Julia's New Domain

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SARA DE BOER/AMERICAN FOTO FEATURES/RETNA

Julia Louis-Dreyfus and husband Brad Hall

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The cast, especially Daily Show correspondent Steve Carell as her ex-boyfriend, is talented, but the show is definitely Louis-Dreyfus'. She even gets to sing on each episode, an activity she indulges in offscreen as well. For Christmas, she, Hall and five of their friends went caroling in their Santa Monica neighborhood. "No one was particularly interested," Louis-Dreyfus confesses. "It was a pathetic display of Christmas cheer. I felt like the biggest a__hole." Even so, her voice is surprisingly good, and her closing torch song is the best part of the pilot.

To lower expectations and buy time to let their show develop as it finds an audience, Louis-Dreyfus and Hall have made some unusual demands. They have asked to have their show be a midseason replacement. They have also offered to sell the network only 15 episodes a year instead of pushing for the full 22-show order most series crave. And they have requested, perhaps unsuccessfully (the final scheduling is still pending), that NBC put them on lower-key Tuesday night instead of in the middle of Thursday's "Must See TV" lineup, a spot so warm and cozy that even Inside Schwartz got good ratings there. These are things that happen to failing sitcoms; they aren't typically requested by new ones.

The abridged season, however, is also an HBO trick, allowing more time to work on stories. But whereas HBO, which is subscription driven, can afford that strategy, it's much harder for network shows. The real money for sitcoms is in syndication, and no one wants to air an old show every night unless there are at least 100 episodes; Ellie would need seven seasons to get there. Even worse, one-camera shows, which require more days of shooting, are expensive. Add to that the creative risks of the real-time premise and the fact that producers Carsey-Werner-Mandabach, who made The Cosby Show, Roseanne and That '70s Show into hits, pulled out a few months ago because of the huge financial gamble, ceding the show to NBC studios to produce. Says Zucker: "I need a show that works now. I'm a little less concerned about finding a show that makes 100 episodes. We stepped in because we want to take a shot with it."

Hall, 43, and Louis-Dreyfus, 40, insisted on the 15-episode deal because they don't want to take any more time away from their kids — their nine-year-old will have his own office on the set to do his homework, while the four-year-old will get a playroom. They're the kind of family that have an electric car and are building solar panels on the roof of their house to provide all the electricity. Vegas is taking bets on the method the children will use to rebel against their parents.

In order to work together without straining their relationship, the couple, who were cast members on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1984 and did theater together while students at Northwestern, have set strict ground rules. They don't talk about work in front of their kids, they have a screening service block all nonemergency calls after 6 p.m., and they don't ferry work-related messages to each other. "That's about it," says Hall, looking at Louis-Dreyfus over their cappuccinos at Santa Monica's Ivy at the Shore. "Oh, and the sex has ended."

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