The pilot for “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” will be shown tonight at the PaleyFest Fall TV previews festival, followed by a panel discussion with star Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna, who co-created the new CW hourlong musical comedy with her.
The event will begin at 6 p.m. at the The Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills with a reception. The pilot of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” will be shown at 7 p.m., followed at 7:30 p.m. by the panel discussion, which will be live streamed on Yahoo Live, where video on demand content will also be offered.
Live streaming on Yahoo can also be accessed on mobile platforms through the Paley App and Yahoo Screen App.
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” is The CW’s lone new fall series. A screening of “Containment,” which is set to premiere at midseason will follow the panel discussion, along with what is billed as “a special preview of “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” also set to premiere at midseason.
Tickets are $15 for center members are $20 for the general public and can be purchased on the center’s website, Paleycenter.org.
Bloom portrays Rebecca Bunch, who declines a junior partnership with her New York City law firm to move to West Covina, the home town of her 2005 summer camp sweetheart Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III), who she had just been reunited with.
Each episode will include two-to-three original song and dance numbers from a variety of musical genres, Bloom and McKenna said at last month’s Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour.
The West Covina setting stems from a desire to do a “fish out of water story,” the lack of previous series about “Inland Southern California — it’s way different than other parts, it’s really fascinating” and because “a guy I used to have a crush on lives in Glendora and I would find excuses to try to go to Glendora all the time,” Bloom told City News Service.
Showtime ordered a half-hour pilot be produced for “Crazy Ex- Girlfriend,” which included obscenities, but declined to order it as a series. Executives at CBS TV Studios, which produced the pilot, reached out to their counterparts at The CW, network President Mark Pedowitz said.
“We saw it and fell in love with them,” Pedowitz said. “We thought we could make it into a broadcast version. They thought they could make it into a broadcast version. We needed it to be an hour comedy. We thought it would be a perfect companion for ‘Jane The Virgin.”‘
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” will premiere Oct. 12, airing Mondays at 8 p.m., preceding the network’s critically acclaimed romantic comedy-drama “Jane The Virgin.”
Pedowitz said he initially thought “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” would not air on The CW until the 2016-17 season, “but the more we thought about it, the more we realized this would be the perfect fit.”
When asked what he liked about “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” Pedowitz responded, “It’s different.”
“It’s a big swing,” Pedowitz said. “It’s fun. It’s blue sky, but dealing with a really tough topic matter, obsessive love. Rachel makes it work because she’s so charming.”
