Television shows typically aren’t created during a limousine ride to the airport… but then again, Jamie Lee Curtis isn’t your typical actor. The Oscar and Emmy winner tells Gold Derby that the idea for her new NBC sitcom Newlyweds did, in fact, come to her in the backseat of an airport-bound limo. In fact, Curtis even remembers the exact date it happened: April 25, 2019.
“The driver said to me that he was divorced,” recalls Curtis. “And then he said, ‘But my new wife…’ and in my head, I went, ‘Oh, that’s a sitcom about people in their 60s and 70s hooking up, marrying on a whim, and then what happens afterwards!'” Curtis adds that the situation mirrors her own accelerated marriage to director-actor Christopher Guest, who she wed five months after their first date back in 1984.
Curtis joined forces with sitcom producer Gail Lerner to create Newlyweds, which premieres Friday on NBC, and streams next day on Peacock. The series finds buttoned-up divorcee James (Tim Daly) meeting free-spirited widow Jeanie (Téa Leoni) and after six weeks of dating, they head to Las Vegas to get hitched. Curtis plays James’s formidable ex, Claudia. (For the record, Leoni and Daly are also a couple in real life, marrying last year after meeting in 2014 on the CBS drama Madam Secretary.)
Gold Derby spoke with the three stars about the series, whether holiday episodes might be on the horizon, and why Curtis feels like sitcoms are the best jobs ever.
[Editor’s Note: On Oct. 9, Lerner revealed on Instagram that she’d been fired from the show; Bruce Helford has since been announced as her replacement.]
Gold Derby: Tim and Téa, do you think James and Jeanie’s ages have something to do with their impulsiveness, or could this have happened at any time?
Téa Leoni: I think it could happen at any time, but there is something to agreeing to do it at this age, because what do you have to lose? You accept that it’s gonna end one way or the other, so go for it.
Tim Daly: It’s sort of like mature naivete, not the naivete of a kid. The thing that I hope we can all hold onto is this curiosity about life, and this willingness to jump for something that might be a really amazing opportunity, whether or not it’s a guaranteed win or not.
Jamie Lee Curtis: But also, it’s tick-tock, tick-tock! At our age, what do we have to lose? It’s something beautiful and aspirational for the world be able to see thse people working it out on free TV on Friday nights.
Jamie, Claudia does not warm to Jeanie at first. Will that change over time?
Curtis: Claudia’s not an iceberg, but she was a little shocked that it turned out to be Jeanie and not the quintessential rebound of a younger woman. We were talking about this earlier, but I woke up this morning and saw all over the internet that Tobey Maguire officiated the wedding of his ex-wife and I thought, “Well, there you go.” So yes, I do believe that Claudia will shake the snow globe of their happy union as much as she can, but at the end of the day…
Leoni: I mean, how could they not end up friends?
Curtis: How could they not? Look at us — we’re so cute. [Curtis rests her head on Leoni’s shoulder and they laugh.]
Leoni: But also, we both love this guy [pointing at Daly] so you realize that, by hook or by crook, they have more in common than not. It’ll be really fun.
Curtis: In my personal life, I think there were like 13 marriages between my father, my mother, and my stepfather so the idea of exes coming in your life and out of your life is a little bit like a farce. But at the same time, there’s something really pleasurable and real about it.
Tim meets Jeanie’s kids for the first time in the pilot; as the show goes along, how good is he at being a parent?
Daly: He doesn’t know how, because he has no experience with it. He lives a life of solitary, mental exploration, and he’s not very well-versed in how to actually operate in certain situations. We haven’t really gotten there in the show, but there is some really fertile ground to be mined there, because not only are they kids, but they’re also grown-up kids. They’re very different than anything that’s in his life, because it’s been established that he doesn’t really know anything about pop culture or sports. He’s going to have his eyes opened wide by Jeanie’s kids.
Leoni: Nobody’s painted into a corner. There could have been a love child that came out of these two [gestures to Curtis and Daly] that we don’t know about yet.
Daly: It could be a mystery child.
Curtis: That’s Episode 100! There was actually a scene in a later episode with Jeanie’s daughter, Poppy (Emma Meisel), where she has an emotionality that is hard to contain, and James goes to try to help. Tim actually improvised this line in a rehearsal where James understood what should have been an unintelligible outburst. All of a sudden, he knew what she was saying and he said, “I speak Poppy” or something like that. It’s a beautiful moment.
The show’s just starting, but are we getting holiday episodes?
Curtis: Oh, yes, we have a Thanksgiving and a Christmas episode. We just filmed Thanksgiving, and it did not go well for James.
Tim and Téa, you’ve acted together before, obviously, but what’s been different about the sitcom format?
Leoni: It’s more fun.
Daly: By definition, we’re doing it in front of a live audience. And Téa, bless her, we both started out in sitcoms. [Daly starred in Wings from 1990 to 1997, and Leoni headlined The Naked Truth from 1995 to 1999.] It took a toll on Téa because she was very nervous to be in front of people, but she’s changed over the years and now there’s not an airsickness bag on the set. We can enjoy ourselves, and there’s a special energy that’s created with a live audience. You feed off each other. It’s this wonderful experience because they want to suspend their disbelief and go along this journey with you and you want to do the same thing with them. We’re having a wonderful time achieving that.
Jamie, are you enjoying the studio audience?
Curtis: You have to remember something; I did a sitcom back in the day called Anything But Love. Prior to that I had done movies, but I’d never been on the stage. The closest thing I had ever been to a live audience was when I hosted SNL twice in the ’80s, and they were both bad. So I had never been in front of a live audience so when I did the Anything But Love pilot and on show day, all of a sudden the same jokes that I’d been rehearsing all week long got laughs. You should have seen me!
What was fascinating is that my co-star, Richard Lewis, was a stand-up comedian whose entire life had been standing in front of strangers telling jokes. And he hated the audience, hated them! He couldn’t wait for them to be gone, and I was like, “Oh, give me more!” That was my favorite job I’ve ever had. I’m 68, and I’ve been an actress since I was 19. I am telling you, I’ve been trying to be on a sitcom all these years! I’ve been asked to be on a couple, but they ended up not happening. My only job I ever wanted to do was a sitcom and it took me creating my own for me to do a sitcom. It’s the best job in show business.
