On April 25, 2019, Jamie Lee Curtis had a chance encounter with a limo driver that would ultimately become a new NBC sitcom called Newlyweds. (Because that’s what happens when you’re an Oscar- and Emmy-winning actor.) For Curtis, she was most struck by the possibility of love flourishing at any age.
“The driver was talking about the fact that he had recently been divorced,” Curtis told Newsweek’s The Parting Shot podcast. “I was like, 'Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, no kids, right?' He said, 'No.' I said, 'Well, that's the blessing.' And then he said, 'But my new wife...' And the minute he said that, I was in the back seat of the car, and I went, 'My new wife, that's a sitcom about people in their 60s and 70s who hook up, get married on a whim like me and Chris [Guest, Curtis’ husband of 42 years] and what happens after it.' I could see it in my mind right in that, and that's when the show was born.”
Newlyweds stars real-life spouses Téa Leoni and Tim Daly as Jeanie and James, two 60+ singles who impulsively get married after just meeting. On Newlyweds, because of their ages, the new marriage comes with a set of kids from another marriage and an ex-wife, Claudia (played by Curtis), who never seems to go away.
"Our hope is that we can bring back this feeling of this kind of wonderful experience of love and people of a certain age who are willing to stay curious and stay open and take a leap into something that they have no idea how it's going to [go] in the figuring out of how to do that," Daly said.
Andrew Eccles/NBC
Why 60+ Is the New 18-49
While this would be a funny idea for a sitcom in any era, there’s a reason why this idea is actually genius in this era. It used to be that the coveted age bracket for advertisers on TV was 18-49, but not so much anymore. With millennials and younger generations abandoning network TV for streaming, that age bracket has gotten older and older. According to Nielsen, 65-year-old Americans now make up the median age of primetime TV viewers.
And what Newlyweds does is show older Americans living full lives and yes, being sexual.
“I think you have to see something to mirror it," Curtis said. "You turn on your TV on a Friday night at 8:30 and you see two people in their 60s and 70s who are doing it, who are involved, who are in love and you're seeing it literally come alive on your screen. I think that's aspirational. I think it makes everybody, if you're in a relationship, it'll make you look at each other a little different. I think it's a very hopeful message for people.”
Still, the cast believes the premise resonates far beyond their own demographic. "The thing we keep saying is that it's not just for, you know, the alter kocker [Yiddish slang for old geezer], because we're hoping that young people can take something away from it as well, because so many young people now are so afraid of making mistakes," Daly said.
"Yes, because if they do, it goes viral," Leoni added.
"We've been saying, put down your phone and brush your teeth and go out there and meet some people, be face-to-face with other human beings and experience the miracle of this life, that we are existing, that we all know is short," Daly continued.
"Well, it's shorter for us,” Curtis joked. “But also, I think that's the other part. It already happened with Poppy [Leoni’s character’s daughter, played by Emma Meisel] on the show where she's the one going, 'Wait, you married a stranger?' Like it's anathema to her that that would happen. And yet, as you're saying, that example for young people to see that, in fact, yeah, and this is what happens from it, I think is a fun result.”
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‘You Don't Have to Pay for It’
For Curtis, beyond just discovering a great idea, she also wants to tap into something that’s rare today: the accessibility of the sitcom. In an industry where executives constantly refer to art as "content" (a term Curtis jokes the cast treats like "a C word"), she views traditional network comedy as a vital communal experience.
"First of all, I love sitcoms. I love them as an art form. I love them as a delivery system of ideas, and they're always family-oriented or grouped people-oriented," Curtis said. "And you don't have to pay for it. It comes into your house because you turn the button on. And that's it. Once we enter your house, we get to then bring that kind of joy and love and possibility into your home.”
Daly felt similarly, seeing nostalgia as a means for communal viewing. "One of the things that we hope that we can bring back is this wonderful sort of family of the sitcom, because the best sitcoms, as we know, are all about families, whether they're biological families or work families," he said. "For most of us, [they] came into our house and we watched them with our families, and it was a really kind of bonding experience. It took the edge off your day, whatever the exigencies of your day were.”
Playing Married While Married
And that accessibility also includes the people involved. Obviously, we as a culture have had a relationship with Curtis for nearly 50 years now, but the same can be said of Daly and Leoni. They’re TV veterans, Daly from Wings and Leoni from The Naked Truth, and the pair even previously played spouses on CBS’ Madam Secretary, where they met. In Newlyweds, them being married in real life while playing a couple obsessed with each other comes through in an infectious way.
When asked how much they resemble their television counterparts, Leoni deadpanned, "Not very much."
Daly, however, is able to see a little of himself and Leoni in Jeanie and James. "I think the thing [is] that we're exactly like the couples that we play, the thing that bonds us is that—this sounds like I'm lying—but we're crazy about each other. We're actually crazy about each other," Daly said. "Despite all this stuff that gets thrown in our way, because life, I mean, the wisest thing that was ever said by any human being was 'sh** happens.' And the thing is that the hallmark of a successful life is how you deal with the stuff that comes your way, right? As we always say, it's not the mess. It's the cleanup. And so, they've sort of made their mess and their beautiful mess, and they're in the process of continually trying to clean it up.”
For Leoni, the characters' whirlwind romance mirrors the unexpected nature of her own relationship with Daly. "When Tim and I got together personally, we were both on the edge of saying, 'Oh, we're done. We've done that, we've had great loves in our lives, and we have children.' And we were both at this moment where, I guess that's done," Leoni recalled. "And the greatest kismet was, well, Tim walked in—and I do actually remember seeing him just from about his knee down to his boot—and I remember thinking, looking up, and it was like, ‘Whoo.’"
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‘Creativity Is a Continuum’
Creating a new show isn’t without bumps. Former Will & Grace writer Gail Lerner shepherded Curtis’ idea into the show it became, serving as showrunner before stating in an Instagram post that she had been fired over "creative differences." For Curtis, she says Lerner’s departure is “obviously upsetting for everyone involved,” but that she’s grateful to Lerner and has always viewed this creative process as a collaborative effort.
"I had this idea for a show. And then Gail took that idea and expanded it and created the world and the characters,” Curtis said. “And now someone else is going to take her ideas and her world and expand it and showrun it. And as far as I'm concerned, creativity is a continuum. It is not binary, it is not rigid and boundaried, it's creative, and sometimes creativity shifts and dodges and opens. It's fluid. I spoke to Gail over the weekend, and we are going to continue establishing this world that she has created and [she] will have forever credit for that creation.”
That fluidity is also how the cast itself came together. "Did we originally conceive that a real-life couple would play the couple? No," Curtis explained. "The conversation started around Téa and her incredible combination [of factors]. I bring up Lucille Ball about her all the time: great beauty, great comedy, this incredible elixir of beauty and comedy. And then lo and behold, she's married to Tim Daly, by the way, just married [in 2025]. So, we didn't originally plan the show to be real-life people. This is how creativity continues. I wasn't supposed to be in the show at all.”
And Curtis has got a point, because the sitcom, a uniquely American art form, has always been a collaborative effort. Unlike in film, the writers are the ones who shape what a sitcom becomes. Newlyweds has a team of writers, not to mention veteran actors of TV who are experts at what they do. This, one could say, is a recipe for success.
"What I hope people take away at the end of the day is the beauty of sitcoms, which is a little laughter, a little aspirational, relatable interplay about coupling or families or marriages or children or exes, and that at the end of the day you feel a little bit touched by it. That it just makes you feel a little safe," Curtis said. "Sitcoms are like comfort food, and if we ever needed that in the world today, it's right now.”