CBS sitcom finds over-eaters need romance too, premieres on September 20th at 9:30 PT **** 4 Stars

By Gabrielle Pantera

Mike & Molly, new CBS finds romance trying to lose weight

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 9/20/2010 – “This is a love story,” says Mike & Molly star Billy Gardell. Mike & Molly is about a working class Chicago couple who fall in love at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.

“We’re fat…the show’s funny,” says Gardell. “The great thing about this love story is, this is a show people can look at and go, you know what? I’m like that…or, I look better than that…instead of looking at the show and going, God, I’m never gonna look like that. You know, everybody else on TV is 82 pounds, so they’re going to notice a couple big people.”

Mike & Molly is a new Chuck Lorre sitcom premiering on CBS tonight. Billy Gardell is Mike, a Chicago cop who joins other over-eaters in a weekly 12-step program meeting. Melissa McCarthy, Snookie from The Gilmore Girls, is Molly, a teacher who lives with her annoyingly slender mother and sister. Molly knows who she is, but want’s to improve herself. McCarthy is a great choice to play Molly because she always comes across as real. Besides the Gilmore Girls, she was Dena in Samantha Who?

Chuck Lorre is simultaneously executive producing three series. “Three writers rooms are going all the time,” says Mike & Mollyexecutive producer Chuck Lorre. “I’m working on a first draft with 2 1/2 Men for half the day then I go downstairs and work withThe Big Bang Theory writers. Mike & Molly started production a little later so I was catching up with Mark on the drafts of Mike & Molly.”

In Mark & Molly, Gardell’s partner and friend is Officer Carl played by Gardell’s real life friend Reno Wilson. “He called me, four months before,” says Gardell. “He had read the script. He said, this is us! This is us! I said, I’m packing up in Cincinnati. I’m talk to you when I get back. I got wind of the script, and said I’ve got to get in on it. My agent set up the audition. And here we are tonight.”

Gardell was in Cincinnati because he was on the road as a stand-up comic. “Man, I’ve been a road comic for twenty years. I’m not in a Holiday Inn this weekend…I’m excited. When it’s show night and you hear that audience laughter and you know it’s not canned laughter, it’s insane gratification. It’s awesome. They’re a little more forgiving in the TV studio. You get a chance to do it again, which you don’t get in stand-up. Stand-up is a level playing field. There’s no, hey, let’s do it again. Or, you’re beautiful, so we’ll cut you a break. It’s a live audience on Friday. You suck or you don’t suck. That’s what attracted me to stand-up. There’s no pretending.” Gardell says his hero in movies and television is Jackie Gleason, that Gleason was a band leader who showed the big guy could be cool.

Mike & Molly is a comedy with wit and heart. The characters are likable and there’s no mean-spiritedness in the humor. Like The Honeymooners or Everybody Loves Raymond, it’s a show about family and how it can drive you nuts.

“Good network comedies are fundamentally family shows, “ says Chuck Lorre. “Shows like Taxi…they were a family. The Cheersgang operated as a family. They supported each other. They knocked each other down. They were inseparable in some ways. They made each other miserable. They functioned in all those ways that we experience as family.”

“It has a lot of layers and intricacies to it, both in Molly’s family, and there’s a family relationship in a way between Carl and Mike, and we’re going to develop it as well for Nyambi  to become part of that group of guys looking for some sort of companionship, some sort of life together.”

Nyambi Nyambi plays the role of Samual, a waiter at the diner the cops frequent. “Mike and Carl come into my diner as regulars,” says Mike & Molly star Nyambi Nyambi. “We become friends. I get to see Mike’s eating habits. It fluctuates. Either he’s ordering one single wiener or he’s ordering three subs, all because he’s not sure about who he is.”

Shortly before Nyambi Nyambi was cast on Mike & Molly, he won a Leonore Annenberg Arts Fellowship. He says the grant will enable him to work with his play, that he’s a new playwright, and that he’d also like to film a mockumentary. Although his name is Nigerian, Nyambi was born in Oklahoma. (Nyambi Nyambi means the same thing in Nigeria as Nyambi Jr. in America.) Although raised in America, Nyambi’s extended family lives in Nigeria. Nyambi says Nigeria has its own film industry called Nollywood. However, his experience is as a stage actor in America.

“I just finished doing Shakespeare in the Park in New York with Al Pacino,” says Nyambi. “We’re doing Merchant of Venice. I had a great time playing the Prince of Morocco, getting laughs. The show is going to Broadway, but I can’t do it because I’m working. Mike & Molly is my first series. I’m excited to do a sitcom.”

Mike & Molly premieres on September 20th at 9:30 PT on CBS.

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/mike_and_molly/