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Forbes
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Mid-Century Modern' Is Familiar, But Not ‘Your Parents' Sit-Com,' Say Creators
Nathan Lee Graham, Nathan Lane, and Matt Bomer star in "Mid-Century Modern." When Max Mutchnick and David Kohan set out to craft each episode of their new comedy, Mid-Century Modern, they made sure to include plenty of laughs, but, at the same time, make it feel realistic and heartfelt. To do this, Mutchnick says that they looked for the 'WITRA.' He explains, saying, 'In our writing room, we wrote across the top of the dry erase board, 'What is this really about?' That's the WITRA, and that's what guides us. It's about finding the emotional core of the story and when you're using that as the jumping off point, you're pretty sure that you're going to write something from a place of truth and that's just the way that we have always written our shows.' The duo has had previous success using this method including with their hit series Will & Grace, which ran for 11 seasons. Now, with Mid-Century Modern, they're telling the story of three best friends — gay gentlemen of a certain age — who, after an unexpected death, decide to spend their golden years living together in Palm Springs, in the home the wealthiest one shares with his mother. The series stars Nathan Lane as Bunny Schneiderman, Matt Bomer as Jerry Frank, Nathan Lee Graham as Arthur Broussard, and Linda Lavin as Sybil Schneiderman, Bunny's mother. To keep foundational truthfulness in the story, while still injecting as much humor as possible, Kohan says that, 'all of the writers are pretty honest with each other to keep anything from getting out of hand, like, we'll say, 'is this cringy? Is this too maudlin? Does this feel right tonally?'' He adds that, 'When we see the rehearsal process, we can tell if anything feels dishonest and if you're being hard enough on yourself, you know what you want to get out of a scene, and you know whether or not you actually are getting that.' Mutchnick, being true to what Kohan has just said, interjects, 'You just write them all like a negotiation with the spouse, right? Meaning, you know, you're trying to get what you want, and give them love at the same time, and make them laugh so you get what you want. That's what every scene is, really.' Balancing the serious with the funny, while telling a modern, relatable story makes the series both 'new, but also familiar,' says Kohan. 'That, to me, is one of the strengths of our show. And I think sometimes sit-coms get a bad rap, but really they still work well, and they're totally enjoyable.' And, Mutchnick says, with a laugh, 'Ok, but let's be clear, this is not your parents' sit-com. It's a bit…..more. And that's putting it somewhat mildly.' One aspect of the series that Mutchnick and Kohan won't be bringing from their time on Will & Grace is having politically charged storylines. 'We did that a bunch on that show and we just don't want to be dealing with it anymore, and I don't think the audience wants to be hearing about that right now,' says Mutchnick. Kohan quickly points out that, 'Actually, what we want to be is an escape from politics, and be a show that's open-hearted and inclusive. It feels like a really good time for that.' Working with the duo behind the camera is legendary director James Burrows, who's helmed classic shows such as Cheers, Friends, Frasier, and the entirety of Will & Grace.' 'We've had almost a 30 year relationship [with Jimmy] at this point. He's kind of watched us grow up,' says Kohan. 'He always says, 'I have a fun clause. I have to have fun and if I'm not having fun, I'm going. So our goal has always been to keep him around, and he stayed for all of the episodes so, yeah, he must have had fun.' Amid the joy on set, the team did experience tragedy when Lavin tragically passed away as they were in the middle of filming. Addressing this, Mutchnick says, 'To have what happened with Linda, because we have such a phenomenal writing staff, that it made it a little bit more of an easier process for us to handle, even though it was horrible thing,' but he quickly adds, 'Still, you should watch what happens because it's very, very, very much the way that it went down and it happened with a lot of love,' to which Kohan responds, 'And I feel like it was Linda's directive to show it the way we did. We feel good about how it was handled because we know she would feel good about it as well.' Mutchnick says that the show can best be summed up by a monologue that Bunny gives at the end of the pilot. 'It's when he comes to terms with the fact that the relationship that he has with these friends of his is the love of his life, that it's the most enduring and powerful connection he has and he wants them to know that, and to invest heavily in these relationships.' Kohan mentions that he and Mutchnick are actually a reflection of this ideal, saying, 'I mean, we went to high school together, and we keep ending up working on shows together!' The narrative of Mid-Century Modern 'really expresses the thing that everybody ultimately wants,' concludes Mutchnick. 'Everyone, no matter who you are, wants a friend group that you love and adore, that you feel safe around. When it's all over, the only thing that we're going to have are the connections that we make with other people, and whether it's blood relatives or your chosen family, you've got to make the most of it.' All episodes of Mid-Century Modern are available on Hulu.
New York Times
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Through Tears, ‘Mid-Century Modern' Makes Them Laugh
On an evening in mid-January, there were bouquets piled outside of Linda Lavin's trailer on the Disney lot in Burbank, Calif. Nearby, on a soundstage, a black ribbon was wrapped around her caricature. Lavin had died on Dec. 29, at age 87. Now the creators and cast of 'Mid-Century Modern,' a Hulu sitcom that shoots in front of a live studio audience, had returned to work to honor her. That night, they would film a half-hour episode designed to pay tribute to her character, Sibyl Schneiderman, while also eulogizing an actress with an outstanding seven-decade career. That was hard enough. Even harder: They had to make it funny. 'The job is to make sure it doesn't get too sad and too sentimental,' said James Burrows, the multicamera-sitcom legend who directed the episode. 'You have to remember it's a comedy, and you've got to make the audience laugh.' I had reached out to the sitcom's creators back in the fall. A new sitcom set among gay men in later life — think 'Golden Girls' for the marriage equality set — it sounded like a hoot. It also offered a chance to explore how depictions of queer relationships have changed since the 1990s. But when Lavin died unexpectedly after most of the season had been shot, an irreverent sitcom with an impressive zingers-per-minute rate suddenly had to pivot. So the reporting assignment pivoted, too. (All 10 episodes arrived on Friday.) Last summer, Hulu agreed to fund a new pilot from the creators of 'Will & Grace,' David Kohan and Max Mutchnick. Set in Palm Springs, Calif., it centered on three roommates, to be played by Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer and Nathan Lee Graham. As in 'The Golden Girls,' Kohan and Mutchnick knew they wanted a mother character, Sibyl, to join the roommates. They considered several actresses for the Sibyl role, including Lavin, a Tony winner for 'Broadway Bound' and a star of the seminal 1970s sitcom 'Alice.' (Mutchnick and Kohan knew her best from the 'Will and Grace' spinoff 'Sean Saves the World,' in which she had played Sean Hayes's mother.) Burrows insisted they hire her. 'That woman is a heat-seeking missile for a joke,' he remembered telling them. The creators invited her to a video call last year to discuss the role. Lavin joined them from Berlin, where she was vacationing. 'She was such a cool, spunky chick,' Mutchnick said. Lavin told them she would play Sibyl if certain conditions were met. The character, the mother of Lane's Bunny, was conceived of as an Iris Apfel-type with short white hair. Lavin objected. ''When you see how fantastic my hair is and what kind of shape I'm in, you're not going to want me to look like an old lady,'' Mutchnick recalled her saying. On set, she bonded quickly with her castmates. 'She was very disarming,' Graham said. 'She just made you feel like, Let's play.' And she was an unfailingly good sport, even lip syncing the Salt-N-Pepa song 'Whatta Man' in the pilot. 'She was 87, wearing heels and walking around like she was 37,' Burrows said. It was easy to write for Lavin's Sibyl. Lane's character quips that her bedroom 'smells like Nivea and disapproval' and that Sibyl will probably live to 200 on cottage cheese and spite alone. When it came to her own lines, Lavin nailed them in just a take or two, imbuing grace and heart into even the meanest jibe, seemingly without effort. 'She was just always so grounded and real in a medium in which you can be encouraged to be over the top,' Bomer said. In December, a few months into filming, Lavin told the showrunners that she was ill. But her prognosis was excellent, she assured them, and she would soon begin treatment. In the event that she couldn't film, she invited to them to write her illness into the script. Her death, at the end of the month, was sudden and unexpected. When Lane received the call, he couldn't make sense of it. 'What?' he recalled asking Mutchnick, again and again. He was sure he had misheard. The showrunners visited with Lavin's husband, Steve Bakunas, an actor and musician, who described to them her last moments, in the car on the way to a hospital. But even as Kohan and Mutchnick grieved, they had already decided to address the death in an episode. It would be best for them, they reasoned, best for the audience, best for the show. 'You have to tell the truth, and then you have to show this world moving forward,' Mutchnick said later. To hew close to that truth, they went back to Bakunas to ask if they could include a version of that final conversation in the script. Once that first grief had ebbed, the terror came in. 'The big fear was, Are we going to be up to the gravity of the moment?' Kohan said. 'Because we wanted so badly to honor this woman that we all loved.' 'But we didn't want to get into an area that was schmaltzy,' Mutchnick added. Burrows gave them some advice. The show should be a kind of sandwich. Hard comedy at the top, sentiment squeezed into the middle, a turn back toward comedy at the end. 'Linda was a sitcom person,' Mutchnick said. 'That's the way we honored her.' The actors were on board. Lavin was an old-school trouper. They felt it was what she would have wanted. 'I was emotionally bereft,' Graham said. 'But Linda was a real old time go-getter; she was a broad, a full-on broad. Her attitude would have been: This has happened. It sucks. But we've got to do it, and we've got to do it really, really well.' Rehearsals that week felt strange. Bomer had the sense that they were merely marking their lines, not ready yet to let the feelings out. Bakunas had given each of the actors a piece of Lavin's jewelry, which they put in their dressing rooms or in their pockets as totems. By Wednesday, when I joined the cast and crew on the soundstage, it was time to tape the episode, the season's ninth. The feeling in the room, even as the warm-up comedian joked with the audience, was, Lane said later, overwhelmingly emotional. The showrunners set up a kind of protective barrier around Lane, who as Bunny would have to shoulder the sad parts. 'We tried extra specially hard to make sure people were not in his sightline, that he was just in the world of the character who had just lost his mother,' Mutchnick said. After a jaunty opening scene that involved a Tupperware cascade, a much more somber scene followed, in which Lane's Bunny recounted Sibyl's death, how even as he was driving her to the hospital she kept telling him to slow down. 'Sibyl died,' the scene began. 'She's dead. My mother's dead.' Between takes he wiped away his tears. Burrows put an arm around him. 'OK, honey,' he said. 'Take your time.' Lane reached into his pocket and touched Lavin's brooch. Then he took the scene again. The taping ended with a screened montage of Lavin in previous episodes and then a video she had sent to Dan Bucatinsky, one of the writers on the show, in which she sits at a piano and sings the 1939 ballad 'We'll Meet Again.' Some audience members teared up. The cast felt similarly moved. 'So much of the material has been some of the closest to the bone of anything I've ever worked on,' Bomer said later. 'I did not expect that signing up for a half-hour comedy.' A comedy about men in retirement, particularly one that begins with the funeral of a different character, was always going to be at least a little about death. But no one expected it to come so soon or with such intensity. 'We were saying goodbye to her,' Mutchnick said, and Lavin's colleagues were trying to do it in the way she would have wanted — with laughs and heart. 'It was a true love letter to Linda,' Bomer said. 'I feel we really honored her in a beautiful way. But I obviously don't ever want to have to do that again.'
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mid-Century Modern: Watch First Trailer for Hulu's Nathan Lane-Matt Bomer Sitcom
Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer are going live in front of a studio audience with Mid-Century Modern: The multi-camera comedy will premiere Friday, March 28 on Hulu, with all 10 episodes. Mid-Century Modern — which hails from Will & Grace creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, and executive producer Ryan Murphy — is loosely inspired by The Golden Girls, and 'follows three best friends — gay gentlemen of a certain age — who, after an unexpected death, decide to spend their golden years living together in Palm Springs where the wealthiest one lives with his mother,' according to the official logline. 'As a chosen family, they prove that no matter how hard things get, there's always someone around to remind you it would be better if you got your neck done.' More from TVLine Doctor Who Season 15 Trailer: The Doctor Meets The Nurse, Insists He's 'Velma' and Not Scooby-Doo Oscars 2025: How to Watch Sunday's Academy Awards Online for Free SNL Host Shane Gillis Bombs With Monologue Jokes About Trump and Dating Black Men - Watch Video Nathan Lee Graham (LA to Vegas) and the late Linda Lavin (Alice) co-star. Watch the first trailer below: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mid-Century Modern (@midcenturyonhulu) // Lavin died unexpectedly on Dec. 29, due to complications from recently discovered lung cancer, midway through production on Season 1. The Emmy-nominated actress and two-time Golden Globe winner was 87. One month later, Mutchnick revealed that art would, sadly, imitate life, with Lavin's passing being written into the show. Sitcom legend James Burrows directed the pilot and serves as an executive producer, alongside Mutchnick, Kohan, Burrows, Lane, Bomer and Murphy. Scroll down to learn more about each character, then hit the comments and tell us if you'll be adding to your Hulu watchlist. 'A successful businessman with one foot in retirement, Bunny is forever in search of love, but he first has to be convinced he's worthy of it.' 'Like her son, Sybil's strengths are her weaknesses — wise, caring and iconoclastic — which sometimes means she's critical, smothering and amoral.' 'Jerry left the Mormon Church and his marriage in his early 20s after his wife informed him and the rest of the congregation that he was a homosexual. Now a latter-day saint in the literal sense of the term, Jerry is pure of heart. He is also hard of body and soft of head.' 'Arthur is a dignified, elegant, fashion industry veteran who believes that life will never quite match the grace and panache that would exist if only he were in charge.' TVLine will keep you posted as we learn more about Mid-Century Modern — release date, trailer, etc. — so be sure to bookmark this page and check back for updates. In the interim, drop a comment and tell us if you're looking forward to the show. Best of TVLine Yellowjackets Mysteries: An Up-to-Date List of the Series' Biggest Questions (and Answers?) The Emmys' Most Memorable Moments: Laughter, Tears, Historical Wins, 'The Big One' and More 'Missing' Shows, Found! The Latest on Severance, Holey Moley, Poker Face, YOU, Primo, Transplant and 25+ Others
