Reimagining ‘Sound of Music’ with C&W twang
Give Fran Fine of “The Nanny” a drawl and some cowboy boots and you’ve got Netflix’s new comedy series, “Country Comfort.”
The show centers on a down-on-her-luck wannabe singer, Bailey (Katharine McPhee), who stumbles upon a ranch and ends up getting hired as a nanny for a cowboy and his five kids, each with enough quirks to drive every other nanny out of town.
It’s a well-known premise, and showrunner Caryn Lucas even got some of her first writing credits on “The Nanny” in the late 1990s. But McPhee found more familiarity in “The Sound of Music.”
“She’s a less-gracious Julie Andrews,” the 36-year-old actress joked. “She needs a new job and he needs a new nanny so they’re kind of forced into each other’s lives.”
“Country Comfort” finds Bailey on the worst day of her life, dumped by her boyfriend and kicked out of their band all in one go. So she brings her mayhem to cowboy Beau (Eddie Cibrian) and his family, which is still reeling from the death of his wife and their mother several years ago.
All of the predictable hijinks ensue: a jealous girlfriend, a runaway daughter, a horny teenage boy. It’s silly and simple and sweet. LeAnn Rimes, Cibrian’s real-life wife and country singer, even appears in a few scenes.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be one happy family,” Cibrian, 47, said. “You’ve always got to throw a wrench in every now and again. There’s going to be struggles. But I think you’re going to see this family grow and learn from each other and heal each other.”
But where “The Nanny” was dropped into Manhattan and Queens and “The Sound of Music” sent Maria yodeling through the Austrian hills, “Country Comfort” calls the South home, full of horses and handsome bachelor cowboys and twangs.
Cibrian, a California native, not only had to learn the accent but also had to coordinate pronunciations with the five young actors playing his children, Ricardo Hurtado, Jamie Martin Mann, Pyper Braun, Shiloh Verrico and Griffin McIntyre.
Los Angeles-born McPhee, who played a Southerner in “Waitress” on Broadway in 2018, had a bit of a jumpstart on her drawl, but she had an added challenge, singing with the accent, too. Bailey, a failed musician who hasn’t given up yet, knows how to do little but sing.
“They hired a girl from the Valley, this is what they get,” she laughed at her accent efforts.
For Bailey’s chaotic speeches, usually made up of defenses, pleas and insecurities, McPhee found it helpful to go more high-pitched.
“More nasal,” the “Smash” star said, the same description often used to describe “The Nanny” star Fran Drescher.
The first four episodes of “Country Comfort” were filmed in front of a live studio audience before the COVID-19 pandemic made that untenable. What’s left is a story about a family searching for a savior and a woman searching for a home.
“This last year has been so crazy on so many levels in every way,” McPhee said. “Going to work was such a breath of fresh air for us. It was a real haven. So we hope that the show is that as well.”