Unto every television generation, a Reba McEntire sitcom must come.
Seventeen years after her first show ended on The CW, McEntire and her Reba costar Melissa Peterman are back together for Happy’s Place.
Peterman learned that Peacock had picked up the show during an interview with Entertainment Tonight.
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“Amazing!” Peterman said when she heard the news. “I get to work with Reba and our team and I’m so excited!”
Peterman and McEntire starred on the CW sitcom from 2001 to 2007, McEntire as a single mom who works too hard, who loves her kids and never stops, with gentle hands and the heart of a fighter. In short, she was a survivor. While Peterman played the younger woman her husband knocks up and leaves her for. Though they may have been rivals onscreen, Peterman and McEntire became good friends in real life.
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“She’s like coming home,” Peterman said of the country legend. “I think that in this business, we have a lot of ‘Hollywood friends’ — friends that you share just the good stuff with. I think I knew that when we started sharing real-life stuff, that it was forever. I know she’s got my back whether we ever work together again. She is on my side always, and she knows I’m on hers.”
In Happy’s Place, McEntire stars as Bobbie, a woman who inherits her late father’s restaurant along with the half-sister she never knew she had (Hocus Pocus 2‘s Belissa Escobedo). Peterman plays Gabby, a bartender at the restaurant.
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“It’s whole new characters, a whole new scenario and a lot of our same team,” Peterman said of Happy’s Place. “The dynamic is gonna be that dynamic that we have, that natural one.”
NBCUniversal announced Monday that they had ordered a pilot starring the Voice coach back in January, with Kevin Abbott, a writer and executive producer on Last Man Standing, Cristela, and the original Reba, serving as head writer and EP for the series.
Happy’s Place will also star Pablo Castelblanco, Tokala Black Elk, and McEntire’s real-life beau, Rex Linn — who previously co-starred with Peterman and McEntire on Young Sheldon. Peterman revealed that she takes “a little credit” in setting up the two. And now they all get to play together.
“You’re lucky if you get one chance to work with people you love and have it be received so well and still sort of live on,” Peterman said, “but I’ve had more than that, and I mean, I feel like the luckiest.”