploding and apologizing — a sentiment Marino quickly echoed. “When I got married, I went off the rails as well, and I’m assuming we’ll explore that,” he said with a laugh. “Going off the rails isn’t just for ladies anymore!”
The series is loosely inspired by Caspe and Wilson’s real-life relationship, with elements written into the series and others based on their friends’ experiences. “I’m just as crazy and irrational, but we did not go through that,” Wilson quipped of Annie’s outburst in the pilot.
Meanwhile, producers Caspe and Gordon also noted that they’re still unclear how to handle the multiple “f—” references in the pilot, but that they could continue writing it into scripts and simply bleeping it. “I think ‘f—’ is NBC-friendly now,” Marino joked.
Email: Lesley.Goldberg@THR.com
Twitter: @Snoodit
