‘Newlyweds’ Jamie Lee Curtis On Why She “Begged” Her Agents To Find Her A Sitcom & Why Multi-Cam Comedies Are Primed For Comeback — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Jamie Lee Curtis co-created "Newlyweds" with writer and executive producer Gail Lerner during the pandemic, with NBC greenlighting the project in November 2025 after Lerner said it had been "hibernating" for years.
- Curtis said she has begged her agents every year for sitcom work since her 1988 ABC series "Anything But Love" (which ran four seasons with Richard Lewis), calling sitcoms her "favorite job I've ever had" at age 68.
- Curtis said she "hates" single-camera comedy because "nobody laughs" and crews stay silent, though she praised "New Girl" and "The Bear" as great shows; her new show is multi-camera, the format she prefers.
- "Newlyweds" stars Téa Leoni as a free-spirited woman and Tim Daly as a buttoned-up professor who marry impetuously after a whirlwind courtship, with Curtis playing the professor's ex-wife — "a bitch," in her own words.
- Leoni confessed she used to get sick before scenes on her 1990s sitcoms "Flying Blind" and "Naked Truth," while Daly pushed back on the idea that sitcoms are old-fashioned, citing young fans still discovering his classic show "Wings."
- Curtis positioned the show as "must-see free TV" for cash-strapped viewers and predicted NBC's multi-camera strategy — anchored on Fridays by Reba McEntire's "Happy's Place" — could expand to Thursdays, calling the network "geniuses of bringing back the thing that real people really want."
Why it matters: NBC is making a deliberate bet that free, broadcast multi-camera sitcoms can reclaim prime time, using Curtis's "Newlyweds" as a companion piece to the breakout Reba McEntire hit "Happy's Place" on Friday nights. Curtis, an Oscar winner with no sitcom series credit since 1992, is staking her producing credibility on the format's comeback — a notable reversal given that multi-camera comedy has been in retreat across broadcast for over a decade.
Ask SkimNews
