Brad Garrett, Elizabeth Perkins and Jon Dore panic during a location shoot. (ABC)
About five years ago, veteran showrunner Claudia Lonow was at her parents’ annual Academy Awards party when a distinguished film- industry veteran — who shall remain nameless — accepted a lifetime achievement award. Lonow looked to her mom to express her excitement at the scene, and received a response she did not expect.
“I looked at my mom like, ‘Wow, isn’t this a great moment,’” says Lonow. “And she mouthed to me, ‘I f- – – ed him.’ I’m like, ‘You slept with so and so?’ She goes, ‘Yes. You were asleep in the other room.’”
The ABC sitcom “How To Live With Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life),” which premieres Wednesday at 9:30, is based on Lonow’s experience of moving her and her daughter in with her parents, and all of them living together for the past 16 years. Given her family background, she has enough potential plotlines to keep this show running forever.
Lonow’s mother, JoAnne Astrow, was an actress and stand-up comedian who performed on “The Tonight Show,” and now manages comics Kathleen Madigan and Lewis Black; her stepfather, Mark Lonow, is one of the owners of the Improv comedy club chain. They’re played on the show by Brad Garrett (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) and Elizabeth Perkins (“Weeds”).
The couple lived a very show-bizzy life. Lonow can recall watching people roll huge joints at parties when she was 10 years old — and their friends included the likes of Madeline Kahn, Richard Lewis and Larry David. (Lonow is also connected to entertainment on her birth father’s side, as her half-brother is actor Michael Rapaport.)
Lonow, 50, began her career as an actress, co-starring on “Knots Landing” as Michele Lee’s daughter, and also appearing on cheese-fests like “Fantasy Island” and “The Love Boat.”
“For my ‘Fantasy Island,’ I was like 18, and I had to be seductive toward Paul Williams,” says Lonow. “At one point, Ricardo Montalban talked to me. He spoke in English, and I understood the words he was saying, but I did not understand what he was saying. He’s like, ‘The blue cat is very spacious.’ It didn’t have meaning as a sentence in English. I’m just going, ‘Yeah. I know.’
After years of silly scenes — her “Love Boat” episode involved her delivering a singing telegram to “Happy Days” star Donny Most while wearing a fur bathing suit — she turned to writing and directing, eventually creating, producing and/or writing series including “Rude Awakening” on Showtime, “Good Girls Don’t” on Oxygen, and “Accidentally on Purpose” on CBS.
But the show closest to Lonow’s heart and life lie ahead of her. When her daughter Isabella, now 18, was 2 years old, they moved in with Lonow’s mother and stepfather, and have lived with them ever since.
“I’m a single mom, and even though my parents go out more often than I do and are not typical grandparent types, it gave me a feeling of security for me and my daughter,” she says. “Also, in a tumultuous situation, they were an amusing distraction. My parents are very funny.”
Lonow began shopping the idea for this show about 10 years ago. Given that it’s based on her life, pitching it around Hollywood was often humiliating, as she demonstrates when recalling a pitch meeting with an unnamed network executive.
“I [told the story] and got lots of laughs,” says Lonow. “And she goes, ‘How are we not going to think the lead character is pathetic?’ I said, ‘Well, do you think I’m pathetic?’ ‘Well, you know, Claudia. . . .’ It was embarrassing, like, how do I get out of this meeting?”
As Lonow developed the show, she always pictured the eventual star, “Scrubs” actress Sarah Chalke, as the person to play her, and met with her throughout the pilot’s development.
Chalke, known in the show as Polly, was drawn to Lonow’s depiction of a single mother whose modern, helicopter-mom tendencies are a reaction to her free-spirited grandparents.
“Claudia would always say that between the three of them, they made one responsible parent,” says Chalke. “I liked the idea that this character so desperately wants to be the mother she didn’t have because of the mother she did have, and she has to go get her mother’s help in order to do that.”
While Lonow doubts that her daughter, who’s about to start college, will even watch the show, she says that it’s giving her parents a nice ego boost.
“They like to be the center of attention,” she says. “My step-father pissed me off the other day, and I said to him, ‘If you don’t watch it, I’m gonna get back at you on the show. You better shut up.’ They’re really supportive, because I come from a background of not just show business, but stand-up comedy. So the concept of distilling your life into a show is familiar to the family. My mom did jokes about me from the stage. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to do jokes about her.”
To add an even greater level of eccentricity to the situation, Lonow mentions that her daughter just left for college, meaning that at this point, she’s not even staying for her daughter’s benefit — it’s just her and her folks now. But aside from the family’s closeness, Lonow has another, more strategic reason for staying.
“I’ll probably outlive them, and then I’ll get the place,” she says. “I’m in pretty good health, and they’re getting up there. That’s my plan.”
HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS
Wednesday, 9:30 p.m., ABC