{"id":853715,"date":"2026-08-11T03:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T03:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/853715\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T03:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T03:40:11","slug":"newlyweds-jamie-lee-curtis-on-why-she-begged-her-agents-for-sitcom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/853715\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Newlyweds’ Jamie Lee Curtis On Why She “Begged” Her Agents For Sitcom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jamie Lee Curtis<\/a> had just wrapped a movie when, during the 1988 pilot season, ABC offered her a half-hour multi-camera pilot. She did it and loved it, so she was bummed when the network didn\u2019t pick it up to series that May. Curtis went to do another movie, and, while she was filming, A Fish Called Wanda came out in July 1988, making her an overnight global star.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, ABC called and told her they wanted to pick up that pilot, which became Anything But Love, a sitcom that ran for four seasons. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was my favorite job I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d Curtis recalled during a panel Monday for the new NBC<\/a> multi-camera comedy Newlyweds<\/a>, which she executive produces and recurs on. \u201cAnd I\u2019m 68 years old, and every single year, all I\u2019ve ever said to my agents is \u2018I want to do a sitcom, all I want to do is a sitcom.\u2019 It\u2019s my favorite job, I love the whole part of it, every aspect of it, the dance with the cameras, the idea that you actually get to rehearse something and work it and learn a joke and play it. I just never got to do it, and so I just decided to basically kind of create my own job. I met Gail, and that\u2019s why we are all here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gail Lerner<\/a> is Newlyweds\u2018 writer and executive producer.<\/p>\n

Curtis has done single-camera comedy series over the years, including New Girl and The Bear, but is not a fan of the form.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m telling you, I have begged my agents\u00a0\u2011\u2011 and by the way, I did a single\u2011camera, which I hate. I mean, great show, New Girl, very funny,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a good show, but doing it is just like doing a movie. You\u2019ve got a camera crew, and nobody laughs. They are silent, and it\u2019s awful, for me, awful. Single\u2011camera comedy is not fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newlyweds is a later\u2011in\u2011life love story about a free\u2011spirited woman (T\u00e9a Leoni) and a buttoned\u2011up professor (Tim Daly) who marry impetuously after a whirlwind courtship. Curtis plays the professor\u2019s ex-wife, \u201ca bitch,\u201d in her own words.<\/p>\n

Curtis, an Oscar winner who is married to filmmaker Christopher Guest, spoke about the genesis of the idea for Newlyweds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth of the matter is I met my husband and married him after seeing his picture in a magazine, and we had never spent more than 72 hours together before we got married, I mean at one time,\u201d she said. \u201cI think you can know what we did for the other 70 hours,\u2028there wasn\u2019t a lot of talking. We were strangers when we married, and then you wake up one day and go, like, \u2018Wow. He really doesn\u2019t talk.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Continued Curtis, \u201cWe have been married for 42 years, thank you very much. But the point is that there\u2019s always been that aspect of my relationship with my husband, we are polar opposites, and that was when we started talking about a later\u2011in\u2011life thing that happens to people in their 60s, who hook up and kind of go, \u2018You know what, let\u2019s do this.\u2019 There\u2019s something really delicious about watching people figure out life when they are filled in a life with other people, and that\u2019s ultimately what we kind of wanted the show to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"L-R: Gail Lerner, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill O\u2019Neill, Tim Daly, T\u00e9a Leoni, Emma Meisel and Ignacio Diaz-Silverio during NBC\u2019s \u201cBacklot Pass Day\u201d on Monday at the Universal Studios lot<\/p>\n

Lerner spoke about how she and NBC got involved. <\/p>\n

\u201cJamie brought me this idea during the pandemic, so we\u2019ve been really generating it for a very long time. And for a million various reasons, it was hibernating for a while, and a lot of people say my project died, but I just knew my project was hibernating,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then NBC called in November of 2025 and said, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s do that show,\u2019 and we were off to the races.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lerner gave NBC props for \u201creinvesting in multi-cam and bringing back Must See TV.\u201d \u2028<\/p>\n

Curtis stressed the fact that Newlyweds is on a broadcast network that is accessible to anyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also must-see free TV,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to remember, a lot of people don\u2019t have any money anymore, people are really struggling, and cable and all of the things you have to spend money on. This is network television, and I actually think this whole nostalgia of what sitcoms bring you into your house, things do come around. And my guess is that NBC\u2019s decision to pick up a show that\u2019s going to make a block of comedy on Friday nights\u00a0\u2011\u2011 \u2018Fridays: We Are In Love On NBC,\u2019 I mean, that\u2019s an advertising feed. That\u2019s how you build something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Friday sitcom block<\/a> Newlyweds will be part of is anchored by the Reba McEntire comedy Happy\u2019s Place. NBC set a goal this past development season to find a companion for its breakout multi-camera hit, greenlighting two pilots, one of which, Newlyweds, went to series<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason we are here is because Happy\u2019s Place became such a happy place, and people wanted to go there that they needed to pair it with a show about love and friendship,\u201d Curtis said. \u201cI just think people want to have a good time in the comfort of their own home, and they want to turn on a network show and have laughs and have feelings. If that isn\u2019t what sitcoms can do well, then I\u2019m not sure what they do. That\u2019s what they do, and that\u2019s why we love them.\u201d<\/p>\n

With multi-camera comedy in retreat across broadcast, Curtis hopes Newlyweds will help the genre make a comeback that will extend beyond Fridays on NBC.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy guess is then Thursdays are going to start being that, and the next thing you know, NBC is going to look like they were geniuses of bringing back the thing that real people really want, and they want it for free,\u201d she said. \u201cThey want to turn their television on and have that level of entertainment and laughter and a good feeling about who we are as a society. And I just think that it\u2019s exciting that we get to do, and we are grateful to NBC for doing it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Daly chimed in to \u201cslightly dispute the characterization that people in general think [sitcoms are] old\u2011fashioned,\u201d noting that young people come to him to talk about his classic sitcom Wings which they had discovered and loved.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think that there is an audience; it\u2019s just a matter of us finding them and them finding us, and, hopefully, they will,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jamie Lee Curtis had just wrapped a movie when, during the 1988 pilot season, ABC offered her a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,296901,10106,7817,296902,18321],"class_list":["post-853715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-gail-lerner","tag-jamie-lee-curtis","tag-nbc","tag-newlyweds","tag-novid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}