MARRIED: Nat Faxon Teases His New FX Series and Reuniting with Judy Greer

Rom-coms are all the rage in this upcoming season’s new comedies, but for the new FX series, MARRIED, the focus is more on what really happens after the “happily ever after.”

“The differences between network and cable are pretty evident as far as I think on this show we’re allowed to be darker and more tragic and slightly dirtier, and network is just more heightened and a little bit glossier,” MARRIED star Nat Faxon (Russ) told reporters on the show’s set. “There’s a rhythm to network TV I feel like that is different — at least [with] this show. I feel like this lives in a sort of more honest place, as far as what relationships are really like. I don’t think we strive to be funny all the time on this show, and I think that’s one of its strengths in a sense. It took me a little bit to get used to that.”

Because the show is so grounded, Faxon has found that his reality has often echoed what he’s had to play on-screen.

“I think that’s also part of the reason why I’ve really enjoyed this process because, like I said before, it feels very honest to what happens in actual relationships, and I can say that because I am married and I do have children,” he said. “Some of the circumstances or arguments or things that happen on the show are so reminiscent of things that have happened in my life personally. We shot a scene the other day where Judy [Greer (Lina)] catches me in a lie; basically I tell work that I’m sick and then I go surfing and then she shows up at the beach and said that, ‘I showed up at your work and they said you were sick, and I hope you’re feeling better.’ And that has happened to me a lot…[I’ve] gone surfing [in my real life] and then been caught when I said I was going to go do something else, and then I get caught in this stupid horrible lie and you realize like I don’t know why I just didn’t say I’m just going go do this, I want to go surfing right now. It’s very much sort of art mirroring life to the T.”

And while Faxon didn’t have the chance to write on the show in season 1 — he noted he wanted to “concentrate and sort of settle into the character a little bit” — the show’s creator had his own marriage and family to draw on for other real-life experiences.

“[MARRIED creator] Andrew [Gurland], being married and having 3 kids, this character a little bit kind of based on him and his experiences,” Faxon shared. “But I think those are universal things that most people that are who married with kids can identify with. We have certainly talked about things like the going surfing and saying you’re going to do something else, you know, experiences like that. I don’t know that it’s like we talk about something and he goes and writes it. I think it’s more just a product of maybe some of those little tidbits will sneak their way into the script, but I think a lot of it is just that things that come from his brain from dealing with family and commitment and all of those things. It’s very comforting to be around a creator like that where it feels collaborative.”

Helping to complete the experience is Faxon’s on-screen wife, Greer, with whom Faxon has worked with a handful of times over the years. (Including the Oscar-winning THE DESCENDANTS, which Greer appeared in and Faxon co-wrote.)

“It’s frighteningly easy [playing husband and wife], which freaks me out a lot,” Faxon laughed. “It’s very effortless. She’s so good, she’s such a very natural performer, and that makes things very easy because you just kind of slide right into it without having to have a lot of time together to create something that doesn’t exist. So it’s been not a ton of work as far as us bickering at each other and loving each other and hanging out with each other…I’ve been lucky the last couple of things I’ve done. It’s been able to sort of have that [easy relationship]; like, Dakota [Johnson] on BEN AND KATE was similar. [We] slid into like a brother-sister thing, and I feel like that way with Judy, and it has been very easy to sort of slide into a married couple that’s been through a lot of stuff and living through it and dealing with it.”

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MARRIED premieres tonight at 10 PM on FX.

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