Pop Culture | TV | 90s | 80s
'Designing Women' Is Officially Coming Back To Television With A Brand New Series
Reboots, revivals, and remakes are all Hollywood seems to want to make these days, and the latest TV show that has been resurrected after 25 years off the air is none other than Designing Women.
The rumors have been swirling for weeks now, but now everything is all official, and the classic sitcom will be returning to television.
The show originally started in 1986, and starred Dixie Carter, Delta Burke, Annie Potts, Jean Smart, and Meschach Taylor. The plot followed four women while they worked together at an interior designing firm.
The show lasted for seven seasons, with the series finale airing in 1993, but after 25 years, it will be returning.
Over the last couple months, rumors of a Designing Women reboot have been circulating, but because literally everything is said to make a comeback it's hard to know which ones are actually serious.
But ABC has officially signed on to create the show in partnership with Sony Pictures Television who produced the original.
Apparently we will be heading back to Sugarbakers design studio, but it'll be an all new crop of young, female designers.
It's hoping to bring back the quick-paced dialogue and the cultural and social humor that made the first version work so well.
The original creator, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, will be back as the executive producer and lead writer, so at least we know that her vision will be upheld.
While the original show aired on CBS, Bloodworth-Thomason is very happy to be heading over to ABC. "I'm very excited to be working with ABC," she said. "And Sony has always been a great partner for Designing Women. Normally, I'm not a fan of reboots but Designing Women does seem to have the right fengshui for all that is going on right now. We could definitely have some fun."
As for her relationship with CBS, the writer and producer actually revealed that she had a horrible relationship with CBS executive Les Moonves.
Currently, Moonves is facing a lot of backlash after allegations that he has sexually abused many women. He just resigned from CBS, but Bloodworth-Thomason doesn't care, as she said in an essay for The Hollywood Reporter, she is "happy to dance on his professional grave."
She revealed that while she had never been sexually harassed in her time working with Moonves, she did experience a different type of harassment from the head of CBS.
"In 1992, I was given the largest writing and producing contract in the history of CBS," she wrote. "It was for $50 million, involving five new series with hefty penalties for each pilot not picked up."
She believes that Moonves was responsible for derailing her career. She had written a pilot for a show called Full Clothed Non-Dancing Women, but when Moonves took over as the head of CBS, she learned that he may not appreciate the sentiment.
"I was immediately concerned when I heard that Mr. Moonves was rumored to be a big fan of topless bars. Then, someone delivered the news that he especially hated Designing Women and their loud-mouthed speeches."
He arrived at the table read, and while they went through the script, he was not receptive in the least.
"He sat and stared at me throughout the entire reading with eyes that were stunningly cold, as in, 'You are so dead,'" she shared, saying it was reminiscent of another scary moment in her career. "I had not experienced such a menacing look since Charles Manson tried to stare me down on a daily basis when I was a young reporter covering that trial."
His decision seemed to be made up from the start. "As soon as the pilot was completed, Moonves informed me that it would not be picked up. I was at the pinnacle of my career. I would not work again for seven years."
She was under contract, so she had to keep trying though, but everything she wrote was immediately rejected. "Often, if he would catch me in the parking lot, he would make sure to tell me that my script was one of the best he’d read but that he had decided, in the end, not to do it. It always seemed that he enjoyed telling me this."
Bloodworth-Thomason eventually left CBS, and clearly it's for the best. But she has the support of her former cast members, including Potts who even offered to be on the show.
"I would love that," Potts said. “I don’t know when I’d find the time for it, but I think that they could use a show like Designing Women — feisty smart women that didn’t take any B.S. from anybody. Every Monday night was a #MeToo moment for us, and we were talking about it; we were very political. I’m sad that there’s not such a strong voice, I don’t think, in any singular show. Nobody is doing what we did then. So yeah, if [Bloodworth-Thomason] wanted to write six episodes and do it in my hiatus, I would be there in a minute."
Source - Hollywood Reporter