Hollywood’s unprecedented shutdown due to the coronavirus has pressured the networks to deliver product in makeshift locations.
Talk show hosts have experimented doing their gigs with laptops, while news anchors have broadcast from their basements, family rooms and libraries. “Walking Dead” star Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays the ominous Negan on the AMC zombie apocalypse drama, went into his garage and built a studio that looks like his living room.
The premiere episode of his series, “Friday Nights In With the Morgans,” debuts Friday (10 p.m.) on AMC.
Morgan, 53, and his wife, “One Tree Hill” actress Hilarie Burton Morgan, 37, will host the freewheeling chat show from their Dutchess County, NY, farm, nicknamed Mischief Farm from the mysterious headstones for — it is believed — long-dead cats Mischief I and Mischief II on the property.
Morgan was listening to Howard Stern after dropping off some masks Burton made at a local hospital when he had the idea for a show that gathered his friends in the agricultural community, to see how they were handling their lives during the pandemic. He was partly inspired by the “Talking Dead” spinoff and sent a rough outline to AMC president Sarah Burnett. “It was green-lit that day,” says Morgan, for a four-episode pickup.
“We love Jeffrey and Hilarie — and we were really drawn to the idea of this raw and real glimpse into their life on the farm that isn’t the ‘polished celeb’ approach, but something much more messy and practical, where they talk to friends who may be famous and friends who may be local doctors on the front lines right now,” says Sarah Barnett, president of AMC Networks Entertainment Group.
AMC sent a camera, a tripod and a few lights to Morgan, and he invited friends such as his “Walking Dead” co-star Christian Serratos, “Supernatural” star Jensen Ackles and his wife Danneel Ackles, who was also on “One Tree Hill,” to come on the show. The only non-performer on the debut episode is the Morgans’ personal physician, Dr. Sharagim Kemp. “She led the way in telemedicine in New York State, so she’ll be talking about that,” Burton says.
The network was very hands-off when it came to guidelines, Morgan says. “I don’t do well with [guidelines] and I think AMC knew that,” he says. “The way to get me to follow is to tell me to do whatever I want — and then I panic.”
“It was important to us that wasn’t a bunch of actors talking about themselves,” says Burton. “That would feel really shallow. We wanted to talk to friends of ours who are being pro-active, who are getting involved within communities or working with front-line health-care workers. And people who are just overwhelmed.”
For the premiere, Morgan filmed 70 minutes of conversation and shipped the footage to LA, where “Talking Dead” executive producer Brandon Monk and co-executive producer Steve Markowitz worked on the episode. Morgan named John Krasinski, whose Sunday-night YouTube series “Some Good News” has proved popular, as an inspiration. “I love what he’s doing. I’ve written to him a couple of times on Twitter,” Morgan says.
Another inspiration is Kelly Clarkson, who has been filming portions of her daily talk show at her ranch in Montana, with occasional songs recorded a capella in the bathroom. “I would love to do an episode, a day in the life of Mischief Farm,’ and get cameras outside our studio,” Morgan says.
For her part, Barnett says, “To see this show come to life so soon after saying, ‘Let’s do it’ is strange and brilliant.”