January 23, 2015
Netflix/for PhillyVoice
A scene from the Netflix-released trailer for 'The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.'
Netflix has released a two-minute trailer for its upcoming original comedy series, "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," written by Fey and Robert Carlock. After months of Fey droning on about the show, it's the first actual footage viewers have gotten a glimpse of. (And it looks promising.)
The show's premise is the standard fish-out-of-water variety, only with Fey's stamp of "Mean Girls" relentlessness. (You'll even notice there's a blond, "WASP-y" character who's essentially Regina George's mother in all but name.) Kimmy Schmidt, played by Ellie Kemper of "The Office," is one of a handful of Indiana women who lock themselves in a doomsday bunker, only to reappear 15 years later. Schmidt then decides to reboot her life in New York.
The concept's not something that necessarily needed to be on Netflix (the streaming service picked it up from NBC in November), but it does allow Fey certain creative freedoms, and in a recent interview, she specifically cited "Orange is the New Black" as a standard-setter for building buzz for a new show.
From NPR:
... ask if platforms like Netflix might offer a better home for smart TV comedy — Yahoo! will make new episodes of NBC's canceled Community soon — and Fey's not quite willing to go there yet.
"I think the future is a mix," she said. "People still have that communal feeling when the next season of Orange is the New Black goes up. And they do want to talk about it, they do want to email about it and they do want to talk about it at work. So you still have the communal feeling of, like, 'Oh we want to see this and talk about it right now.' But it's just not literally at that specific hour of the night."
See the trailer for the 13-episode "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" below, and mark your calendars for its March 6 debut.
