“So Help Me Todd” made its debut Thursday night on CBS and anyone who saw the episode and thought, “This can’t happen,” well, the show’s jaw-dropping plot is rooted in creator/executive producer Scott Prendergast’s own experiences. . ,
In the premiere episode, Joan (Marcia Gay Harden) enlists the help of her son, Todd (Skylar Astin) – despite being somewhat neurotic in her life – when her husband goes missing, like, without a trace to help her. For.
“It’s very personal to me,” Prendergast, who created the series, told TheWrap. “There was a time in my early 30s when my life was falling apart and I was trying to get into entertainment. I had just turned 30, I guess. … I was doing a variety of things. was.
Prendergast had moved from New York to Portland after his career had not begun. After some son/mom friction, he told his mother that he would be moving to Los Angeles to make “an independent film starring Lisa Kudrow.”
“And my mom was like, ‘You’re an idiot; you need health insurance; you need to get a regular job. And I was like, ‘You don’t believe me!’ And we had this big fight. And then we weren’t talking for a few weeks,” he said, which parallels Todd’s relationship with his mom in the pilot for the CBS show.
Eventually, Prendergast and her mother began speaking again when her mother and her husband were planning a trip to Greece and wanted her to take them to the airport. Although shortly after that request, with her mother calling her to tell her that her husband was missing, things got awkward.
“I swung into action. And I saw that my mother was very upset,” said Prendergast. “So, I spent two weeks playing detectives with my mom, and we were at a stake, and we were in Portland trying to figure out what was going on.”
Prendergast eventually solves the mystery locally, while the show sees Todd finding Harry (“Mad Men’s Mark Moses) as he boarded an international flight to escape the country, living the rest of his days without Joan. For.
The unbelievable story, however, provided Prendergast with the bait to become “So Help Me Toad”. “As this was happening, I just kept thinking ‘this would make such a great TV show,'” he laughed.
“I was like, ‘Basically a mother and son fighting crime. So like if the mother was a lawyer and the son was a private detective,'” he said. “When I first saw ‘The Good Wife,’ I was Bar saw the concept of an in-house investigator. … so, when I pitched the show to CBS, I said, ‘What if we take Alicia and Kalinda, make them mother and son and ‘moonlighting’ them and have a lot of jokes between them and You know, the characters would never be together because they’re mother and son, and it would be like a crime-fighting show with just a mother and son. And that’s what we’re doing.”
Prendergast admitted that her mother is “not thrilled” that her story inspired the show, but she is happy that she is “having success.”
“What really happened was that her husband had gone missing and I stepped in to help him find him. And I really found her and she was so grateful when I found her and solved this mystery of her life. And [at] At the end of it, she was like, ‘I believe in you; You can go to Hollywood and do anything. Like, you should go and follow your dreams, chase your dreams. You are capable, you can do it. Look what you have done for me.’ So, she is happy that I am having success,” the EP explained. “She’s a little conflicted about the fact that our story is going to be the star of a television show on CBS.
“And also, we’ve changed a lot of details. My mother isn’t really a lawyer. I’m not really a private detective. But we did set it in a building in Portland, which is where I grew up. And We are checking things all over Portland,” he continued. “And Portland is a big character on the show. And my mother is getting together with 15 of her friends to watch the premiere. She is worried about this. She’s nervous, but she also knows it’s not her.”
Prendergast said there’s one thing he’s not nervous about, is the woman playing the character he inspired.
“My mom said, ‘Oh, well, Marcia Gay Harden. That’s a great choice. I love her. I love her. I love her. I can’t wait for her to play my part on television. Could,'” Prendergast said. And for the record, Prendergast made a movie with Lisa Kudrow. It’s called “Kabluy” and came out in 2007.)
“So Help Me Todd” airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.