Murphy Brown ready to take on new political wars
LOS ANGELES —The last episode of Murphy Brown that aired in 1998 was titled “Never Can Say Goodbye.” It sounded like nothing more than a sweet way for the CBS comedy to end its 10-year run, but turned out to be very prophetic. After an extended absence from television (that would be two decades), “Murphy Brown” returns with most of the original cast reprising their roles.
To put this return into a little bit of perspective, when “Murphy Brown” launched, Ronald Reagan was president.
Now, the 248th episode of “Murphy Brown” is ready to air at 9:30 p.m. Sept. 27 on CBS.
Brown (Candice Bergen) returns to the broadcast news world after a brief retirement to find things have change because it is a world of “fake news,” 24hour news cable channels and social media.
The gap between the end of the original run and the new launch was almost a decade shorter because interest in the show emerged when Sarah Palin was running with John McCain on the Republican ticket in 2008. There was talk of doing six episodes then but that never happened. Plus, series creator Diane English and Bergen were not 100 per cent certain they wanted to
bring the series back because they felt they had already done their best work with the show.
A reawakening of “Murphy Brown” became a topic again last year but it took English nine months to write a script that she was certain would be a proper way to bring the series back. Members of the original cast — Faith Ford, Joe Regalbuto and Grant Shaud — contacted each other during the time English was writing in hopes of hearing any good news. They finally got the word the show was a go.
Bergen stresses that this isn’t
just a trip down nostalgia lane.
“They built Murphy’s townhouse on the soundstage in the studio in Queens, and we came onto the sound stage and saw Murphy’s townhouse for the first time, and we all got tears in our eyes. And Murphy was so important to all of us, and so to be back there, we’re just grateful,” Bergen says.
“Can I just say that the script of the first episode is so ambitious and so fearless? During the taping, I turned to Joe at one point, and I said, “This show has no fear of anyone because we really stick
our heads in the lion’s mouth,” Bergen says.
That fearlessness is toward what Brown sees as a divided nation where the press is a constant target. She can’t sit quietly and let this unfold and recruits her “FYI” team: lifestyle reporter Corky Sherwood, investigative journalist Frank Fontana and her former news producer Miles Silverberg.
“Murphy Brown” always existed in the real world of politics even to the point of Vice-President Dan Quayle condemning Brown for being a single mother. English promises the new episodes also will reflect the real world with the focus being how the First Amendment is under attack.
The original cast has worked on other projects during the past 20 years but Ford’s heart has always been with Corky Sherwood. She’s excited to be able to slip back into the role that now has her a little older, less married and a lot happier.
“Corky has been through some stuff and we will find that out as we go along,” Ford says. “I slipped back into the character the first time we read the script. The spirit of Corky never left me, obviously. By the time we started shooting with the audience, she really came out. “The fact she has been through some hard knocks gives me some more subtext to play with her.”
The big change is the casting of Jake McDorman to play Brown’s son, Avery. In the original series, Dyllan Christopher and Haley Joel Osment portrayed the character. The grown up Avery is just as quick to share his views but he does it as the liberal voice on a conservative-leaning network. That doesn’t stop the old “FYI” team from continuing to act as a surrogate family for Avery.
McDorman says, “For him to kind of maintain his kind of ethos on a network where he’s the liberal voice is going to be is really interesting to play.”