2009 Summer TCA

New sitcom Accidentally on Purpose premieres tonight on CBS, with Jenna Elfman in the lead role as a San Francisco movie critic who becomes pregnant after a one-night stand (Elfman went totally Method: she just announced her real-life pregnancy). Playing her best friend? British actress Ashley Jensen. Jensen has struck comedy gold on both sides of the Atlantic, earning an Emmy nomination for her work alongside Ricky Gervais in Extras and making a splash as Betty's best friend (and Wilhelmina's surrogate) in Ugly Betty. Jensen and I chatted at the CBS/CW party at the TCA press tour about how she landed the role (after getting horribly lost on the way to her audition) and how she'll play a party girl despite being pregnant in real life. Here are highlights:

• On her character, Olivia: "She's a party animal girl, sort of the cheeky, sassy, witty one who kind of is independent and doesn't need to be tied down. She seems to have a boyfriend in every place that she works . . . which is good fun to play!"
• On playing pregnant on Ugly Betty and now being pregnant: "I've been pregnant for over two years! This [belly]'s a little bit more difficult because I can't remove it at lunchtime. I said to someone earlier, 'If I'd realized what it was like to be pregnant and wearing four-inch heels, I may have walked a little bit different in the last season of Ugly Betty.' I was just strutting about!"

To hear her Ugly Betty highlights, how she stumbled into meeting Ted Danson and how she feels about using her own accent on TV, just read more

Jessica Lucas seems to be the go-to girl for the CW's soapy remakes. After appearing on the big screen in Cloverfield, Lucas turned up on 90210 as an undercover cop posing as a transfer student. Now she's staying in the Aaron Spelling reboot family as newly engaged elementary school teacher Riley in the new Melrose Place. At the TCA press tour, Lucas had a few things to say about her new job:

• On whether Riley's relationship with Jonah (Michael Rady) will last: "They're definitely going to be tested a lot. I think the environment they're in is very harsh.They're under a lot of financial stress. So I don't know how long they're going to be able to work things out. And I think, you know, Riley's really at a crossroads. I don't think she really knows if she wants to get married."
• On whether her character is as good as she appears: "Like anybody in real life, she has flaws, and those flaws are going to start to come out a lot in the first few episodes. I think the main thing with her is, she is really nervous about getting married, and she doesn't know if she wants to, and that's going to cause her to maybe stray a little bit."
• On how this show differs from the original: "I saw a few episodes of the fourth season [of original Melrose] and it was insane — like, people were blowing up the courtyard. I think we're going to try to keep ours a little more grounded. It's heightened reality, but it's very gritty, it's very dark. And I think it shows that really dark side of LA and how it can affect people and define who they are and change who they are."

To find out what Lucas thinks of the show's mystery twist and whether she'd ever do another Cloverfield, just read more

Kevin Williamson's Dawson's Creek helped make the WB into a buzzworthy network. Now, can The Vampire Diaries do the same for The CW? Williamson and writing partner Julie Plec will be bringing that other vampire book series to the small screen on the show's premiere tonight, and at the TCA press tour, he talked to me about what it's like to launch a new vampire show in a post-Twilight world.

Here's the question I'm sure everyone is asking: Why vampires? Why are they so big now?
It's all cyclical. I remember when I was growing up we had those Lost Boys, and then there were a few shows after that. . . . I'm sure there's some psychological ramification to the psyche of America and culture at the moment and politics and the state of the world. I'm sure we could go analyze it till the cows come home. But I think they're cool, they're fun, they're sexy, and they took off. Julie's the one who coined the phrase "They're the new James Dean," and she's got a point. They're the new version of a bad boy, and for a whole new generation.

With so many other vampires out there, what will make this show stand out?
I read the first book and was like, "This is Twilight. This is just like Twilight." . . . I was like, "No way." And then Julie was three books ahead of me and she was going, "Keep reading. Keep reading." And then I kept reading and was like, "Oh, OK, I get it." This is a different show. This is a story about a town. This is a story about a family. . . . The premise is the same but the themes are different. It goes beyond just a love story and really goes into everything that goes bump in the night. It's more sort of a Dark Shadows. This town has a lot going on in it, and we just start with the vampires.

Is it easier or harder to be the new vampire show right now?
It's really tough. We were just saying there's a hundred reasons that are working against us. And one of them is my favorite show, True Blood. . . . Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I personally have room for one more vampire show in my lineup. It's a coming of age story, it's a drama show, I get to have a little fun with the humor of it, I'm trying to put our characters in the real world. They're in the world of it — these are high school girls who actually read Twilight. We just wrote the scene where one of the girls finds out Ian Somerhalder's a vampire, and her first comment is, "Why don't you sparkle?"

To hear about how Williamson cast the roles and how much of the books will turn up on TV, just read more

For a little while, it seems like Michael Rady has been everywhere, turning up on the small screen in Greek, Swingtown, and even Grey's Anatomy while also romancing Alexis Bledel in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies. At the CBS/CW party at the TCA Press Tour, I chatted with Rady about playing a nice guy, whether or not his Melrose engagement is doomed, and those Swingtown sideburns. Here are highlights:

How did you end up working on the new Melrose Place?
The first week of casting for Melrose Place, I went in, I didn't know anything about it, I think I had five auditions that day, and I left and they were like, "They want you." And I was like, "Really? No one wants me!" They were like, "Yeah, we like him." And then I booked it a couple of days later. And I was the first one cast. There was no script. It still hasn't quite sunk in yet — it's a little surreal.

When I saw you were cast in Melrose Place, I was of two minds about it — on the one hand, I was excited, and on the other, I was like, "Well, I guess I know what happens to Max on Greek."
Yeah — stumbling off drunk into the night, alone.

But then suddenly resurfacing here, a little more glamorous. Although Jonah seems pretty down-to-earth.
Yeah, he's the transplant from the East Coast and just comes from a grounded family, a good family situation.

Do you think he'll stay that way?
They swear up and down I would turn out good in the end. I think it's just this den of corruptibility, Melrose Place. So I think we'll get swept up here, and then spit out, and then swept up again, and then spit out.

It seems like there might be a chance on this show to play up the evil side.
It happened to Michael Mancini, right? No matter how much they swear I need to remember that: That this is Melrose Place and nothing is safe.

To hear Rady's thoughts on his Greek romance and those sideburns, just read more

At every NBC TCA event, Connie Britton is one of my absolute favorite people to find. Once again, the Friday Night Lights actress took some time this Summer to talk about the upcoming seasons four and five of FNL. Read on for highlights:

• On some of the drama in the upcoming season: "I'm still at the school that basically ousted my husband, so I think that we're going to have a lot of interesting conflicts in terms of that and the people in the town. I think that some of the Dillion High students are going to be moved to East Dillon and that might be a problem — infighting about the football team."
• On having Tami become principal in season three: "I was so excited about her being principal and then it ended up being such a challenging year. . . . There were issues I had with, oh, you know, 'I feel like Tami would do this differently.' But at the end of the day, it was such a rewarding season. There were so many highs and lows and I feel like being principal added a dimension to all of the things that Tami had to deal with, being a wife, being a mother, being sort of a person in this town who people look to for things, and then on top of that having this sort of bureaucratic, political role where she's really idealistic and trying to do good.
• On what's next for her relationship with Julie: "I just feel like this season we are really going to see her grow up, which is going to be great. I think that's going to be exciting, to see her really come into her own. And I imagine there's going to be some letting-go struggles. As a parent that would be heartbreaking. It would have to be."

To hear Britton's thoughts on the departing seniors and which character she'll miss seeing in season four (a little spoilery, that one), just read more

When I first saw Alison Brie on NBC's comedy pilot Community alongside Joel McHale, I thought, "Good for her!" And then I had a second thought: "But wait . . . what about Trudy?" Brie also plays Trudy Campbell on Mad Men, and I was worried this new role spelled the end for Trudy. Luckily, I caught up with Brie at NBC's TCA day, and she put my fears to rest:

• On balancing Community with Mad Men: " There were lots of phone calls made from one to the other, and luckily people have so much respect for Mad Men — it's like an institution — and for Matt Weiner that it didn't take too many phone calls for them to go ahead and OK me for a good portion of this season. Obviously my stuff on Mad Men this season is a little lighter because my first priority is Community, but because we started shooting that season a couple of months before Community started, I had some good time to get through and now we're still managing the popping back and forth for both."
• On similarities between her characters: "I think their biggest similarity is that they strive for perfection. Trudy really has her ideas about marriage and what it should be and she really wants things to be perfect in that way. And Annie has her ideas about college and studying and what that should be, so in that respect they're the same. Trudy's much more fashionable, and . . . we've had a few seasons to see her grow and develop as a character. With Annie I can't wait to see the depth."
• On whether she prefers drama or comedy: "I've flip-flopped on both throughout my career. When I was in college and growing up I was like, 'It's comedy for me! I'm so funny!' Yikes. Then when I started acting, right away it was drama, and with Mad Men it's my first success in television and obviously it's a heavy drama. What I like about it is, [drama and comedy] both appeal to both sides of me. Obviously to work on a drama you couldn't ask for a better lineup than Mad Men, and that appeals to my artistic side and the depth and there's so much under the surface. And [Community] just appeals to — it's just so much fun. It's like a child goofing off. It's like my class clown days in elementary school coming back."

Unfortunately, I couldn't get Brie to drop any hints about the state of the Campbells' marriage, but for a bit more of what she did have to say, read more

When I first checked out Cougar Town, the new ABC comedy from Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence and starring Courteney Cox, I was a little concerned. The show was racier than I was expecting, and something in the tone seemed a little off. Apparently, I wasn't alone in that opinion — and apparently, Lawrence is listening. When he took the stage at TCA over the weekend, one of his main messages seemed to be that he knows he has some work to do.

"It's the first time I've ever written a show that I feel like I need outside input [to get right]," Lawrence told me after his session, adding that his staff now has more female writers than male writers. Though his wife (Christa Miller, who also stars in the show) and their friends provide him with a lot of material, he said he still has a tendency to see things from a guy's perspective — like a waxing scene he recently wrote that he said might have gone down the 40-Year-Old Virgin route if he hadn't been careful.

A number of the things that bugged me in the pilot have been reshot: He said the opening scene (which used to feature Cox and Busy Philipps's characters ogling guys at a high school football game) felt "like a cartoon" and has been changed, and he's toned down lines that make it seem like Cox's character couldn't get a date despite looking like, y'know, Courteney Cox. (Now it's more that — as a friend told him — "every single guy at our age is either gay, broken, or dating younger girls.")

To hear what Lawrence thinks of the term "cougar" and why he used it for the title, read more

"Scrubs is over. I wrote the finale." That's what Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence told me Saturday night at ABC's party at the TCA press tour. It might seem like an odd thing to say, considering that the show is very much alive and well on ABC's schedule — so Lawrence explained a little more.

"I'm writing the first Scrubs like it's a new pilot," he said, moving the setting to medical school and introducing a new cast to surround a few of our Sacred Heart regulars. He even wanted to change the name of the show (to Scrubs Med), but that didn't fly with the network, which wanted to keep the Scrubs brand.

Viewers will see plenty of familiar characters, though: John C. McGinley, Donald Faison, and Eliza Coupe are all regulars, and Zach Braff will be around for at least the show's first six episodes. Lawrence and the show's production team built a new set, shooting medical school scenes in a building across from a slightly renovated version of Sacred Heart. And when the characters head out of the classroom and into the hospital, they'll see other familiar faces (including Judy Reyes, Sarah Chalke, Ken Jenkins, and Neil Flynn — who apparently wrote his own exit from the show) whom Lawrence can hire for an episode or two at a time.

Three new major characters will also be introduced; the "new, young actors" are testing with the network this coming week for their roles. And while the tone will be similar to Scrubs (actually, Lawrence described it as Paper Chase with a hospital set), the show's focus truly will be "21-year-old students in med school starting their first day of hospital care."

Lawrence promises Scrubs 2.0 won't be "a lame, pale imitation" of what we've already seen, and that certainly makes me more curious to tune in when the show returns next season after Dancing with the Stars finishes its next run. What about you?