Comeback kids: The 90s comedy series Mad About You has been revived, with the same lead duo in a new era.
It has been more than 20 years since we first met New York newlyweds Paul and Jamie Buchman in the comedy series, Mad About You. For actors Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt, the series changed their lives, earning four Golden Globes and 12 Emmy awards over its seven-season run, but they never contemplated returning – until now. In this latest 12-episode series, Paul and Jamie are exploring life as empty nesters after dropping off their daughter Mabel (Abby Quinn) at university. The show’s co-creator, producer and star Paul Reiser – himself a 62-year-old empty nester with two sons, Ezra, 25 and Leon, 20 – talks to Jenny Cooney about the inspiration for the reboot.
Why did you decide to bring Mad About You back now?
Paul Reiser: We were all happy with how it ended and were opposed to ever coming back because we felt like we told all the stories we wanted to tell. But Helen and I had been getting together socially all these years so when people kept asking, we asked each other if there was a reason that was not just for nostalgia sake. What finally sold us was the idea that this moment – when Mabel leaves the house – is very much like the original pilot when the doors closed and the two of us were left alone and newly married, so we were older but starting over again.
How much do we explore their marriage this time around?
The complexity of marriage is still the show and now they’re 25 years into the marriage they could ask the question, ‘Well how hard do we want to work at it? Because we could walk away and say 25 years was good
enough’ or, on the other end, ‘We’re closer to death now so should just stick it out’. (laughs)
Did you use your own experiences as a parent?
I’ve always told people I’m not smart enough to make anything up, so I have to actually go through it before I know how to write it and that’s really what happened. Mad About You came about after I was married and my stand-up comedy was all about that. They wanted us to have a kid in the first season and we said, ‘No’. And in season four I had a kid in my own life so in season five it was like, ‘Let’s have a kid’.
How tough was empty nesting on your own marriage?
It didn’t throw our marriage into upheaval, but literally the day that we had our table read for this first episode, just hours earlier my son had left for college and I was sitting in his room crying and was like, ‘This is not healthy’. And then I read in the script, ‘And Paul is crying’ so it was a little too close. So much attention is on your children and once they’re out of the house you don’t stop worrying about them but you are definitely off-balance. When you take the cartilage out, that’s
when you have bone on bone and arthritis, so that’s when the mom and dad are rubbing against each other because there’s nobody there in the middle.
Are you closely in touch with your sons?
I’ve learned about texting, that you don’t get a response to a text unless you make it sound really important or you go, ‘I’ve got a present for you, I need to know your size’ and then they’ll write back. (laughs) You want your children to grow and blossom and flourish, so it’s not like you’re rooting against it but it still hurts when you have to beg them to call you.