Smile, Ryan Murphy! You have another show on the air. (The New Normal TCA panel)
The big talk on NBC”s presentation day last week at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour was Ryan Murphy’s sitcom, The New Normal. In the series, Book of Mormon’s Andrew Rannells and The Hangover’s Justin Bartha star as gay couple Bryan and David, who decide to father a child through a surrogate (played by Georgia King) who joins them with her precocious daughter (Bebe Wood) and mother (Ellen Barkin) who puts Archie Bunker to shame with her extremely vocal bigotry. Add Real Housewives of Atlanta’s NeNe Leakes and you have one of the riskiest and most potentially offensive series of the new fall season.
AfterElton made sure to ask the network executives about their take on the show and Jennifer Salke (President of Entertainment) answered our question about the language in the series and how they think audiences will respond.
Jennifer Salke: I’ve worked with Ryan Murphy for a long time, coming from 20th [Century Fox Television] and working on Glee. He is a guy who pushes the envelope, but this show-- and you’ll hear from him later today-- is really his love letter to families. I’ve read the first three episodes. They’re incredibly accessible. They’re warm-hearted. You do get some irreverent comedy from the Nana character [played by Ellen Barkin], who is, you know, brilliantly portrayed, we think. And she is exploring an extreme side of the audience that may have different attitudes about that family. But the bottom line is the three episodes that I’ve read are all exploring storylines that come from any of those six characters, and they all kind of come back to this very warm, sort of relatable, heartfelt place"
"And it’s about responsible parenting, changing your lifestyle once you start having children, pursuing your dreams and what it will take to get there, from everyone’s point of view in the piece. And it’s by no means centered on just the gay couple in the middle of it. And the title isn’t meant to push the idea that that’s a more normal family than everyone else. It’s just meant to open up, you know, to bring a family show to the public that we feel captures the zeitgeist of what’s going on in the country right now and being inclusive."
"As he would say, the normal family isn’t a gay family; it’s just a different family. And I think we all see that all around us every day."
Andrew Rannells, NBC's Jennifer Salke & Justin Bartha
So, in our due diligence, we asked creator Ryan Murphy the same question during the show’s panel later that day. Murphy and members of the cast chimed in with their thoughts.
AfterElton: How do you think audiences will respond to the un PC ness of [the show]? We hear a lot of language, things the characters say that we might hear in real life, but how do you think audiences will respond? Will they find it amusing or will they kind of run from it?
Ryan Murphy: I don’t know. I think all the characters are lovable, and I think that everybody has people in their family who are representative, hopefully, in all of these characters. I certainly think the most controversial character will probably be Ellen Barkin’s character. But, you know, I remember Thanksgivings when I was growing up when my grandmother would actually say these jaw-dropping things very similar to that, and then we would call her out on it, so it felt very familiar to me, and I think it feel hopefully familiar to other people.
Georgia King (Goldie, the surrogate): Certainly, when I read the script, I was really excited by such a broad spectrum of characters. Obviously the gay couple are very prominent, and Ellen is eye-watering at times with her lines. But it really looks at so many different types of people in such detail and asks questions about all sorts of different types of people. I think it’s kind of what I found exciting about it.
Justin Bartha: It doesn’t really seem like there is any political incorrectness in this show. From being inside of it or just when I just read the show, no one, I think, was attracted to it because of controversy or political correctness. It just portrayed a family that seemed to be a modern type of family. Not to compare the show, but it is the new normal. It’s not going to be the new normal. It’s what people are going through now. So the correctness of it is just that it is true.
Ryan Murphy: The other thing I’ll say about that, just lastly, when I was growing up, I remember with my family one of the most memorable times that I would have with my parents was watching All in the Family and being young and hearing people talk that way and then having a discussion about, “Was that good? Was that bad? What was that?” So I like that about the show. I think people will talk about some things that the characters say, obviously, but I think that’s a good thing.
Ryan also said during the panel that The New Normal owes a lot to other sitcoms that have broken ground with gay characters like Modern Family’s Cam and Mitchell. “The thing about that show,” he said, “I’m personally just so appreciative to Modern Family and also to Will & Grace because those shows are huge successes, and I think so many people watch those shows and are educated, and those shows changed views. And, yeah, I think that they’re wonderful programs, and I think that we stand on their shoulders in success hopefully, if we’re so lucky. But I’m full of deep admiration for those actors and those characters.
Will Katherine McPhee's Karen and Megan Hilty's Ivy and make room for Jennifer Hudson? 
And what about Smash, the show that, in its first season, did a lot of things right and more than a few things wrong? How will Season Two go when it kicks off in January? “I’m inordinately proud of Smash on so many levels,” said NBC Chairman Bob Greenblatt during the NBC Executive Session. “It’s a big soap with a number of characters with arcing storylines, and I think in every soap, at the end of the season, relationships end, and people leave the show. And you look at characters and evaluate whether they’re great characters or not or whether they have a future in the show. And we did all of that. And we had some ups and downs creatively as the season went on, which is true of any show.”
Greenblatt believes bringing in new showrunner Josh Safran (Gossip Girl) will shape the show in the right way, but owned up to some of those first season mistakes. “I think we were inconsistent, going back and forth with some things. But pound for pound, that cast, those six central characters and now the new people that we’re bringing to the show Jeremy Jordan, who’s currently a star on Broadway in Newsies, which just is making over a million dollars a week because he’s incredible, he’s a new cast member. We have Jennifer Hudson in three of the first four episodes. There’s some other people coming, but the heart of that show is Debra[Messing] and Anjelica [Huston] and Christian Borle, who won a Tony Award while he was on hiatus from doing Smash.”
Taylor Kinney wore clothes at the Chicago Fire panel. In the show, not so much.
Chicago Fire does have a lesbian character (played by Laura German, who talked to AfterEllen earlier this week) but you’ll also see lots of man-candy in series stars Taylor Kinney, Jesse Spencer, Charlie Barnett and Eamonn Walker. Kinney, who fantastically wears a towel in a pilot scene, said that the training he went through still didn’t prepare him for actually being in the midst of a fire. “You walk into a smoke filled room that’s over, you know, 150 degrees, 200 degrees, and it’s a shock to the senses. You really can’t see 4 feet in front of you. So even with the little training that we had, it’s it really is amazing what these guys do and then what they’re trained to do and how they can because without eyesight or what have you. So you have a hand on a wall or a foot on a wall and not knowing if you’re in a closet space or another room and then being able to communicate with your fellow firefighters, workers. I think that was the most shocking thing that I’d gone through so far in training.” Don’t worry, Taylor, I’m sure you many of our readers would love the job of holding your hand anytime.
The Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour continues through August 3rd.
