When TBS debuts its new comedy “Chad” on Tuesday, its star and creator is probably going to have a hard time believing her eyes. “Certainly when I first had this idea and became excited about it, I didn’t expect that it would premiere exactly five years later,” Nasim Pedrad, who serves in the triple role of star, creator and showrunner on the teen comedy, told TheWrap. “It truly feels like nothing short of a miracle.”
The unconventional series, which stars the “Saturday Night Live” alum, is built around a premise that you’d expect to see in a sketch on the venerated late-night comedy series. Pedrad plays Ferydoon “Chad” Amani, a Persian-American 14-year-old high school boy, complete with all the awkwardness and cringe that usually accompanies early teenhood.
“I knew I loved writing about adolescence, and mine happened to be really awkward,” Pedrad, who is Iranian American, said. “But more than anything, I just had never seen a coming-of-age story where the teenager at the center of it was played by an adult who’s in on the joke.” Pedrad points out that “Chad” was developed years before Hulu’s comedy “Pen15,” which stars Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle as middle-school versions of themselves.
Pedrad takes that idea one step further by playing the opposite gender, which she said helped her avoid it feeling too much like her actual teen years. “I knew with the help of the wig and the eyebrows, the binder that I wear under the shirt, and the posture that you often see with 14-year-old boys — which then led to his mannerisms — his vocal register and the way that he stumbles over his words; I just knew all of that would really help me disappear into that role,” she said. “It also didn’t feel like a far cry from my own adolescence, because I was a tomboy and a late bloomer.”
“Chad” was a TV late-bloomer, as well. The series was initially set up at Fox as part of its 2016 pilot cycle under the title “Chad: An American Boy.” After visa issues with some of the cast caused a delay in filming the pilot, it was later scrapped. But a year later, Turner became interested.
“I really believed it was funny and relatable, and if nothing else, certainly honest to my experience growing up as an immigrant kid in this country. I was willing to stick with it until I knew absolutely everyone in town said no, and all you really need is for one person to say yes,” Pedrad said. It ended up being two people that said yes: Brett Weitz and Kevin Reilly. Reilly was then the president of TBS and TNT, while Weitz was the head of programming for TBS.
“The two of them really championed the show and understood it and believed in it and were willing to go through the process of acquiring it from a different network,” Pedrad said. “And it obviously would never have seen the light of day if it weren’t for them.”
Weitz, who is currently the general manager for TBS, TNT and truTV, was in love with the pilot almost immediately after Fox passed. “When the pilot was passed on, we saw the pilot, and we saw something in there that we believe would work really well for TBS,” he said. “But we also knew what we wanted more than anything was her on our air.”
Weitz acknowledged the project’s long development period. “I know this is gonna sound shocking to you, but it took us a little while to get the deal done,” he said. In fact, Pedrad was cast as a series regular in TBS’ short-lived comedy “People of Earth” while they were negotiating with Fox to get the rights to “Chad.”
TBS officially greenlit the series in May 2019.
Both Pedrad and Weitz said virtually nothing — outside of the main premise and some of the actors — remain from the Fox version.
“Once we got the deal done, then we commissioned a script, a new script with a whole new origin story,” Weitz said. “We really wanted to differentiate from the Fox pilot. It’s really important that we show Chad in kind of a more premium cable space.”
Pedrad points out a particular scene from the pilot (light spoilers here) that features drugs and a female classmate attempting to have sex with Chad that probably would have had trouble getting past Fox network censors. “For the show to be able to exist in a cable space is really helpful and allows me to have a lot more creative freedom than maybe I would have gotten to have at the network level,” she said. “In cable you don’t necessarily have to have a tidy little bow at the end of every episode. You can live in some of that messiness.”
“Chad” was supposed to premiere last July but production was shut down with two episodes remaining to be shot because of the pandemic. After production wrapped last fall, Weitz said the network decided to hold the series for an April launch to use March Madness as a promotional vehicle.
But Weitz is well aware that “Chad” will premiere two years after it was first greenlit. After all, it’s not the first time a Turner cable show took a long time to make (think “Snowpiercer”). “We’ve, I think, been to two TCAs, two upfronts and the show still hasn’t premiered,” Weitz recognizes. “But it’s coming!”
“Chad” premieres Tuesday, April 6 at 10:30 p.m. ET.