Life UneXpected creator discusses new show

SFUniverse writer Cynthia Boris was present for a recent panel with Life UneXpected creator Liz Tigleaar and shared her notes with New to TV. Life UneXpected is new show coming to The CW in the midseason.

When The CW put the show on its schedule, the series was originally called Parental Discretion Advised. But I guess that didn’t really convey the show, so it was changed.

First, here’s a look at Life UneXpected’s plot. After spending her entire life bouncing from one foster family to another in Portland, Oregon, 15-year-old Lux (Britt Robertson, Swingtown) has decided she wants to be in control of her life and takes steps to become an emancipated minor. Her journey through the legal maze leads Lux to her biological father, 30-something Nate "Baze" Bazile (Kristoffer Polaha, Mad Men), who owns a bar, lives like an aging frat-boy with two slacker roommates, and is astonished to learn that he has a teenage daughter. Lux is equally astonished when Baze reveals that her mother is Cate Cassidy (Shiri Appleby, E.R.), a star on the local morning radio show, along with her on-air partner and real-life boyfriend, Ryan Thomas (Kerr Smith, Eli Stone, Dawson’s Creek). Lux has been listening to Cate’s voice on the radio as long as she can remember, so she feels an instant connection with the mom she’s never met. Baze takes Lux to meet Cate, who is shocked and saddened to learn that Lux has grown up in foster care, but thrilled to finally meet her beautiful daughter. When a judge decides that Lux isn’t ready for emancipation and unexpectedly grants temporary joint custody to Baze and Cate, they agree to try to get past the awkwardness and make a belated attempt to give Lux the family she deserves.

Creator Liz Tigleaar got her start with an internship writing on Dawson Creek, which has made her into the writer she is today.

“I started on Dawson’s so I have a love for the old WB, what they did so well with their shows, shows like Felicity and Everwood, you so longed for something but now it’s about what are the big act breaks and promotable moments and when you do that you do stuff for shock value and you forget like Joey and Pacey, like they started out, they hated each other and it was a long time, people had to hang in and all of a sudden you’re kind of like, I never thought of Joey and Pacey and next thing you know it’s “I love Joey and Pacey.” It was slow played so much, that’s something I feel like we miss as an audience today – getting to not having everything given to us write away,” Tigleaar said. “I’m sure it’s a product of our time, everything is instant and the way we tell stories, you want something before you even knew it existed. I think it is nice to go back and slow down and get the enjoyment out of wanting something.”

Speaking of Dawson’s Creek, the Life UneXpected character Ryan (Kerr Smith) played in 113 episodes of the show as Jack McPhee.

“When he came in to audition, I was like Jack! Why does Jack want to be Ryan? He was amazing. I hadn’t seen him since Dawson’s and I didn’t know him well, so it just turned out to be this thing we have in common and such a nice surprise. He’s so charming,” Tigleaar said.

And the Life UneXpected’s main character Lux has a similar background to the show creator.

“I was briefly in foster care when I was a little baby but I was adopted and in reading a lot about adoption . . .  it’s funny, I wrote this pilot because the story interested me and I didn’t know why and it’s only in the course of going through the process, two years in development, I’ve actually found out who my birth parents were and one thing that came to light when I was meeting with the writers, was just how much of this story was something I kind of been, I don’t want to say struggling with, but certainly has been with me for my whole life,” Tigleaar said. “It’s this ‘where are my young, cool parents’ No matter how great your own family is, my parents are wonderful, but when you’re 16 and fighting with your mom and be like, my real, young, cool, hot mom, totally understands, she wouldn’t have interfered.”

But as Tigleaar learned in real life, if you put people on a pedestal (like romanticizing your birth parents), they don’t always end up being what you dreamed.

“I think the thing about the pilot that I liked exploring was that idea of having someone so high on a pedestal means that they can fall so far. Lux, I didn’t intentionally write it this way, it wasn’t until afterward that I realized, I was like, Lux has listened to Cate her whole life and she has this idea of who Cate is and this belief that she really knows this person. But the reality of Cate is different than the Cate she conjured up in her mind. Not only dealing with being disappointed in somebody, but from Cate’s end, it’s so hard to be disappointing,” Tigleaar said. “It’s harder to be disappointing than it is to be disappointed and that’s what Cate and Baze struggle with.”

The show is set in Portland, though it will be shot in Vancouver.

“We had originally wanted to shoot in Portland but we set it there knowing that if we got picked up we’d be shooting in Vancouver. Portland is an amazing city. But we can make Vancouver look like it, it’s got bridges and rivers…,” Tigleaar said. “We played around with other cities in the Pacific Northwest, we thought about San Francisco but that was a little bit glitzy and we thought about Chicago, but Portland, we felt it was kind of crunchier, grittier about it. The director wanted the show to have a little more of an indie feel. That kind of Juno way. It felt like Portland had a great vibe.”

In the pilot episode, Lux’s birth parents take over her custody. But in the second episode, we find out Lux had other plans.

“She told the judge she was going to live by herself but that wasn’t the case, so we’ll open up the world and meet her 18-year-old boyfriend and her best friend Vanessa who was planning on getting emancipated as well and now Lux has screwed everything up. So now there’s a lot of tension between her foster care friends, like ‘you’re ditching us.’ We had plans. And Lux is torn, ‘how do I tell them that I don’t really want to get out of this,’” Tigleaar explains.

Lux also will go to the same high school where Cate and Baze grew up, which means every time Cate walks into the school, she remembers the past.

And one of the dynamics will be Cate and Baze’s relationship.

“It’s how Cate feels about Baze, that, wanting something you’ve always told yourself you despised in order to protect yourself,” Tigleaar said.

Life UneXpected is produced by Mojo Films in association with CBS Television Studios and Warner Bros. Television with executive producers Liz Tigelaar (Brothers and Sisters, What About Brian) and Gary Fleder (October Road). Gary Fleder directed the pilot.

No exact date has been set for Life UneXpected’s premiere, but the show has received a lot of buzz and has been compared in some ways to Gilmore Girls.