Jon Cryer returns to the live-audience sitcom format in NBC’s “Extended Family” — eight years after ending his run on “Two and a Half Men.”
“I miss being in front of people — for actors that connection is really rare and working out comedy in front of people is fun and valuable,” Cryer, 58, told The Post.
“You start to feel that you’re losing your touch when you haven’t done it in a while, so when this opportunity came around I just felt like it was something I couldn’t pass up.”
Cryer said he “was not rusty at all” after such a long sitcom-role layoff, but that he felt the effects in other ways.
“I had forgotten how nervous I get,” he said. “All through 12 years of doing ‘Two and a Half Men’ every Friday I would be really nervous for the audience show. It keeps you on your toes, in a way, but it’s also very exhausting.
“I’m trying to get to that place now where I can do [the live taping] without being gripped by paralyzing fear beforehand.”
“Extended Family” premieres Dec. 23 (8:30 p.m.) before moving to Tuesdays at 8:30 starting Jan. 2. It posits Cryer and Abigail Spencer as the amicably divorced Jim and Julia, who work hard to make their split work for them and for their children, Grace (Sofia Capanna) and Jimmy Jr. (Finn Sweeney) — by sharing parental duties in the family’s Boston-area home (they take turns).
They even wrote a “Family Constitution” with articles of parental conduct — and had a “reverse wedding ceremony” to celebrate their uncoupling.
It’s a slippery slope made trickier, since Julia is engaged to Trey Schultz (Donald Faison), who owns the Boston Celtics and spends a lot of time in the house with the kids … and Jim.
The setup was inspired by the real-life family dynamic of executive producers Wyc Grousbeck, Emilia Fazzalari and George Geyer; it was adapted into “Extended Family” by creator/executive producer Mike O’Malley.
“When you meet [Grousbeck et al.], what they’re doing is so weird … but they’ve built a remarkable life all-around in making the kids have something steady and it’s a fascinating friendship they’ve developed,” Cryer said.
“This had a very odd voice I thought was really cool and interesting for a sitcom. And my particular experience kind of mirrored what these guys are going through in the show. My parents are very amicably divorced; I think for a lot of people divorce is painful, but this is a way to see another side of it — and I thought that was a really fresh approach.
“There’s a sort of culture in Boston of relentlessly giving each other crap, so it infuses who these people are,” he said. “The way they relate is really fun and unusual and direct — but indirect at the same time.”
Part of the approach in presenting “Extended Family” is putting it into comedic context by the characters occasionally addressing the camera directly — instead of explaining the situation through expository dialogue.
“The series is really mostly about trying to be a parent nowadays and how some very smart and capable people can screw that up consistently,” Cryer said. “Jim is going to try to date again; Julia and Trey are engaged but not yet married so there are all kinds of things they have to go through as a couple in order to get to the marriage piece of it.
“It’s a narrative of two people trying to retain what love there was from their marriage — in order to make this next period of their lives positive.”
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