Have you seen the comedy series Trophy Wife yet? It airs on ABC on Tuesday nights at 9:30 PM (EST) / 8:30 PM (CST).
Trophy Wife stars the lovely Malin Akerman as Kate. Kate is a beautiful young woman who marries an older man, Pete, who has two ex-wives. Pete’s ex-wife Diane very much a “Type A” person who is a bit too intense and not a lot of fun. Pete’s other ex-wife, Jackie, is the polar opposite. She’s zany, flaky and a bit “out there”.
Pete also has children with his ex-wives, Hillary, Warren and adopted Asian-American son Bert.
Trophy Wife also stars Bradley Whitford (Pete), Marcia Gay Harden (Diane), Michaela Watkins (Jackie), Bailee Madison (Hillary), Ryan Lee (Warren) and the adorable Albert Tsai (Bert).
I have seen the show several times. I love the whole premise of the show and how Kate is trying to fit in to her husband’s life with ex-wives who don’t exactly make it easy for her (especially Diane). She is also learning how to be an “instant mom” to three children, two of which are teenagers and a very precocious young son. Diane is especially hard on Kate because Diane feels like she’s “perfect” and doesn’t think that Kate is good enough to raise her children. Jackie on the other hand likes Kate. Kate just has to deal with Jackie’s weird quirkiness.
I think the show did an excellent job casting these characters. All of the actors are very believable in their parts.
The Wedding, Part 1 recently aired (last week). In that episode Kate discovers the wedding videos for Pete and Diane’s wedding and Pete and Jackie’s wedding. Since she and Pete basically eloped she feels like she’s missing out on something special. To make it up to her Pete proposes to Kate and they plan on having a wedding, complete with family and friends.
I can totally relate to this. My husband and I eloped. I didn’t have a fancy wedding dress or a big party for all my family and friends. Our wedding was at the court house and our wedding cake was a boxed cake from the grocery store (It was Pepperidge Farm cake – it was good. LOL). I felt the same feelings that Kate felt. I also feel like I missed out on something not having a real wedding. I also don’t have a wedding video, only a few photos.
The Wedding, Part 2 airs tonight on ABC 9:30 PM (EST) / 8:30 PM (CST). I had the opportunity to view part 1 and part 2 when I was out in Los Angeles last week. I won’t giveaway any secrets. Let’s just say the craziness continues and something unexpected happens that might derail the entire wedding. Will Kate finally get a special wedding video with Pete like Diane and Jackie did? To find out you need to tune into Trophy Wife to find out.
The blogger group I was with had the opportunity to ask a few questions of Executive Producers/Show Creators Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins. In fact the show is loosely based on Sarah Haskins life because her husband has been married a couple of times just like the character of Kate.
Sarah Haskins (left) and Emily Halpern (right). Photo Credit: ABC/Todd Wawrychuk
How did you come up with the idea for Trophy Wife?
Sarah Haskins: We’re the creators, so we came up with the idea together. It’s very loosely based on my life. I married an older man who’d been married a few times before and has children from those different marriages. Kind of like Malin Akerman’s character, without rocking the short shorts.
It’s a situation that while unique and highly specific, is also very universal. People have dealt with divorce and co-parenting. It’s very common and we thought has a place on TV.
The characters have very good chemistry. How hard was it to get who you wanted?
Sarah: We filmed the pilot off cycle and we didn’t appreciate it at the time. That wound up being a huge advantage because we weren’t competing for all the exact same actors as all of the other pilots at the same time. And a lot of that had to do with Malin. She was really the first piece. ABC had actually passed on Trophy Wife the first year we developed it and ultimately it was given a second life when Malin read the script and ABC really wanted to work with her. And so did we.
Why do a wedding episode now?
Emily: We were kind of trying to think of a big episode idea. Honestly, we knew this was going to air in March. It was a 2-parter. In a comedy, we can’t shoot the president [Laughs] so how big can we go? A wedding felt good to us.
What’s next for Trophy Wife?
Sarah: Hopefully season 2!
Emily: We just finished editing our season finale and our fate is in ABC’s hands. But we hope we get to come back to do some more.
Sarah: Yeah, and appropriately, our season finale is a Mother’s Day episode. It helps wrap up Kate’s arc all season of “Am I a mom in this family’s eyes or am I just a trophy wife?”
How’d you come up with the specific characters? Who were the influences?
Sarah: We talked about my emotional reactions to meeting my husband’s exes. His first wife is super intimidating. She’s French and she’s a lawyer and she went to Brown and blah blah blah. So she was so intimidating that we took that intimidating factor and made that Diane. I think everyone probably has an experience with an intimidating ex who you don’t want to hear about.
And then the Jackie character came out of dealing with the boundaries of a blended family. No one in particular. It’s just hard to say where your nuclear family ends and your everybody family begins. And Jackie is someone who is strongly on the everybody is family portion of the spectrum. That’s just a fun character to have.
Do the ex wives know it’s about them?
Sarah: I wouldn’t say it’s about them. One of them watches it and one of them doesn’t. The intimidating one does watch it.
Emily: And she has notes every week! [Laughs]
I do think we consciously try to write all three women as strong characters. And once we sort of had whatever the stereotype was, we really worked hard to try to make sure that they felt like complete characters and strong women and had their own independence.
What’s the writing process like?
Sarah: There’s a lot of diverse life experiences in our writer’s room, so people would pitch stories. The Lice Story came from a writer who just had a super embarrassing lice breakdown with her kids at school. They had to take home all the pillows in school and wash them. It sounded horrible.
And just issues like The Punisher, was actually from one of our male co-Executive Producers who was just like, “How does she learn to do that? How do you do that?” And I think that’s just his anxiety about being a parent some days. So that’s where The Punisher episode came from.
Emily: We also try to think of what’s the funniest one line story we can think of. And then just build a bigger story on top of it. If the premise is funny, the story is funny. We can make that work. We have an episode coming up where Warren joins the girl’s field hockey team and that idea made us laugh and we built a story around it.
You can catch up on all the recent episode on the Trophy Wife’s official webpage. You can also follow Trophy Wife on the various social networking sites.
Trophy Wife on Facebook
Trophy Wife on Twitter #TrophyWife
Trophy Wife on Pinterest
Trophy Wife on Instagram
Trophy Wife on Google+
You can also see what other bloggers have to say about the show and the Wedding Part 2 episode by using the hashtag #ABCTVEvent on the various social media sites. There is also a wedding specific hashtag you can use #TrophyWifeWedding.
Have you seen Trophy Wife yet? What do you think about the show and the cast? Do you have a favorite character on the show? Feel free to share your thoughts.
Malin Akerman – “Kate” on Trophy Wife.
Kimberly
*I was not compensated for this post. I posted this for the enjoyment of my site readers. The opinions expressed are my own and not influenced in any way.
The post ABC’s hit comedy, Trophy Wife, airs Part 2 of The Wedding tonight at 9:30 EST / 8:30 CST #ABCTVEvent appeared first on She Scribes.