Comedy writer DJ Nash, creator of NBC’s Growing Up Fisher and Truth Be Told, has set up two new projects at the broadcast networks. In a competitive situation, with several nets pursuing, ABC has landed the hourlong dramedy A Million Little Things with a put pilot commitment. Additionally, CBS has bought multi-camera comedy My Other Life In Brooklyn. Both projects are produced by Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment, which was also behind Nash’s single-camera comedy Losing It that went to pilot at ABC last season with Jon Cryer starring. Nash is writing both A Million Little Things and My Other Life In Brooklyn and is executive producing them with Kapital’s Kaplan and Dana Honor, who also exec produced Losing It.
A Million Little Things, whose title stems from the popular adage,”Friendship isn’t a big thing – it’s a million little things,” is described as being in the tone of The Big Chill. It is about a group of friends who, for different reasons and in different ways, are all stuck in their lives, but when one of them dies unexpectedly, it’s just the wake up call the others need to finally start living.
The hourlong drama with comedy elements — about a group of eight friends, four men and four women, in which the one whose life looked most put together commits suicide — is loosely based on personal experience. “It’s an optimistic look at how the loss of a friend is the impetus for the other seven to finally start living, to make a promise to him and to themselves to finally be honest about what’s really going on,” Nash said. “I know in my own life, my friend’s passing is a constant reminder to keep things in perspective.
A Million Little Things marks Nash’s first hourlong project. He came up with it following the half-hour Losing It, which mixed drama into the comedy. “Sometimes in comedy, you have to apologize for adding drama, which is why I was so thrilled to see ABC’s passion for a drama that has comedy,” he said.
My Other Life In Brooklyn, a co-production between Kapital and CBS TV Studios, is about a guy who marries the woman of his dreams, only to get the job of a lifetime 200 miles away. As he moves back in with his single friends, flying home to his wife on the weekends, he discovers that relationship issues are ever-present in his life, regardless of what zip code he happens to be living in.
The project is based on Nash’s experience as a newlywed. At the time, he was a standup comedian living in New York with his new wife who had just taken the New York bar exam. For Nash to pursue a career in comedy writing, they moved to Los Angeles where his wife passed the California bar and found a job at a prestigious law firm. The two settled in, and Nash landed his first staff writing job but it was on a show, Whoopi, which was based in New York. Because they didn’t know how long the series would last, for the next nine months Nash commuted, working in New York and flying back to Los Angeles every weekend.
“For five days a week, I was a celibate bachelor, living with my best friend from college and his roommate, and on the weekends, I flew back to my married life,” he said.
Kapital Entertainment has seven series on the air, four of them on broadcast, CBS’ 9JKL; Me, Myself & I and Life In Pieces and ABC’s American Housewife.
Nash, whose series credits also include Up All Night and Bent, is repped by CAA and attorney David Matlof.
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