YA MEAN I WON?
Ted is accidental & amusing ‘Mr. Mayor’
In fiction at least, politics can still be laughed at rather than dreaded.
The new sitcom “Mr. Mayor,” created by “30 Rock” alum Tina Fey and Robert Carlock and premiering Thursday, showcases Ted Danson as newly elected Los Angeles Mayor Neal Bremer, a bumbling businessman who ran on a whim and accidentally went all the way.
Propping him up — or pulling him down — are Holly Hunter as his deputy mayor, “Saturday Night Live” alum Bobby Moynihan as interim director of communications Jayden, and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” star Vella Lovell as chief of staff Mikaela.
“It’s definitely not ‘ The West Wing,’ ” Lovell told the Daily News. “It’s ‘30 Rock’ meets ‘Veep.’ ”
Lovell, 35, also compared “Mr. Mayor” to “The Office,” calling it a workplace sitcom that just happens to exist in the political sphere.
“It’s why we’re all there but it’s more about making fun of Los Angeles, lovingly,” she said. “It provides a way in ... but it’s actually not political.”
For Danson, it’s a role fresh off his performance as a reformed demon in NBC’s morality tale “The Good Place,” which wrapped up last January. But “Mr. Mayor” isn’t out to demonize politicians.
“The show was written, I don’t want to say in a vacuum, but we’re not here to take down the political issue du jour,” Mike Cabellon, who plays Bremer’s chief strategist, Tommy, told The News.
“We’re using the office of the mayor as a backdrop in the same way ‘Cheers’ uses a bar as the backdrop,” Cabellon adds. “We’re not trying to do anything super political here.”
Cast members believe “Mr. Mayor” is a family show, referring to both the close-knit group the characters created at work and Bremer’s additional job as a single dad to teenage daughter Orly, played by “Speechless” alum Kyla Kenedy.
“We’re just a group of people who want to do well but aren’t always very good at it,” Moynihan told The News.
Moynihan, 43, compared his character to Shaggy and Scooby Doo — “causing a lot of the problems but also solving them.” The important part, he said, is they all try to help.
While Cabellon, 30, joked that Tommy’s highest aspiration is to be vice president, Mikaela has loftier goals, Lovell said. She just doesn’t quite know how to get anything done.
And Mikaela isn’t faking it until she makes it — she’s already made it, all the way to the mayor’s office.
“I’m seeing her as a combination of [New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and an Instagram influencer,” Lovell said. “She’s somehow the chief of staff but she doesn’t have any political experience and didn’t think Neal was going to win, so the pilot [episode] is just her being like, ‘Wait, what?’ ”