‘Hot in Cleveland’ has Rachel Sweet’s stamp
March 6, 2011
By Rich HeldenfelsBeacon Journal popular culture writer
Hot in Cleveland has been smokin’ for TV Land, its most-watched show ever, and the network recently ordered a 22-episode third season.
Some of the credit goes to Akron’s Rachel Sweet.
The former pop singer has been writing and producing for television for about 15 years and joined Hot in Cleveland as a writer and co-executive producer in its current, second season. She has written three episodes, one of which, The Sisterhood of the Traveling SPANX, may be the funniest Hot in Cleveland ever. It also contained several Grady Sizemore jokes — since Elka, the character played by Betty White, belongs to Grady’s Ladies.
”I’m still watching the Indians, unfortunately,” Sweet said in a recent telephone interview from California, where she now lives with her husband, writer-producer Tom Palmer, and their sons, ages 10 and 7.
”We almost had Grady come out for the episode, and then kind of realized halfway through [the writing] that we didn’t really need him — but did want to use his name. So he signed off on that, which was really nice of him. . . . But when I wrote [Sizemore hitting] three home runs, that was just, you know, dreaming. Wishful thinking!”
As for how she joined Hot in
Cleveland, Sweet said: ”I met with [Hot creator] Suzanne Martin, and we got along great. And, obviously, just the chance to work with Betty White was beyond belief. I snapped at it.”
Did her familiarity with the Ohio setting help?
”I certainly mentioned it,” she said with a laugh. ”There aren’t a ton of Ohio references but what there are probably come from me. I don’t think it was key in my hiring. But it certainly helped that I have roots there.”
It also helped that Sweet has a lot of writing credits, including on Sports Night, George Lopez and Dharma & Greg. All the Hot writers, she said, ”are people with a lot of experience. In that way, the [script] drafts come in good. We don’t have to do a lot of work on them because everybody knows what they’re doing.”
But this is a big ensemble to write for, including not only White but — as three L.A. women now living in Cleveland — Valerie Bertinelli (wife of Cuyahoga Falls’ Tom Vitale), Wendie Malick (a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan) and Jane Leeves.
Asked how to balance them in a script, Sweet said: ”Betty is our hammer. Which means she comes in and nails the scene — she hits every joke. But we don’t use her a lot. We use our other actresses because our other actresses are amazing as well. I mean, Wendie Malick delivers all the time. Valerie is probably one of the sweetest people I have ever met . . . and Jane Leeves, a total pro. You can write for all of them. And they’re easy to write for, because Suzanne was able to define those characters so clearly, that you know what you’re writing.
”People say it’s sort of a retro show, but I don’t know. It’s actually pretty modern. It’s just sort of shot in a retro way. Nobody’s talking to the camera. It’s just shot kind of straight-on, letting the comedy breathe and the story breathe.” The modernity is in ”the actual references and the actual stories about three women in their 40s and 50s and the way they are dealing with becoming that age.”
Sweet, in her late 40s, is in the same age bracket as the characters. ”as are all my fellow writers. I think our youngest writer is maybe late 30s. But you know, Rich, out here that’s kind of how it’s going. Writing staffs are getting smaller, just because of the economy, so show-runners want people who know how to write. They’re not necessarily in bringing people up and bringing people along. . . . It’s not there are more older writers working. I just think that, because there are a lot fewer jobs, jobs are going to people with a lot of experience first.”
And writing is a tough gig. In recent years, Sweet said, she had a series development deal with ABC that involved writing four or five pilots, which never became series, and ”to go in and help shows for a couple of weeks if they needed help.”
The process of selling a show is ”seasonal angst,” she said. ”You spend a lot of time developing a show. The networks buy it. You write it. And they give you notes. You take all the notes and it changes dramatically. If it does get to pilot, you don’t even recognize it much of the time. It’s debilitating, but the prize at the end is being able to sit in a room with really funny people and have that be your job.”
But even shows that get sold may not go well. Sweet worked on an NBC sitcom, 100 Questions, that was so short-lived, ”it ended up being six questions. . . . NBC pretty much hated the show from the beginning. It’s like, they bought it and then decided they didn’t like it. . . . I think they ended up airing them somewhere deep in the summer when nobody would be watching, on weird nights.”
Then there was 2004′s Commando Nanny. It was supposed to be a sitcom for the old WB network, produced by and based on the experiences of reality-show mastermind Mark Burnett (Survivor, The Apprentice). As the name indicates, it was about a former military commando working as a nanny. Really.
”Oh, my God, it was such a fiasco!” Sweet said. ”There was Mark Burnett . . . and there was the WB, wanting to get a reality show from Mark Burnett. I met with him probably a year before, and he pitched Commando Nanny, and I said, ‘No, I can’t write that.’ He went off and got another writer to write the pilot, and the pilot was shot. I was on a deal with Warner Bros., and I got a call from [Warner Bros. TV boss] Peter Roth, and he said, ‘Guess what? You’re running Commando Nanny.‘ ” Sweet had no choice, since — as she put it — Roth ”signs my checks.”
”It was a business deal, basically,” Sweet said. The WB ”gave [Burnett] a scripted show because they wanted a reality show from him. And neither one ever materialized, because it was an ill-conceived situation. Sometimes you get caught in those and, you know, you write your best stuff and you see what happens.”
But, I asked, weren’t there times when she thought she could just go and do oldies shows, singing her hits and making money without angst? She laughed.
”Well, yes,” she said. ”There are times when I am so frustrated. . . . [She and Palmer] just look at each other and say, ‘This is kind of the path we chose.’ I think a lot of people would love to be doing what we’re doing.”
