Did you have an imaginary friend growing up? It is not something that I experienced personally, but I know a few people who had them. It is extremely common and ABC has made this commonality into a hilarious comedy.
The new show, Imaginary Mary start Jenna Elfman as Alice is a fiercely independent career woman whose life is turned upside-down when she meets the love of her life – a divorced father with three kids. This triggers even more upheaval when the slightly unhinged imaginary friend she created as a child suddenly reappears to help her navigate the transition from single girl to a woman ready for a family.
(ABC/Katie Yu)
From L-R: MATREYA SCARRWENER, ERICA TREMBLAY, STEPHEN SCHNEIDER, JENNA ELFMAN, NICOLAS COOMBE
This is a live action/CGI hybrid that is on TV! How cool is that? This is coming from the geniuses behind “The Goldbergs” – Adam F. Goldberg (writer/executive producer), David Guarascio (writer/executive producer) and Doug Robinson (executive producer). A few weeks ago, I watched a couple of episodes of the new Imaginary Mary and had the honor to interview the stars Jenna Elfman and Stephen Schneider and executive producer, Doug Robinson and David Guarascio (writer/executive producer).
Photo credit Coralie Seright – Lovebugs and Postcards (http://
Playing a Mom Novice
Jenna Elfman is a mom in real life and is playing a career woman who is learning the ropes at being in a relationship with a divorced father with three kids. We asked Jenna about how she felt playing this role considering she’s a mom. “I thought it was fun to play someone who is not a super mom. She has no idea what she’s doing. As much as us mothers do know what we’re doing, we feel like we have no idea what we’re doing, and we also feel like, I got this, depending on the day and depending on how much sleep your kid has had or sugar they had the day before. My character is super into herself like me, me, me, me, me. She’s in a really high operating level of being an only one and as a mother, you lose all that. You make that sacrifice as a woman when you have children. She’s got time and sleep, and money, and so much me time in her life. The more selfish you’re being, when the kids come in with all their problems, you’re just like, what? You know, and I just use that to hook into that.
ADDED ON 4/3! From tomorrow night’s episode:
IMAGINARY MARY – “The Mom Seal”
(ABC/Sergei Bachlakov)
JENNA ELFMAN, STEPHEN SCHNEIDER
Chemistry
The writer and executive producer of Imaginary Mary, David Guarascio describes the show as a mix between a family comedy and a romantic comedy. The chemistry between Alice and Ben is amazing. It makes the show even more amazing.
David says, “It was really important that they have great chemistry and that we felt like there was a romantic comedy also played while we’re doing a family show because we just felt like it’s something you don’t see as much, and that’s just something that they just sort of like clicked together in a way that was really organic.”
IMAGINARY MARY – ABC’s “Imaginary Mary” stars Erica Tremblay as Bunny, Matreya Scarrwener as Dora,
Stephen Schneider as Ben, Jenna Elfman as Alice and Nicholas Coombe as Andy. (ABC/Bob D’Amico)
Imaginary Mary Look
The animation/CGI comes from Patrick Osborne who is the creator of Academy Award-winning animated short “The Feast” – one of my faves!! David Guarascio talks about the look of Imaginary Mary,”The co-creator, Patrick Osborne, who is also an animator, he really came up with the design and just worked with us about what she would look like, and he wanted to do something that was loveable-looking particularly because an important part of Mary’s character is that she’s not always saying the right thing and she is a defender of, in a very important way, of Alice’s independent streak and her feminist side. We felt like we could get away with Mary saying more of what she shouldn’t say the cuter she looked. She needs to be appealing. It was hard. We had a lot of different concepts and worked overtime and shot a pilot with one aspect, and kept tweaking it until we finally came to this look here. It just came from his brain. We completely changed her between the pilot and the series. We redesigned her just because we found that certain things worked, and certain things didn’t work, and we just made her rounder and cuter, and just kept refining her the whole time. It was great.”
If you are the hunt for a new fun show (I always AM), TUNE IN and check out the Imaginary Mary! It will crack you up and warm your heart. Tuesday nights at 9:30PM/ET on ABC!! TONIGHT!!!
This is blog post is sponsored in exchange for an all-expense paid trip from Disney. However, as always, all experiences and opinions are my own.