Cougar Talk: 2 dozen thing you didn't know about Cougar Town

Cougar Town, the adult family comedy starring Courtney Cox that has become a breakout hit on ABC Wednesday nights, was honored Friday, March 5 at PaleyFest, the annual festival honoring the best of television.

Cast and creators gathered for a panel discussion about the show, sharing tidbits about behind the scenes happenings. Here are some of the things they revealed:

1. Series creator Bill Lawrence (who also created Scrubs) calls the show a “raunchy family comedy.” The show gets away with adult themes even though it’s on broadcast TV. But no matter how raunchy the show gets, it’s still a family comedy at heart.

2. Lawrence, who just turned 41, found many friends dealing with issues around turning 40 and realized this was fodder for a comedy.

3. Lawrence and co-creator Kevin Biegel worried about finding an actress willing to portray a 40-something character dealing with such 40-something issues since actors are so sensitive about their age. They nervously approached Courtney Cox about starring as Jules. She’d worked with Lawrence before and trusted him, so she agreed without hesitation.

4. Lawrence calls Cox’s willingness to bare it all emotionally in that central role of Jules as the reason the show works.

5. Cox says being 40-something is fantastic. She says she’s having fun and now has “the confidence I wish I had at 30.

6. Crista Miller, who plays bitchy next door neighbor Ellie Torres, is married in real life to series creator Lawrence (both pictured right). She picks the songs that usually close out episodes, just as she did with Scrubs.

7. Cox and Miller have developed an off-screen relationship remarkably almost identical to the Jules and Ellie relationship that plays out on screen. The cast jokes that the biggest difference between the actors and their characters is the Cox is nicer in real life, while Miller is meaner in real life.

8. While Ian Gomez plays a henpecked husband and Miller plays the bitchy wife, producers credit them with bringing a real sense of love to the relationship which takes it beyond standard clichés for such couples.

9. The character of Grayson (played by Josh Hopkins) was purposely written as an outsider who was brought into the group by the sheer force of Jules’ will.

10. Hopkins was standing outside his trailer one day playing his guitar. Lawrence came by on a golf cart, stopped and said, “You know that’s going to be on the show next week” and drove off. The next week’s script had Grayson playing guitar.

11. Brian Van Holt is usually cast a bad guys in dramas, but always wanted to do comedy. He auditioned for the role of Grayson but was awful. He persuaded producers to let him audition for the role of Jules’ ex-husband, Bobby, the role he really wanted. Half a page into the audition, they knew he was right for Bobby.

12. Lawrence thought the idea of having Bobby live on a land boat would be a great joke. Once the show premiered, relatives in Florida started sending him photos of people living in land boats.

13. Lawrence credits actor Dan Byrd with making the role of Jules’s 18-year-old son Travis a success because he never plays Travis as a victim.

14. Biegel says they’re blessed to be able to do a show where the characters talk like people talk in real life. He believes that’s an advantage of being in the 9:30 time slot.

15. ABC’s broadcast standards department polices the show heavily because of the sexual frankness and language on the show.

16. Josh Hopkins (pictured right) calls working with Cox like working with a “comedy ninja.”

17. The show has more women than men on their writing staff; the only network comedy to do so.

18. On the amount of red wine that Jules consumes each episode, Cox says “I think Jules is one of the most functioning alcoholics”

19. By the end of the season, things get “naughty and fun” for Jules and Grayson.

20. Singer Sheryl Crowe will guest star before the end of the season.

21. Courtney Cox will direct an episode next season.

22. Producers praise actress Carolyn Hennesy’s portrayal of recurring character Barb. They call her a “comedic force” who has the job of delivering body-blow type lines then getting out. Cox spotted Hennesy in a play and insisted she had to be Barb.

23. “Great actors take ownership of their characters immediately,” says Lawrence adding that they bring their own sense of humor into a role. Writers often shift the characters to reflect the actor’s sense of humor since that will make jokes work better. “A great actor can make a C+ joke into an A+ joke.”

24. When asked who Cox is more like in real life -- Jules or Monica (her character on Friends), Cox says she relates more to Jules than she ever did to Monica. Lawrence says Cox has the OCD of Monica but the edginess of Jules.

Photos by Kevin Parry, The Paley Center for Media

To learn more about the PaleyFest 2010, visit their website.