A new comedy is debuting this Wednesday night on ABC – “Imaginary Mary”. The series stars Jenna Elfman as Alice. Alice’s childhood imaginary friend Mary (voiced by “SNL” alum Rachel Dratch) re-enters her life to help deal with her new boyfriend and his kids.
In January, I talked with one of the “Imaginary Mary” creators, Patrick Osborne. He’s the Oscar-winning director of the Disney animated short “Feast” (and was nominated again this year for “Pearl”). Osborne shared his thoughts about bringing “Mary” to life:
“It was interesting. I never thought I would be working on a family comedy show on ABC. But it was really cool to come back into the Disney fold a little bit with that show. I met Doug Robinson at Happy Madison one day for lunch – and he’s one of the creators of “The Goldbergs”. He introduced me to Adam Goldberg. I thought it would be cool to do the idea of…make a show with a puppet sometimes and animated sometimes – like some of those whimsical shows I grew-up with in the 80s that had a little bit of magic in them.
And we’re figuring out how to make that on a TV schedule at a very high quality, and I think some of the animation is really, really good – and some of the best stuff that’s been done for network television. And it’s definitely the first time that a character like this has been in a network comedy – weekly, network sitcom, which is pretty impressive. So, I’m finding it a challenge, but interesting. It’s a different world, and it’s a different pace working with the people in television. But it’s been fun.”
The “Imaginary Mary” Pilot episode was directed by Shawn Levy (director – “Night at the Museum”, producer – “Arrival”). It airs this Wednesday, March 29th at 8:30pmET (right after “The Goldbergs”), and then the show moves to Tuesdays starting April 4th at 9:30pmET on ABC.