Al Madrigal Joins NBC’s Newlyweds, and the Best Friend Has Teeth

Photos: Montserrat Boix · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source; Colleen Sturtevant · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Téa Leoni, Tim Daly, and Jamie Lee Curtis in the Same Room

The casting already had a neat little joke built into it before Madrigal showed up. Leoni and Daly are married in real life, and the series puts them in a sitcom marriage too. NBC gets to sell chemistry without having to manufacture it from scratch. That is efficient, which is network television’s favorite religion.

Then Curtis enters as Claudia, James’s ex, and the reporting says Dan’s matchmaker role earns her ire. There it is: the friction. Not grand tragedy, not prestige gloom, just old resentments, bad timing, and one more person who thinks the wedding was a stupid idea. That is far better than the syrupy language attached to most romantic comedies, because it admits what actually makes them fun. People interfere. People judge. People make the room hotter than the script pretends.

Madrigal fits that register. He has already been best known for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and, more recently, Lopez vs. Lopez. The reporting also says he will next appear in Disney+’s Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, written, directed, and executive produced by Jon Favreau. NBC did not hire a solemn presence. It hired a comic who can keep a scene from turning to cream.

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NBC’s May Order Looks Like a Real Schedule, Not a Single Bet

Newlyweds was ordered to series in May alongside The Rockford Files, Line of Fire, and Sunset P.I., according to the reporting. That tells you NBC is not betting on one bright object and calling it a season. It is building a slate. Broadly speaking, that means the network wants options, not a miracle.

The show itself is produced by Universal Television, with Gail Lerner as writer, showrunner, and executive producer. The reporting also names Eric and Kim Tannenbaum, Jamie Lee Curtis, Scott Schwartz, and Lionsgate Television among the producers, with Pam Fryman executive producing the pilot. That is the part where a project can start to sound like a committee, because that is what television often is: a committee with better lighting.

Still, the concrete news here is not abstract. It is a cast addition. Madrigal joins a recurring lineup that already includes Emma Meisel and Ignacio Diaz-Silverio as Jeanie’s adopted children, Bill O’Neill as James’s assistant in the philosophy department at the University of Oslo, and Curtis as the ex who may not adore the new arrangement.

What Al Madrigal Changes

This is the difference Madrigal can make: he gives Newlyweds a living, breathing skeptic inside a premise that might otherwise float away on charm. Dan is not there to admire the couple. He is there because the couple has consequences. James’s sudden marriage does not just belong to James and Jeanie. It lands on his best friend, his ex, his department, and the whole little social tangle around them.

That is better television than a press-release romance, and NBC knows it. The show is still being sold as a love story. The reporting says so. But the useful thing in the news today is the friction inside the sale. Madrigal is not the headline’s decoration. He is the guy in the next chair who can make the pitch sound like an argument, which is where sitcoms usually get interesting.

He plays Dan, James’s divorced best friend, the man whose plans for single life get blown apart by the wedding.