Bill Lawrence: How I Turned a Slump Into a TV Hot Streak
The ‘Rooster’ creator on his optimism era — even about Paramount-Warners — plus a scoop on Netflix’s MLB Opening Day lineup
I wrote about Jeff Shell’s absence from the public eye amid his legal troubles, raised 10 burning questions about Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery and mapped out the org chart from hell that would result. Email me at lesley.goldberg@theankler.com
Happy almost-baseball season! Before we get to today’s in-depth interview with Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence, hot off the launches of Steve Carell’s Rooster and the long-awaited Scrubs return, I’ve got a scoop. Ahead of Major League Baseball’s first Netflix Opening Day, the streaming giant has enlisted a roster of on-air heavy hitters:
Future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols and retired Yankees/Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo will serve as desk analysts alongside Yankees Hall of Famer CC Sabathia and former Giants favorite Hunter Pence, booth analysts for the March 25 matchup between the Yankees and Giants.
Play-by-play coverage will be handled by MLB Network’s Matt Vasgersian.
Former SportsCenter Emmy winner Elle Duncan, now with Netflix Sports, will serve as desk host for the coverage that begins at 4 p.m. PT.
MLB Network’s Lauren Shehadi will serve as on-field reporter for the coverage, which will also feature special guest Bert Kreischer (Netflix’s Free Bert).
MLB’s all-time home run king, Barry Bonds, was being eyed for a central role in Netflix’s coverage, but the lengthy negotiations failed to result in a deal, and the slugger is not expected to be part of the broadcasting team at this time.
Now on to today’s main event…
Before Ted Lasso turned Bill Lawrence into one of television’s hottest showrunners, the veteran writer behind Spin City and Scrubs experienced a “crisis of confidence” where he lost sight of what his voice was. After his ABC-turned-TBS comedy Cougar Town ended its run in 2015, he was able to get shows on the air during Peak TV — Surviving Jack, Undateable, Rush Hour, Life Sentence and Whiskey Cavalier — but only one of them made it to a second season. After Whiskey Cavalier — the ABC action-comedy premiered in the prime post-Oscars time slot — failed to work, Lawrence made a conscious decision to focus on kindness and optimism in his writing.
“I decided to embrace who I am and what I like to write,” Lawrence, 57, tells me during a wide-ranging interview from New York, on a visit to his son at NYU. “And if it works, great. And if it doesn’t, I’ve had a super cool run.”
What has come after Whiskey Cavalier and his disastrous string of one-and-dones is the kind of magic that only happens in Hollywood. After pursuing Jason Sudeikis for a separate project, Lawrence found himself enamored with the SNL grad’s vision for revisiting the Ted Lasso character he’d created for NBC sports interstitials. The sunny-side-up show that famously landed at Apple after being passed over everywhere else around town has won more than 20 Emmys since its 2020 launch.
While in London working on Ted Lasso, Lawrence caught lightning in a bottle again when he re-teamed with that show’s writer/star Brett Goldstein to create Apple’s Shrinking, starring and co-created by Jason Segel and with Harrison Ford in a role the legendary actor has said could be a “sufficient” end to his career.
After renegotiating a rich new nine-figure overall deal with Warner Bros. Television, Lawrence now has five shows in various stages of production: the recently confirmed fourth season of Ted Lasso, season two of the Carl Hiaasen-Vince Vaughn black comedy Bad Monkey and the third season of Shrinking, all for Apple; plus there’s HBO’s Carell vehicle Rooster and ABC’s long-gestating Scrubs revival (which launched last week to promising viewership). Soon to be joining that roster is Netflix’s I Suck at Girls, which sees Lawrence re-teaming with old friends Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacher, the Abbott Elementary showrunners he previously worked with on Cougar Town and Surviving Jack. Also in the works is Amazon dramedy Skinny Dip, starring Amanda Seyfried, an expansion beyond Lawrence’s “guy with feelings” brand as he adapts his second Hiaasen title.
All this unfolds as WBTV, his home since 2011, is set to be acquired by Paramount, along with all of Warner Bros. Discovery.
I’ll tell you his thoughts about that and more. In my conversation:
The key change he made in his writing to turn around a long losing streak
His strong feelings about keeping production in L.A.
The call he received from Channing Dungey after news of Paramount-Warner Bros. was announced and his thoughts about what’s coming
The secret for hiring co-creators to manage and expand his vision through multiple series
His answer to the knock that he doesn’t write women well (and what his wife, Christa Miller, who stars in two of his shows, has to say about it)
The list of people he’ll call if he is ever “un-hireable”
What he learned from creating shows for networks and streamers that didn’t own them — until Rooster
His red line when it comes to creative control of his shows and teams