Defying its wink-wink acknowledgment that shows about babies never last longer than one season, Raising Hope will be back for another go-round this fall. The clever, heartfelt FOX comedy about a young layabout who finds himself suddenly a single dad has filled the void left by creator Greg Garcia’s dearly departed My Name Is Earl, which also found much comedic gold in the plight of blue-collar (some would say white trash) oddballs. The cast includes newcomer Lucas Neff as Jimmy, with Martha Plimpton and Garret Dillahunt as his daffy parents, and Cloris Leachman stealing every scene she’s in as the senile Maw Maw.
Garcia and Neff spoke with reporters recently about the show’s first season, which resumes tonight with an episode called “Romeo & Romeo.”
Garcia (on casting Lucas Neff, an unknown actor, in the lead role as Jimmy): “I watched Lucas on tape. He was in Chicago, so I watched on the computer. He just felt very real to me. A lot of auditions that you watch, people are pushing it and trying to push real hard to get the comedy and stuff. He just felt very honest and real to me. I wanted this character to be somebody that people were rooting for and kind of the eyes of the audience into this crazier world, somebody that definitely feels very overwhelmed by this new responsibility thrown in his lap. I just got that from his performance. I got that from him as a person that he was a very — it just came through in his performance that he was very honest and likable guy. Then, I met him and realized he was just a really good actor.”
Garcia (on where the character of Jimmy might be headed): We’re still finding different avenues we’re going to go down. We’re going to, even though he has this crush on Sabrina (Shannon Woodward), it looks like it’s a little bit of a going to be a long haul for him. So, we actually are not going to just have him sitting around. We’re going to have him dip his toe into the dating world a little bit and see what we get out of that. Actually, for stories, it’s been fun to actually go down different avenues because we’re not necessarily just going to always do a story about raising a baby. We’re expanding their world and getting them more and more friends. We’ll do stories just about marriage with Martha and Garret.
Neff (on going from being an unknown actor to a lead in a TV series): “This is a time-consuming job in ways that I never understood, having not really experienced television or film before. So … it becomes your life in a lot of ways. … Frequently, I don’t get to see the show on TV because we’re working. Then, I don’t have time to go out into the city or anything like that because we’re working and working, working, working. So, it’s like being in Narnia. You’re in this wonderful, fantasy, pretend world like 80 hours a week. Then, you go home and you just sort sleep. Then, you’re back in pretend land.”
Photo: © 2011 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Greg Gayne/FOX