CONNECTING… Bosses on Making a Timely, Unique Comedy

NBC’s sole new scripted show this fall is CONNECTING…, a timely comedy about a group of friends struggling to get by in the midst of global upheaval in 2020.

While the comedy has many of the elements viewers are accustomed to (a will they/won’t they couple, a married couple who isn’t quite on the same page), the characters—played by Otmara Marrero, Parvesh Cheena, Shakina Nayfack, Preacher Lawson, Ely Henry, Jill Knox and Keith Powell—interact almost exclusive via Zoom. (The big exception are Knox and Powell, who are married in real-life.)

But as modern as the show is, creators Martin Gero and Brendan Gall (who previously worked together on BLINDSPOT and THE L.A. COMPLEX) looked to iconic sitcoms from the past for inspiration.

“I started rewatching CHEERS right around when we did this,” Gero explains. “That’s a show where the whole episode is basically a scene: they’re there at the bar and they talk about a thing. And that’s what we wanted the show to be. We wanted it to be conversational.”

Here, Gero and Gall dive into the challenges of producing a show remotely, how the cast stepped up, and tackling some of the biggest moments of the year…

How did you land on each episode taking place over a specific day during the pandemic?
Martin Gero: It’s a couple of reasons. One, we wanted to tell a story that took place from about 10 days into the pandemic, all the way up to the election. It felt like an organic arc for these first episodes. And knowing that, we knew we would have to deal with an enormous amount of stuff [that] happens in there and some giant cultural moments. We wanted to be clear to the audience where we were, so that, for instance, if you were to just watch the first episode today [as they were in the beginning stages of the stay at home order], it would seem out of touch and weird. And then also [the show would] grow with the audience…there is a line about how much worse can it get? It has a foreboding element of what the cast is about to go through.

Watching them being a little behind where we are also allows for some distance for some topics that are hard to talk about in the moment, without a little perspective, without a little time, without being able to figure out what is the right way to talk about what’s going on in the world at that moment.

Brendan Gall: Television is often trying to exist outside of the calendar week or month or a year; it’s trying to be every time. And this show is so antithetical to that there’s no denying this happening in the year 2020. All of the events of 2020 are such a rare opportunity for a television show where you can feel that specificity that everyone’s going through together.

At some point does the show veer into an alternate timeline, as you’re filming ahead of what actually has occurred?
Gero: The good news is we’re always a little behind the real world, so it gives us time to adjust and make sure that we’re reflecting those those particular moments and react. We are prepping an episode now that is about the election, or the day of the election, that we will shoot before the election, but we’ve done it in such a way where it is not incredibly reliant on of-the-moment, last minute October surprise. It is a show more about how everyone is feeling. We tried to be clever where we can about the shows that will air after the date that we made them.

Gall: There’s wiggle room. The weird thing is that it’s been such a crazy year that as things happen, they feel like, well, this is the biggest thing. And then like three days later you’re like, oh that’s [nothing in comparison]. As things move and shift, you can’t grab everything. But, also, there’s, there is room to react to all of these things that are happening [currently].

Certainly the show couldn’t be cast in any sort of traditional fashion. How did you approach that, especially when making sure the ensemble had chemistry was so key to the show working?
Gall: We still did chemistry reads, but they were via Zoom. We still had to see how the cast would talk and interact with each other. The obvious differences were that people weren’t existing in three-dimensional physical space with each other. Nor have we yet really. So it’s been interesting to see.

I think the cast inherently understood that they were operating at a deficit in terms of being able to create that chemistry, so what they did, intuitively, as a group, is they got super tight, super quick. They created their own text chat, and they talk to each other all the time. And also the level of support, while we’re shooting, in terms of being there for each other in performance moments for an actor is remarkable. Ironically, I think this is probably the tightest cast I’ve ever witnessed, and none of them have existed in the same space together.

Gero: Yeah, and what they’re doing is so hard, because obviously they have to do a number of crew positions, as well. They have to step up their cameras and light, and do their own hair and makeup. They’re all going through something so difficult and they’re all acutely aware of how hard what they’re doing is, because they are all doing it. So the support for each other [is there]…we had to reshoot part of the pilot because there was a technical error. It was a big moment for one of the characters, and we were like, well, we’ll have to just shoot just them. But the entire rest of the cast was like, “We need to get on Zoom, we need to be there. Even though we won’t be recorded, just so they have something [to work with].” They wanted to be together and united.

It’s been really incredible. The chemistry in this particular group of actors is so phenomenal to watch. It’s crazy that we’ve only done the small amount of episodes that we have. It feels like they’ve been friends forever, which is what the show needed to happen.

Since you had to utilize the space each performer was in, how much were you also casting their location and what you would be able to work with? Or how much did you end up altering things to adapt what they were able to do?
Gall: We certainly didn’t reject any actor that we loved because of their space. For us, the actor was the important thing. Obviously, we had to take into account where they were. But because the show moved so quick from the writing to shooting, we’ve been able to adjust to what we have. In a lot of cases, it was what does this actor have that could inform their character? In some cases, we got better than we could have ever imagined. One of the characters has a garage that turns into this weird kind of strange bunker-y, cavern-y [area], and it’s the most dynamic, interesting, unexpected space that we could have never expected to create. And then we have an amazing set designer, who works with the actors to figure out what they have already, and then she supplements [what is needed]. She sends things to them, and filled out the frame to make sure that they were camera-ready.

On that note, the actors really had to take on so much more as they set things up themselves, etc. How did you approach prepping them for things they may not have ever had to handle on sets before?
Gall: We put together these sort of filmmaker kits. We realized with our department heads, it was like putting together these little space kits and sending them out into space: What are they going to need because we can’t be there to help them? So you have to anticipate anything they are going to need. The obvious, like the iPhone, which we are shooting on, lighting and grip equipment, and set decoration. So when we’re talking to them through Zoom, they have all of the things they need and can be walked through by the heads of departments what they need to do.

There was a little bit of training, but honestly, it’s really been learning as we go. And the learning curve has been steep, but it’s also been amazing to watch the actors rise to it. It is a difficult process, which is full of little speed bumps, but it’s been amazing to see all of the actors’ skillsets expand to take in these aspects of filmmaking that they never had to think about before, and now they’re becoming very competent assistants in all of these other fields.

It’s pretty rare air for television characters to simply talk for extended amounts of time, because in traditional network television, there are scene and location changes, etc. How did being relatively confined to these spaces impact the way things were scripted?
Gero: It’s kind of a return to the television [from the earlier era]…like I love single-room sitcoms. I just think they were my favorite growing up. I started rewatching CHEERS, right around when we did this, which is why there’s a CHEERS shout out in that first episode. But that’s a show where the whole episode is basically a scene: they’re there at the bar and they talk about a thing. And that’s what we wanted the show to be. We wanted it to be conversational. There’s so much going on in the world right now that just needs some sorting with our brain, and some processing. And that’s not on television, which is crazy. There’s definitely like some amazing political commentary, but that’s just kind of like diatribe that you can choose a side on.

The ability to just sit and talk and process things, it just felt like we’re not [seeing that]. The pilot episode is a simple thing. It’s incredible to have friends just talk. And obviously, it’s got to be funny, and it’s got to be propulsive, and there’s got to be twists and turns in the conversation. But it really feels like a return to the old-school sitcom in a way that is so exciting for Brendan and I.

2020 has had an active and often tragedy-filled news cycle. Given the show is a comedy, what was the approach you took to find the right balance to tackling the biggest moments of the year?
Gall: The biggest mistake you could have made in 2020 was ignoring the trauma and tragedy aspect of the year. That would have been the most distasteful thing we could possibly have done. We have no interest in it. Historically, Martin and I have always been very comfortable having comedy and drama live very, very close to one another and inform each other. And that’s been my experience of the world: when people are dealing with adversity, they respond with levity as a survival mechanism. That’s what I think a lot of people are doing in order to process and survive these moments, individually and collectively—we’re coming together and finding things to laugh about, because you can’t just cry all the time. But sometimes you do need to cry. And so we wanted to deal with all of it. We didn’t want to be afraid of any of it. And we wanted it to be a place where we can talk and process all that together, the good and the bad.

Gero: And I think it’s about earning it. Earn those sadder moments. I think it’s about finding a right balance. We have a tremendous staff of writers. And we all kind of kept ourselves in check. If there was a length of time in the show that was too down, we would talk about it; if there was a length of time it was too funny or light, we’d talk about it. There’s so many people who work on a TV show, too. What’s been incredible about this is the departmental division that usually happens on a TV show doesn’t exist here. Everyone was kind of weighing in on how best to do this: the actors are having the same conversations their characters are, in many ways, with each other and with their friends. So they’ve added a tremendous amount to it. Even the crew, we’re dealing with everyone’s lives right now. My favorite thing about TV is what a collective it is, and this is the purest expression of that for us in our career.

CONNECTING, Series Premiere, Thursday, October 8, 8/7c, NBC

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