Drop Dead Diva ended their fourth season in a really good place, so when Lifetime announced that they were not bringing the show back for a fifth one people were shocked and devastated. So much so they let their voices be heard, and Lifetime decided to reverse their decision and the show is currently back on the air with all new episodes Sundays at 9p.
Well if the show you are working on is cancelled, you are going to start to move on with your life. That is exactly what the cast of DDD started to do. So what were they doing when they heard the show was, thankfully, picked up for another season. Something that was well deserved and has proven to be the right thing to do after Sunday’s season premiere.
The first person to know the news, was not a cast member but the show’s creator Josh Berman. When I asked him what he was doing, here is what he said:
Sony and Lifetime had asked me to come back in to tell them my thoughts for Season 5. And when I went to that meeting and I started pitching out where I was going with the seasons, and I saw the executive’s faces light up and the smiles get bigger and bigger, and then when I was finished there was this silence and everyone kind of knew in that moment we were coming back.
While he knew right away, Brooke Elliot who plays Jane, had no choice but to, literally, move on with her life.
Oh, that’s funny you ask. Because we were canceled, and that’s the only information I had to go on. I had to get out of the place that I was renting in Atlanta. And had we been picked up I would have kept the place, mostly likely. But, we didn’t know and I had gotten to the very end of the (lease) I was like, “I’ve got to go.†And so, I was actually moving out of my Atlanta place of living when I found out that we were actually renewed, so that was kind of funny.
Did she find a new place?
I did, but I had to put everything in storage because, you know I was like, “Oh, my gosh, where am I going to live?†And so, everything was in storage, so I immediately – I – the minute I found out I went and got an apartment, and then everything worked out fine, but that’s why I think it’s pretty funny.
April Bowlby, who plays Jane’s best friend on DDD, was spending some time with her friends when the good news broke.
I was with my friends at one of their houses. We were sitting outside drinking wine and trying to wrap our head around the show being canceled, when my cellphone started to buzz with multiple text messages of congratulations about the show being picked up.
It was great to be with friends at that moment. Lots of celebration……and confusion.
Finally Lex Medlin, who plays Jane’s runaway fiance’ after he caught her kissing another guy at their wedding, was running towards something when he heard the rumor that turned out be true. He shared his story with me and you could hear the laughter and the happiness in his voice as he told it.
I was actually in pilot season auditioning for pilots. It was about 4 in the afternoon, and I live in the Valley, and I had an audition for a pilot at Sony (Culver City which is hard to get to from most anywhere in LA) at 6 o’clock. The idea of getting on the 405 was daunting to me. Somebody broke that it was going to be picked up, so I immediately called my people and said, “I don’t have to go to this audition, right?” And they said, “Well you probably should.” And I said, “No, I probably shouldn’t! If I’m going back to Diva, let’s do that!” So that’s where I was and I was very relieved.
Me and the wife and kids, all had a wonderful dinner together, and smiled and laughed.
So now that you know what the cast was doing when they heard the show was picked up, why not check out what they are doing with it now that it has been picked up. You can watch Drop Dead Diva every Sunday at 9p on Lifetime. This week Dead Jane confronts New Jane, so you know it is going to be good.
