After a successful test run earlier this year, NBC’s comedy Undateable goes live for every episode in Season 3. The season opener will run an hour long with the individual titles “A Will They Walks Into A Bar” and “A Won’t They Walks Into The Bar,” and it will be performed live tonight (October 9) for both the East and West Coasts.
In the premiere, Danny (Chris D’Elia) decides to interfere as Justin (Brent Morin) and Candace (Bridgit Mendler) are on the verge of making things official. Burski (Rick Glassman) surprises everyone that when he announces he has a girlfriend. Meanwhile, Leslie (Bianca Kajlich) decides it’s time to change up her look.
We spoke with Executive Producers Bill Lawrence and Adam Sztykiel earlier this week about the change, and what it will mean for the show moving forward.
“Last year, when it was just a one-off, we made it kind of like a variety show. [It was] like ‘Hey! It’s a Night of a Thousand Stars, and Ed Sheeran’s singing, and they’re gonna wink at the camera 9,000 times’… so Adam and I had to come up with an idea of how to bridge that gap,” Lawrence says about what will make this Undateable Live different from what we had earlier this year in the test run. “We can still tell stories, but acknowledge that the show’s live. What we’ve been trying to sell to the network, we’ll see if they buy into it or not, is a live experience, which means the show, for us, is a week-long thing. Every day at 4:30, we put out live content… they have access to all of the cast members, to the bands that are here, to everybody that’s coming by and doing stuff for the show. It leads up to the show. Even during the show, there’s the opportunity,” he explains.
“Chris D’Elia very proudly last year said that he was the first actor to ever live-tweet a show whilst he was simultaneously acting on it, so one of the things these guys will all be doing, besides the fact that phone numbers will be passed out for real cell phones, that if the phone rings, it’ll be an actual fan at home calling, to Periscoping in the down time between commercials, to if any actor is typing on the phone, it’s not fake drinking coffee like you see in normal shows… they’re probably interacting with someone who’s watching. We’ve been practicing… that type of immersive experience will hopefully be fun for people,” Lawrence promises.
Adam Sztykiel, the show’s creator, is prepared for whatever comes. “Whether it’s the perfect show or an epic disaster, it’s still going to be more interesting than just a routine half-hour of TV. There’s so much more stuff on TV now, I feel like you’ve got to do something to separate yourself from everybody. So, I look forward to those handful of episodes where the wheels come off a little bit,” he explains.
“We’ve embraced the potential for disaster,” Lawrence adds, though he knows his cast is more than capable to perform under pressure. “Part of the fun of this show is that these actors and actresses are adept enough and quick enough on their feet that they can handle this stuff. We can’t fabricate it. You can’t ask your performer to fake a spontaneous moment,” he says. “One of the things that they’re all up for, is we give certain performers lines that the other performers don’t know are coming, in certain spots of the scene. The cameramen are ready to handle it… like, last year, Brent Morin didn’t know Ed Sheeran was going to kiss him. Brent had no idea that when they were fighting, that in one take, Chris was going to say ‘Oh yeah? Well you’ve gained a lot of weight since the show started.’ Chris didn’t know that Scott Foley was going to make him get on his knees and do all that stuff… and then we just watch what happens, and hope that people don’t have panic attacks.”
And, of course, an actor losing their composure isn’t the end of the world. “Part of the fun for us is that when you look at Bianca, when she starts laughing, she can’t contain herself, so I truly hope that happens this year, because everybody will try to dive in and try to save the scene, but watching that train wreck… we equate it to Saturday Night Live. I love when Jimmy Fallon used to kind of screw up… I don’t like it if he does it every single sketch, ‘cause then you’re like ‘hey, come on’… but when it happens once, and it’s real and organic, it made me feel like I was watching something real and cool,” Lawrence says.
NBC’s new live season of Undateable premieres tonight (October 9) at NBC. Follow us on Twitter @KSiteTV for some live updates from the West Coast taping!
