Let’s Make a Deal host Wayne Brady is set to topline an autobiographical hybrid comedy, which is in development at CBS.
Brady is collaborating on the project with his ex-wife, Mandie Taketa, as well as veteran Will & Grace writer-producers Tracy Poust and Jon Kinnally.
I hear the untitled comedy written and executive produced by the quartet is about a divorced couple who successfully co-parent in a blended multiracial family. CBS Studios is the studio.
In an interview with Access Hollywood, Brady spoke how his personal experience being part of a blended family during the pandemic helped shape the idea for the series.
He said that he has been spending a lot of time with his ex-wife, her boyfriend and their daughter while in quarantine. “It’s been natural for us. We didn’t need a quarantine to do this, we’ve been doing it for Maile’s whole life,” Brady said. “Now we have a sitcom that we are working on with our friends who were the showrunners over at Will & Grace, Tracy and Jon. We’re writing a script about our life as a blended family, we call ourselves the ‘core four.’”
Longtime friends Kinnally and Poust first began to work together in the mid-1990s in New York when they did a live, weekly soap opera show at an East Village club. They started writing some of their own material and soon formed a small comedy sketch group. In 1997, they reunited in Los Angeles, where they worked odd jobs while doing sketch comedy at the Arcade Theater and writing sitcom spec scripts. In 1998, one of their specs found its way to David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, creators/executive producers of then-newly picked-up series Will & Grace. Kinnally and Poust – a gay man and a straight woman in real life, just like the title characters on the NBC sitcom – were offered staff writing jobs and went on to work on Will & Grace for the show’s entire eight-year original run, rising to executive producers/showrunners on the final two seasons. The two also returned for the Will & Grace revival on NBC as executive producers. Kinnally and Poust’s series credits also include 2 Broke Girls and The Crazy Ones.
Brady hosts CBS’ daytime game show Let’s Make a Deal, which will air a primetime special Dec. 22. As an actor, he recently did stints on CBS’ The Bold and the Beautiful and The Neighborhood, the CW’s Black Lightning and ABC’s Mixed-ish.
Source: Deadline
