Ellen DeGeneres is making a new gay-themed sitcom
By Nick Levine
Ellen DeGeneres is to help develop a new gay-themed sitcom for US network NBC.
Titled One Big Happy, the comedy will follow a lesbian who decides to have a baby with her straight male friend – then gets pregnant just as he meets and settles down with the love of his life.
DeGeneres will serve as an executive producer alongside 2 Broke Girls writer Liz Feldman, who is also openly gay, and Jeff Kleenan, the president of DeGeneres’s TV company A Very Good Production.
US network NBC – whose current sitcom roster includes Sean Saves The World, which stars Sean Hayes as a gay dad – has ordered a pilot episode of the show. Another NBC sitcom revolving around gay parenting, The New Normal, was axed last year (2013).
DeGeneres’s character famously came out in a landmark episode of her self-titled sitcom Ellen in 1997, drawing a massive US TV audience of 42 million viewers.
DeGeneres is set to host this year’s Oscars – her second time as presenter – on Sunday, March 2.