Last month, the news broke that30 RockcreatorsTina FeyandRobert Carlockwould be heading back to NBCwith a brand new half-hour comedy series starringTed Danson. What we didn’t know at the time was that this new seriesactuallybegan its life as a legitimate30 Rockspinoff, withAlec Baldwinreprising his role as Jack Donaghy. That show would have revolved around Jack running for mayor of New York City, butTHRreports that after NBC was in talks with Baldwin for nearly a year, the actor pulled out of the project.
A reason isn’t quite given for why Baldwin backed out, but this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this. He was nearly cast as Thomas Wayne inJokerbefore pulling outa day after it was reported he was joining that Warner Bros. film.
But when Baldwin pulled out of this new yet-to-be-named series, Fey and Carlock still felt the premise was viable and went to Ted Danson to fill the role. The project was retooled to remove all references to30 Rock, which was necessary anyway because the LA-based Danson declined to move to New York to make the show. But it’s not hard to see the Jack Donaghy parallels in the current premise: Danson plays a wealthy businessman who runs for mayor of Los Angeles for all the wrong reasons. Once Danson’s character wins, he has to figure out what he stands for, gain the respect of his staff, and connect with his teenage daughter, all while controlling the coyote population.
That daughter would likely have factored into the30 Rockversion of this show, as Jack had a very young daughter towards the end of that show’s run. And it’s also not hard to see the Trump parallels running heavily throughout this premise, although God knows Fey and Carlock will find a way to make this all hilarious and entertaining and slightly insane.
After30 Rock, Fey and Carlock developed and shot the first season ofUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidtfor NBC, but the network had a change of heard after production had already begun. The episodes sold to Netflix, and we now know that series as a Netflix original, but it began as a standard network sitcom. So Fey and Carlock are no stranger to changes, and indeed once this new series ceased to be a30 Rockspinoff, NBC decided it will air on the unnamed upcoming NBCUniversal streaming service—which will also be the exclusive home ofThe Officeafter that show’s Netflix deal expires.
Danson, meanwhile, is currently finishing up production on the final season of NBC’s critically acclaimed comedy seriesThe Good Place, which returns this fall.
