Back to Air with "Back to You" Creators Levitan and Lloyd

[Sonia]

Like every other show on the network airwaves, Fox's new comedy Back to You with Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton was sent on an involuntary vacation due to the writers' strike. Although Back to You returns to Fox on Wednesday, April 16 at 8:30pm to kick off the show's new five episode run, the sitcom also has four other episodes already "in the can" to air at a later date. It's looking like fans of Back to You will now get an extended dose of hilarity in the immediate post-strike era.

Early this week, The Deadbolt took part in a conference call with show creators/producers Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd to get the goods on the show's return after the writers' strike, the original inspiration of the news room, future episodes of the series, and the new challenges Back to You faces upon its return.

THE DEADBOLT: Steven, how much of Back to You was inspired by your time spent at 27 Live Eyewitness News?

STEVEN LEVITAN: My, you’ve done your homework. You know, I think that when Chris and I were sitting around talking about potential ideas for Kelsey [Grammer], this arena came up because I always thought it was a good area for a comedy. The idea of these local journalists who were big fish in small ponds, while we came up with the idea together, a lot of little details have come from my time there. And I’m also quite a stickler for making sure it’s pretty accurate to how things are really done in local news. So, that comes from my experience as well. But there was a journalist when we were searching for characters for Kelsey; there was a particular journalist in Madison who came to mind as sort of a larger than life character who we thought Kelsey could really play beautifully.

THE DEADBOLT: Did you actually work with someone who was like the Marsh character [Fred Willard]?

LEVITAN: Well, I actually worked with a guy named Marsh who was somewhat like Marsh. But Fred Willard brings his own special qualities to that part. But the idea of an older, somewhat politically incorrect sportscaster, part of that did come from the guy that I had worked with. And a lot of it just came from Chris and me sitting around talking about where that character could go.

THE DEADBOLT: Christopher, what was the fallout after the "Something’s Up There" episode? It seemed like the Polish reference caught people off guard. Does FOX keep a closer eye on you guys now?

CHRISTOPHER LLOYD: The fallout?

THE DEADBOLT: After the episode, I heard there was a bit of controversy about one of the lines?

LEVITAN: Oh, yeah.

LLOYD: Oh, there was one joke in it which FOX had no problem with, especially in light of what is stated on Family Guy in about a five minute basis. You know, there was an objection raised and it wasn’t entirely out of line. It was a questionable line, for sure, and they finally felt that it was appropriate to issue an apology and they did. And so far as we know, it was over at that point.

Conference call highlights:

Are the five new episodes pre-strike episodes?

LLOYD: They are a combination. I think we had four or five in the can when the strike happened, we’ve since aired two of those on consecutive nights in February. But then when we came back and sort of reassessed the show and this was together with the network’s input, it was decided to try and move up a fairly significant plot moment, which is the moment when Chuck and Kelly let the daughter know that Chuck is her dad. And that will be something that we’ll be seeing sooner rather than later, but that necessitated us moving a few things around and writing a couple of episodes relatively quickly, which will be the ones that will air third and fourth out of these five. So, what we’ll wind up with is largely post strike written episodes, but maybe one from pre-strike.

Has there been any inspiration from the real Pittsburgh for Back to You?

LEVITAN: The Anthrocon Convention [episode], that was based in Pittsburgh and we have heard about that so we did that. And one of our writers grew up in Pittsburgh, so we’re constantly pulling out little details from that town.

Anything in the upcoming episodes that we’ll be seeing soon?

LLOYD: I think there’s occasional references in the news. We try to make that as accurate as possible if we’re talking about a happening locally. We use an actual town nearby and try to get the names right, but nothing too Pittsburgh-centric. But... a little local color sprinkled in is a good thing.

LEVITAN: Yes, and it’ll come in in bigger places at bigger times. Like we might have at some point - we’re going to try to get Terry Bradshaw on here and various things like that, but we’ll try to use some actual Pittsburgh people. I know that [Pittsburgh has] a very young mayor and that sounds very interesting to us. So, we’ve talked about it a little bit, but we just haven’t gotten there yet.

Did the previously aired "Cradle to Grave" episode back in February set the template for the show?

LEVITAN: That one felt really special to us at the time because it was a subject that was about something. It was an episode about something and that’s where we started to really think about maybe starting to veer the show a little bit more toward this whole Chuck, Kelly, Gracie relationship.

LLOYD: That is probably one of the first three or four episodes that we knew we wanted to do at the outset of the series, was Chuck spending a day with this person who was his daughter and how was that going to proceed. Our question was, where in the big arc of the series do we fit that episode? And there was a lot of internal debate about that. Is that a good thing to hold off? Is that something that the audience wants to see right away? Are you harming the character of Chuck a little bit if he’s ready for that right away? So, we were kind of finding our way through in those beginning ten [episodes] but I think we always knew that was going to be a pivotal show.

Steve Levitan on all of the episodes beyond the five latest and when they will air:

"We will have made an additional four, which they could run at the end of these five or they could run them in the summer or they could hold them for next year. They’re sort of maintaining all of their options."

Steve Levitan on the challenges of the timeslot and their outlook for the future:

"Well, it’s all so tricky. I mean the Wednesday nights at 8:00 p.m. slot, it’s very early for us. You know, Kelsey is a 9:00 p.m. guy and Patty Heaton and Raymond was a 9:00 p.m. show. So, we were starting out a new night of comedy with a brand new show with ‘Til Death behind us, which you know was not a big hit. So, it’s not like we had a flow or we had a chance to build off of someone for a while. We had to be complete, 100% self starters from day one and that’s been difficult. And it’s going to take some time and consistency to get an audience. We hope we’ll get that."