Sitcom king Chuck Lorre says laughter is ‘a gift’ in hard times
Need a break from the coronavirus and accompanying 2020 woes?
Mega-producer Chuck Lorre hopes to provide a temporary remedy starting Nov. 5 with back-to-back-to-back premieres of three CBS comedies (starting at 8 EST/PST): Season 4 of “Young Sheldon”; new series “B Positive”; and Season 8 of “Mom,” minus co-star Anna Faris. His fourth CBS sitcom, “Bob (Hearts) Abishola,” begins its second season Nov. 16 (8:30 EST/PST).
Comedy is needed, even in deadly serious times, says Lorre, who’s also working on the final season of Netflix’s “The Kominsky Method” and the pilot for another potential CBS comedy, “The United States of Al.”
“Laughter is a shared human experience,” he says. “Laughter is a genuinely wonderful thing to have as part of our lives, especially when the world is upside down. It’s a gift.”
However, getting the returning shows rolling again with extensive health and safety protocols after Hollywood’s March production shutdown is no laughing matter.
The challenge is even greater launching the new series, “B Positive,” which centers on the strange-bedfellows pairing of a buttoned-down therapist who needs a kidney transplant (Thomas Middleditch, “Silicon Valley”) and his rough-edged donor (Annaleigh Ashford, “Masters of Sex”).
“A new show is in a constant state of invention and discovery – and also failure. You’re trying to find the characters, relationships, tone and pacing. Doing that on your laptop from home is very difficult,” the executive producer says of the series, based on the transplant experience of creator and longtime Lorre collaborator Marco Pennette.
Lorre, 68, whose previous hits include “Two and a Half Men” and “The Big Bang Theory,” spoke to USA TODAY about working through the pandemic and teased some storylines for the coming season:
Question: Besides frequent coronavirus testing, how has the pandemic changed production for your comedies?
Chuck Lorre: The writers’ room is on Zoom. You can’t put eight, 10 people in a room together anymore for extended periods of time. One or two of us are on the stage to supervise the production, but the writing and support staff is not on the lot. … When we’re shooting, we’re showing all four camera (shots) to everyone by remote and you can comment and try to make changes as you go. It’s very clumsy compared to just being there and saying, ‘Hey, what if we move this word over here or cut this line?’ But the alternative is not doing anything, so we have to count ourselves lucky that we’re in production.”
Q: How has the lack of a studio audience affected your shows?
Lorre: The few people on the stage while we’re shooting laugh, hopefully because the material earns laughter. and the sound of that laughter is augmented later. We have no choice but to do the unthinkable: Sweeten the (laughter) in post-production. We can’t put 250 people on the stage. It’s not safe. … We are making shows using our best judgment as to what’s working and what’s not, (which is) not an ideal situation by any means but it’s the only way we were going to go back into production. There was never any chance that we were going to bring in an audience.
Q: How significant is the departure of Anna Faris from “Mom,” where her character, law student Christy, formed half of the show’s central relationship with her mother, Bonnie (Allison Janney)?
Lorre: It’s an enormous loss. The show was very much built around her and Allison. For her to step out was a big move to cope with, but we have an extraordinary ensemble led by Allison in a show about women in recovery.
Let’s continue to tell the stories of wonderful group of people we’d come to know and care about. When the (season) debuts, Christy has gone on to greater things. Her career and path through life is going great. Recovery from addiction – not always but very often – brings with it an extraordinary life. And that’s the story we’re telling with Anna’s character, that her life has leapt up to another level, which has her leaving Napa Valley to go to Washington and finish her education.
Q: Could Christy return to visit?
Lorre: It’s a possibility. Absolutely.
Q: How is last season’s premature ending affecting your shows now?
Lorre: We left a couple of episodes on the table when things shut down. We’ve been able to finish those episodes now. (Instead) we’ll be starting the new season (of “Young Sheldon”) with Sheldon’s graduation from high school, which is a wonderful episode. Sheldon (Iain Armitage) will be going to college (at East Texas Tech) at 11 years old. He’ll be going home at night. He’s not moving into a dorm room at 11 years old.
Q: Any developments in the relationship between sock-company owner Bob (Billy Gardell) and Nigerian-born nurse Abishola (Folake Olowofoyeku) in “Bob (Hearts) Abishola”?
Lorre: Getting engaged is very much a storyline in this season. (However), she is married to a man in Lagos, and and that is a complication they will have to deal with.
Q: Conchata Ferrell, who played snarky housekeeper Berta on “Two and a Half Men,” received praise far and wide, including from you, after she died earlier this month.
Lorre: That was a great lady. She was hysterically funny. She created this astonishing character, the domestic housekeeper who was in fact running the show and was fearless, indomitable, ruthless and kind of shady. She was allin solid, somebody who showed up prepared and was supportive and a joy to be around.