Archive

Elisha Cuthbert on Lizzy’s quirks and the Season 1 finale of “One Big Happy”

On One Big Happy‘s Season 1 finale tomorrow night, viewers will find out if Luke will return to officially marry Prudence, and how his gay best friend/baby mama to be will help put the happy couple back together. In the NBC sitcom’s six episode season, we’ve only just begun to get to know the characters and their quirks, and Elisha Cuthbert has made every moment of lesbian character Lizzy’s screentime worth tuning in for. Her comedic timing and camaraderie with co-stars Nick Zano and Kelly Brook has us hoping NBC will pick the show up for a second season, which we will find out about at the upfronts in May.

“We’ve got nothing but really great responses in a short period of time which is fantastic, and I think the ratings, too, kind of reflect that as well which is all you can really ask for,” Elisha said on a conference call last Friday. “So I feel like I’ve been getting all good stuff all around, which doesn’t always happen so I’ll take it.”

Ratings for One Big Happy have been pretty steady, with tiny dips and resurgences in the six weeks it’s been on air. There’s so much story left to tell, and Elisha said she is hopeful they’ll have the opportunity to get deeper into the humor of Lizzy’s pregnancy.

“I don’t think we want to rush that. If we got a full second season it would-you know I don’t think the baby would come until at least the very end. I think there’s going to be some really funny stuff in her being uncomfortable and having the big belly and you know Luke and Prudence sort of catering to her,” she said.

Elisha said she hoped for more scenes like one she spent in the doctor’s office when her nurse turns out to be the woman she went on a date with the night before.

“You know getting on the scale and improvising that sort of sound effect when I’m bringing back the weight because she’s embarrassed by how heavy she’s gotten,” Elisha said. “I was almost embarrassed because I thought this was too much and people love it, you know. So I thought, gosh, as embarrassed as I was about the choice I made there, people-they liked it you know so I was like ‘Okay, this is good we’re going somewhere.”

Elisha said she’s had a lot of fun filming the multi-cam show, and was somewhat self-conscious about going too “big” in some scenes, but has been happy to see how well they translated on TV.

“I realized that as big as I thought I was doing-like, you know, as far as like feeling like I was playing it too broad- watching it back, I realized there’s room for more, which is insane to me. I mean I was to the point like I don’t think I can play this any bigger, but it seems to work you know which is fascinating in the grand scheme of things. So it felt right and it looks right to me,” Elisha said.

There are also parts of Lizzy that Elisha hopes viewers pick up on as character traits.

“You know like when she’s around beautiful women she gets a little uncomfortable and stutters and can’t form a sentence,” she said. “And I think you know that works in it played to me anyways, so I mean going forward if we get to keep doing it I think we keep those little things, you know? We keep the fun things that work and you get rid of things that just don’t stick, but those are things that the actor knows and you know the writers see and play to those qualities and those traits. It’s fun-that’s all the fun stuff right, like developing the character and forming her into a real sort of person with real sort of nuances and things. That’s the fun stuff.”

But one thing Elisha didn’t want to do with Lizzy was to make her too high-strung.

“I also wanted to bring a kind of quirkiness to her too because sometimes type A characters are written so uptight that they’re not loose enough to have fun almost like-I think of it like Charlotte from Sex and the City,” she said. “I just-I didn’t want to go down that path with the character and Liz didn’t either. So she’s got a little bit of that Type A which makes sense, but at the same time she also is a big goofy which lends itself to us having a lot more fun with playing with the character.”

One question viewers have had about Lizzy throughout the season was if she had a job, which Elisha explains.

“She did have a job at the start in the pilot, and I think that it ended up getting not specified or got taken out of the dialogue in some form that would be more Liz [Feldman],” she said. “But I think she was involved in working in not publicity but possibly marketing in some way because everyone was wondering how does Lizzy have this house and afford an amazing house in Silver Lake, so she’s obviously got a good job which I don’t know if we’ve specified what it is yet.”

Elisha said she enjoys hearing from people who have the same kind of modern family as she’s part of One Big Happy.

“The best that I’ve heard is that I had actually just spoken to a writer in New Zealand who had said that he has a really good friend who has the same family situation as Luke and Lizzy and Prudence. And just the feedback in which the people are not too shocked or you know fascinated with the idea more so that people are relating to our family dynamic and this style of show and this group of people,” she said. “So for me you know there was always that, ‘Oh, it might be shocking,’ which seems crazy to us but obviously was on people’s radar and then for us to have the show come out and it really not be anything sort of out of the norm and people really responding to and, if not more so, relating to it was amazing.”

So what can we expect for tomorrow night’s season finale? Elisha gives us a few tidbits.

“Well it’s definitely a continuation of last week’s episode when Martin came to town so you’re really going to get to sort of see where that episode takes Kelly and Nick’s characters more primarily,” she said, “but I think we put in a nice button on it for the season. I think the audiences will be really satisfied where we leave them off, but I think there will be also that thing where there will be more places to go with it. It’s a really nice season finale episode.”

On the next page, spoilery pics for the season finale!

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button