Lake Bell

Upon The Launch Of Her New TV Comedy, Lake Bell Reflects On Being A Boss Lady, Connecting With Nature, And The Importance Of Being Earnest

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL SCHWARTZ WORDS BY ELIZABETH WALLACE

Near the beginning of “Bless This Mess,” Lake Bell’s new ABC sitcom, Bell’s character, Rio, and her husband are standing in a ramshackle farm house in Nebraska they’ve just inherited. The floor the couple are standing on collapses beneath them, and they’re plunged to the basement.

"The floor falling in is a metaphor for the first year of marriage," Bell says. The protagonist Rio, an anxious clinical therapist, and her new husband Mike (Dax Shepard), a laid-off music writer with an open heart, abandon their chaotic, not fully satisfying lives in New York City for a fresh start as farmers in the Midwest. But they discover the old farmhouse they’ve romanticized picking up and moving to is in need of significant repair. Bell, the co-creator, executive producer, co-writer, and star of the single-camera comedy, also directed the pilot, a piece she’s proud of aesthetically. “There are times not everything is perfectly lit. It’s not as crispy as other sitcoms, and that’s a stylistic choice I hope to maintain,” she says. “Marriage isn’t crispy. It’s dusty, rough around the edges. You have this ideal of what it’s supposed to be, but the reality is staunchly different. You might fall through the floor sometimes. But you don’t sell the house, you just fix the floor.”

“Bless This Mess” is indeed a personal project for Bell and co-creator Elizabeth Meriwether, television producer and creator of FOX’s New Girl and ABC’s Single Parents. The pair became friends on the set of the film No Strings Attached, and, Bell told Meriwether recently, “If you ever want to do a TV show...” Meriwether did want to, and the two “sat down on a couch within minutes and starting pitching ideas to each other.” Both women had gotten married in the last couple years, and they were keen to discuss those new marriages. That was early last year, and, as we spotlight at Story + Rain, there was indeed magic in that mix—the series airs April 16. “Liz and I are both married to men who are incredibly optimistic, while we are both very neurotic. We found a lot of fodder and camaraderie laughing about our marital unions.”

The collaborators went from casual sofa-ideating to 24/7 contact quickly. When asked if they call each other “work wife,” Bell laughed: “We haven’t, but we are going to start right now. Today we had 45 emails back and forth. We’ve gone from pretty good buddies to interacting with each other from 5:45 AM on through to 10 PM.” This is the first television show Bell has birthed from the idea phase, and admits it “is definitely an adjustment from filmmaking, where the director says all. I’m wearing a lot of hats here, and I’m grateful to have a comrade so well versed in this space.” Meriwether—Bell often refers to her co-creator by just her last name—“is a master of network TV, she’s so well versed at it.”

With a terrific supporting cast that includes local residents played by “badass mutherfucker” Pam Grier (literally the town sheriff), and Ed Begley Jr. in the role of awkwardly-dropping-in-neighbor, “Bless This Mess” is Bell’s way of showing how we can all work harder to bridge divisions.

Individually and beyond, Bell believes in the power of small acts of kindness—the converse of microaggressions, you could say. Would that be … microembraces? “Like when someone cuts you off in traffic,” she presents, “you have the choice to let yourself be infuriated or you can let it roll off or even smile at the person. That decision is monumental in my opinion. If you flip them the bird, the negativity snowballs. The little things, the pennies, add up. I need to live in that space now, and that’s why this TV show is important for me and my family and my friends right now.” She and her cast and crew are being united, she points out, not on a cold dark soundstage, but outdoors every day, on a beautiful ranch with families of deer roaming.