Fans hope for ‘Philly Justice’ 15 years after ‘Parks and Rec’ pilot
Philly justice takes on many forms, but there’s a Philly justice that exists that’s never been seen before in the City of Brotherly Love, or anywhere else for that matter — “Philly Justice,” the fake-but-kindof-real TV show created by the cast and crew of “Parks and Recreation.” It’s been whispered about for more than a decade, but ...
Now, thanks to a recent article in the Independent, we know that a “Philly Justice” script and footage exist.
From what I find, the first mention of “Philly Justice” was during a “Parks and Rec” panel at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills in 2012. Series star Amy Poehler and co-creator and showrunner Michael Schur explained that “Philly Justice” was created during downtime on the set of “Parks and Rec,” which ran on NBC from 2009 to 2015.
They were inspired to create the show after members of the cast, including Poehler, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn, Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones, took a very serious picture in suits one day.
“They were on set and they had someone take that picture and they decided to pretend that they were all in a show called ‘Philly Justice’ about Philly lawyers,” Schur said at the panel.
According to the backstory the cast and crew created, as told by Poehler, the “Philly Justice” pilot was made in 2003 and all of the characters have been named and given backstories; Scott is “loose cannon” Nick Bellows, and Jones plays Joanna “Joey” Suarez, who “likes to stop gang violence.”
Lore from the made-up backstory was that Rudd didn’t connect with the show’s producers and was replaced after the pilot with Dylan McDermott, who was later replaced by Dermot Mulroney.
“It’s difficult to explain to you how intricate this bit has gotten,” Schur said. “These five people got so into this idea that they had been in a fake show together and that Paul Rudd had been replaced by Dylan McDermott that Adam Scott created a fake email address for Dylan McDermott and started emailing everybody about how excited he was to be on the show.”
The show’s tagline: “Without them, there is no justice.”
“I will say it’s a real promising show. It’s on after ‘Joan of Arcadia,’ ” Poehler said. “They recently had to reshoot some of the pilot because Elizabeth Smart was found. They do a lot of ripped-from-the-headlines stuff.”
In the comments on the Paley Center’s YouTube video, people call for a real version of “Philly Justice,” a web series, a TV special, an “SNL” skit and a crossover episode with “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
In an obvious travesty of justice, nothing ever came of the show and not much was spoken of it — until now. In its look back at “Parks and Rec” upon the 15th anniversary of the premiere, the Independent interviewed Jones, who talked about creating “Philly Justice.”
“We became obsessed with it and so did the writers,” she said. “They ended up writing it as an entire episode of a different show which we started to actually shoot. We shot 15 pages of a show that doesn’t exist with our free time.”
A tape is out there, somewhere, and to the cast and crew of “Parks and Rec”: The time has to come to finally release it. Sure, the 2001 legal series “Philly” starring Kim Delaney and Tom Everett Scott flopped, but that was a drama. But comedies, that’s where Philly shines. Two of the best currently on TV — “Abbott Elementary” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” — are set there.
So in a final plea, I ask the cast and crew of “Parks and Rec” to release the lost “Philly Justice” footage and consider making the show. It’s the right thing to do. It just is.
And if you won’t do it for us, do it for Li’l Sebastian.