South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Having a full-circle moment
‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ ends soon, but first, Aline Brosh McKenna has a few things to say
Aline Brosh McKenna can’t let it go. She admits that.
Which is why when her CW series “Crazy ExGirlfriend” comes to a close after four seasons, it will be no ordinary send-off — because, come on, is anything ever ordinary with this show?
The swan song finale April 5 will be boosted by a concert special, airing immediately after the last episode of the musical dramedy. There’s also a documentary about the finale in the works that will be available on the CW Seed app. McKenna, cocreator and showrunner of the cult favorite, is in the midst of cutting footage for both bonus offerings. It caps off the already rigorous task of writing the series finale, which McKenna did with fellow co-creator and star Rachel Bloom, and directing the episode too. So, basically, overwhelming panic was inevitable.
“I don’t know what we were thinking,” McKenna, 51, says. “Rachel and I are still working around the clock. We’re insane. I don’t know why we did this to ourselves. … Clearly, we couldn’t let this show go.”
Considered by many to be an anti-romantic comedy, the show has followed the shenanigans of Rebecca Bunch (Bloom) in the pursuit of love and happiness. Along the way, the show has skewered the cliches often put on women and has offered a sobering exploration of mental health — all while breaking into song every so often. After a particularly dark third season, which included Rebecca plotting revenge on her ex and a suicide attempt, the final chapter has taken on a lighter tone in looking at Rebecca’s journey toward happiness in a healthy way.
For McKenna, whose screenwriting work has largely been focused on film, including “The Devil Wears Prada,” “27 Dresses” and “Morning Glory,” the end of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” is a significant marker in her career. It brings to a close her first TV series — a full circle moment for someone who spent her early years in Hollywood writing TV pilots.
With the office she used for four years on the “Crazy Ex” set in North Hollywood already boxed up, McKenna has been using Rachel Bloom, left, and Aline Brosh McKenna at the Crazy Ex production office in Los Angeles in 2016.
her other office in LA’s Larchmont Village. There, she talked about wrapping up the show. Her musings, which follow, are edited for space and clarity.
It all started when ...
After college, I wrote a proposal for a book with my roommate, and we sold it to Pocketbooks.
And then, I tried in vain to become a magazine writer. I really wanted to be, not quite as much of a journalist, but sort of in the world of “Devil Wears Prada.” I wanted to write for New York Woman. We tried to write for Spy. We had a piece killed at Glamour. We tried really hard. And then my writing partner moved to LA. She got a job on “Married With Children.”
I wrote a screenplay in a screenwriting class, an extension class at (New York University). And with that screenplay, I got an agent. I was about 23 or something like that. That was actually a blind deal that I got from a producer at Universal that didn’t turn into anything. And then the original spec sold to New Regency. Those two deals were the things that sustained
me for the first few years of my career. I was just expecting to work as a writer. That was the extent of my goals. And I worked in TV for five years. I wrote pilots mainly.
I think I stopped writing TV when I was pregnant with my son, so I was about 30, and then, I got the job writing “Devil Wears Prada” six or seven years later.
On her first IMDb TV credit — Margaret Cho’s “All-American Girl”
After a few years of writing movies, I got a TV writing partner, this really hilarious gentleman named Jeff Kahn, who was on “The Ben Stiller Show.” One of the pilots (we worked on together) was called “Young Americans.” They took one of our pilots, and they made it the last episode of “All-American Girl.”
It was a planted spinoff where Margaret moves in with a bunch of … we had written sort of “Friends” without money. But it didn’t get picked up.
On learning to be a showrunner
By the time we got
(“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”), I knew a lot of people who were running shows. Everybody does it differently, so I kind of crowdsourced it and called a bunch of different people.
I will say that Jennie Snyder Urman (“Jane the Virgin”) was working at the CW, and that was one of the reasons that we went to the CW to begin with. She was very helpful and gave me a lot of good advice.
I (also) solicited a lot of feedback from the writers we hired. We had a retreat right in the beginning, and I said, “Tell me the best practices and the worst practices of your previous jobs.
I had to learn that every person you work with requires a slightly different style of communication. If you think about, with your five closest friends, you have a slightly different communication with each. Like, This one, I text with, and this one, I call, and this one, it’s best to hang out with them in person.
It’s sort of like with kids. You take them as they are, as opposed to trying to get everybody to be on your wavelength.
On being conscious of her role in creating an inclusive workplace
I think that’s present in my everyday brain. I remember Rachel said to me once, “Why are you so nice to me? Why are you mentoring me?” I was mentored and taken care of by a lot of people when I started. Having someone identify, “Hey, you did a good job here,” or, “I see something in you” — just the slightest little thing is so meaningful when you’re starting.
Changing the rom-com narrative
I had been so steeped in being likable and the female leads being a certain way — that had been hammered onto me. I will say, on “Devil Wears Prada,” that was the process where that happened the least. Besides (director) Dave (Frankel), it was a movie made primarily by women.
And so I got fewer of those notes. (Anne Hathaway’s character) was brainy, and she was a little snobby, and she was opinionated, and I think that’s partly because the book existed. So that helped a lot. But also because it was a movie surrounded by women.
And then with “Crazy Ex,” I think one of the things that really connected Rachel and I was a desire to get underneath stereotypes. She comes from musical comedy, where the female characters are often severely compromised. And I had been working in romantic comedies, where I was trying to get these other kinds of characters through.
And this was a brilliant opportunity for both of us to kind of spoof these things.
Rebecca Bunch is a studio executive’s nightmare of a romantic comedy female lead, and that was highly intentional because it’s a character who’s been fed that crap. What does that look like when you’re actually trying to manifest those romcoms into being? That is maybe the biggest difference between Rachel Bloom and Rebecca Bunch, which is that Rachel is steeped in musicals. Rebecca Bunch is steeped in rom-coms, mostly.