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Page 2 March 16 - 22, 2015 Ellen DeGeneres is 'Happy' as NBC sitcom producer By Jay Bobbin © Zap2it Ellen DeGeneres is one busy maker of television these days. In addition to her pop- ular, syndicated weekday talk show, the comedian also has produced the HGTV competition series "Ellen's Design Challenge" and ABC's Tuesday pro- gram "Repeat After Me." Through her firm A Very Good Production, she's adding another credit to her very active TV season ... as an executive produc- er of the NBC sitcom "One Big Happy," premiering Tuesday, March 17. Elisha Cuthbert ("24," "Happy Endings") and Nick Zano ("Cougar Town") play longtime, romantically unattached friends who decide to have and raise a child to- gether. The plan is altered when Luke impulsively marries new acquaintance Prudence (Kelly Brook, "Smallville") — just as lesbian Lizzy (Cuthbert) learns she's pregnant — and whether they all can coexist as one big happy family remains to be seen. "We're starting out with a lesbian as the cen- tral character this time around, so there's no surprises," DeGeneres says in comparing "One Big Happy" to her 1990s "Ellen" series. "People aren't going to freak out, versus when I surprised everybody. I think it's a more accepting world that we live in, for the most part. Obviously, there are people that are still not on board. The show is not just about that." Still, "One Big Happy" is based on the life of its creator and fellow execu- tive producer, Liz Feldman ("2 Broke Girls"). She confirms "it's based on my relationship with my straight best friend. We were planning on having a baby together. We've been friends our whole lives, and then he met the love of his life and that changed the course of our lives. Honestly, it was so difficult to deal with it when it happened, the only thing I knew how to do was write something about it." "One Big Happy" con- tinues actress Cuthbert's move into comedy, a big switch from her well- known work as "24's" frequently imperiled Kim Bauer. She credits co-star Zano for helping her get used to going for laughs in front of a studio audience. "I couldn't believe that they were even consid- ering me for this char- acter," she maintains. "It just seemed too good to be true. I said, 'There's a problem. I can't do a multi-camera show.' I mean, I was terrified of the fact that we would have to go in and shoot in front of 200 people live. He said to me, 'Elisha, I know you can do this.' If it wasn't for Nick, I don't know if I would have had the guts to do it, but I'm grateful to him that I did." DeGeneres reasons that "what's going to be great about this show is, as you get to know these characters, they're just going to be people that you love and watch and don't think twice about any of it being weird. It's just friendship or family or whatever that is. I think friendship is obvious, but family is not so obvious. I think family changes all the time." New location, same "Community." After a five-season run on NBC, the sitcom about a community college and its "characters" is moving online. Yahoo! Screen premieres the first two episodes of the show's latest run Tuesday, March 17, with another new chapter to follow weekly. Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Ken Jeong and Jim Rash all return to the cast, and creator and executive producer Dan Harmon also is continuing. To hear them tell it, all that's really different about "Community" now is where it can be seen. "You would be surprised how very little that changes," Harmon claims, "because a studio like Sony, they have a template for production of television. Whether Yahoo! (or someone else) is going to be the people that are providing it to an audience, that doesn't really change." Back as lawyer-turned-student Jeff Winger, the droll McHale is as happy with the writing quality – if not more so – as he was during "Community's" NBC era. "Our scripts have just been dynamite," he maintains. "I've run screaming through my house reciting lines to my nine-year-old and six-year-old. They don't get a lot of the references." Former co-star Yvette Nicole Brown is now in CBS' remake of "The Odd Couple," but Paget Brewster ("Criminal Minds") and Keith David ("Enlisted") have been added to "Community" for its Yahoo! stint. Harmon, replaced for the show's fourth season but brought back for the fifth, says Brewster plays "a very nuanced character," a consultant hired to update Greendale Community College's image. "I wanted to be careful not to bring two new characters into a show and have one of them have an eyepatch ... and always, every third word he says rhymes, or something that you would feel the plasticity of these new characters (from). "The tough thing is, you've got 13 episodes. You're very late in the game (in the show's run overall). How do you, without forcing it on the audience, make these characters feel like classic 'Community' characters? You can't create a classic out of the box. The answer was, you put characters with a lot of potential in a petri dish with these guys and let them grow, let the actors grow them." Still on board as unpredictable teacher (among other things, including student at one time) Ben Chang, Jeong is happy about "Community's" continuation from the personal side as well as the professional one. "We know each other so well and we love working with each other so much," he reflects, "and it is pure joy just to come in every day. And to say that six years later, and to mean what you say, is a big thing. It's a real thing. That's why we're here." BY JAY BOBBIN Yahoo! gets a sense of 'Community' Joel McHale Elisha Cuthbert, Nick Zano and Kelly Brook (from left) star in the comedy series "One Big Happy," premiering Tuesday on NBC.

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