The Middle » The Middle News http://the-middle-abc.com A fansite for the TV show 'The Middle' on ABC Thu, 13 May 2010 23:54:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Casting at The Middle http://the-middle-abc.com/casting-middle http://the-middle-abc.com/casting-middle#comments Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:17:43 +0000 admin http://the-middle-abc.com/?p=217 One might say that G. Charles Wright has spent his whole life preparing for a job in casting. “All my childhood was spent in front of a television instead of playing outdoors or doing homework,” he says with a chuckle. He currently works on the hit TV show “The Middle,” starring Patricia Heaton and Neil Flynn, and teaches a popular auditioning class in Los Angeles. Other credits include “That ’70s Show,” PBS’s “Sid the Science Kid,” and numerous pilots and Web shows.

The hardest role we had to cast on “The Middle” was Sue, the daughter, and that had to do with the fact that “The Middle” was a pilot that had already been shot two years before with a different cast. It didn’t quite come together as ABC had wanted it to, but they really liked the story. It was a situation where the writers kept thinking about the girl they had from the first pilot, and it was hard for them to get her out of their heads. Eden Sher came in and pre-read for me. She was one of the very first girls we saw for the role. Brought her to producers and she went through that process, but at that time, I think the producers still had in their minds the performance from the previous actress, so they kind of dismissed everybody. I ended up bringing Eden back in again at the end. By that time, they had seen so many actresses for the part, they really started to look at her with new eyes. Eden was the only actress who came in and played that character with exuberance and zeal. Everybody else played her more goth, kind of down and mopey. Eden makes you remember and root for a character that nobody ever roots for.

Read the full story on Backstage

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]]> http://the-middle-abc.com/casting-middle/feed 0 ‘The Middle’ ABC Finale Date http://the-middle-abc.com/the-middle-abc-finale-date http://the-middle-abc.com/the-middle-abc-finale-date#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:38:47 +0000 admin http://the-middle-abc.com/?p=207 It has just been announced that “The Middle” season finale will be on May 19.

Source: Zap2It

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]]> http://the-middle-abc.com/the-middle-abc-finale-date/feed 1 Betty White: On Top and in ‘The Middle’ http://the-middle-abc.com/betty-white-top-the-middle http://the-middle-abc.com/betty-white-top-the-middle#comments Fri, 02 Apr 2010 18:16:23 +0000 admin http://the-middle-abc.com/?p=198 Betty White is white hot these days, and we have a first look at the 88-year-old TV legend dishing out some stern punishment on ABC’s “The Middle”!

Betty plays a librarian who threatens to keep little Atticus Shaffer from graduating to the third grade on the ABC comedy, airing Wednesdays.

Source: KGET

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]]> http://the-middle-abc.com/betty-white-top-the-middle/feed 1 Betty White On ‘The Middle’ http://the-middle-abc.com/betty-white-the-middle http://the-middle-abc.com/betty-white-the-middle#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:25:25 +0000 admin http://the-middle-abc.com/?p=193
White at the premiere for The Proposal in June...
Image via Wikipedia

The TV legend, Betty White, has signed on to guest star in the season finale of ABC’s The Middle.

White will play a school librarian who confronts Brick (Atticus Shaffer) about his failure to return numerous overdue books.

Source: EW.

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]]> http://the-middle-abc.com/betty-white-the-middle/feed 1 Marsha Mason Guest Star On ‘The Middle’ http://the-middle-abc.com/marsha-mason-guest-star-the-middle http://the-middle-abc.com/marsha-mason-guest-star-the-middle#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:08:47 +0000 admin http://the-middle-abc.com/?p=184 Marsha Mason will guest star in the Mother’s Day episode of ABC’s “The Middle,” playing Frankie’s (Patricia Heaton) mother. The trivia- minded might re member that Heaton starred in TNT’s 2004 remake of “The Goodbye Girl” (opposite Jeff Daniels) — in the same role that garnered Mason an Oscar nomination.

Read more: NY Post


marsha_mason The Middle

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]]> http://the-middle-abc.com/marsha-mason-guest-star-the-middle/feed 1 Alexa Vega Finds The Middle http://the-middle-abc.com/alexa-vega-finds-middle http://the-middle-abc.com/alexa-vega-finds-middle#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:05:08 +0000 admin http://the-middle-abc.com/?p=167 The 21-year-old actress will be guest starring in a new The Middle episode titled, “The Break Up.”

In the episode, Frankie and Mike (Patricia Heaton, Neil Flynn) are excited to discover that Axl (Charlie McDermott) has found the perfect girlfriend, Morgan (Vega), and that he’s in love. But just as they start to get used to his new, sunny outlook on life, Morgan does the unthinkable and breaks up with him, leaving Axl completely heartbroken.

“The Break Up” premieres on March 10th @ 8:30PM ET/PT on ABC.
alexa-vega-the-middle

Read more: Buzz

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]]> http://the-middle-abc.com/alexa-vega-finds-middle/feed 1 ABC Pairs Modern Family With The Middle http://the-middle-abc.com/abc-pairs-modern-family-middle http://the-middle-abc.com/abc-pairs-modern-family-middle#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:53:09 +0000 admin http://the-middle-abc.com/?p=164 ABC has scheduled the return of the Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special to air the week before the Academy Awards and plans to give “The Middle” a “Modern Family” lead-in.

The Oprah special will air March 3. On Feb. 17 and Feb. 24, ABC will try out repeats of “The Middle” — which recently hit a season high in its usual 8:30 p.m. slot — at 9:30 p.m. after “Modern Family.” ABC will air back-to-back “Cougar Town” repeats at 10 p.m. on those dates. The results might convince ABC to shake-up the order of its Wednesday nights, which has seen “The Middle” gathering strength in the ratings and “Cougar Town” fading. This week, “Middle” outperformed “Cougar Town” for the first time.

Source: THR

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]]> http://the-middle-abc.com/abc-pairs-modern-family-middle/feed 0 Midwest attitude drives The Middle http://the-middle-abc.com/midwest-attitude-drives-middle http://the-middle-abc.com/midwest-attitude-drives-middle#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:55:12 +0000 admin http://the-middle-abc.com/?p=135 The Middle may be middling as a comedy, but the freshman sitcom about an atypical middle-American family got a resounding endorsement this past week from ABC executives: renewal for a second season in the fall.

For show-runners Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline, the early pickup is validation of a gentle and genuinely sweet take on raising kids in an increasingly frantic world.

“It allows us to go forward without the fear hanging over our heads of not being back,” Heisler told reporters at this week’s meeting of the TV Critics Association in Pasadena, Calif. “We get to invest more, as we hope the audience will as well.”

That middle-American setting is crucial to The Middle’s success, Heisler believes.

“DeAnn and I are both from the Midwest, and it started from our yearning for the life we came from. The location is a very important part of the show. We wanted to show regular people in the middle of the country, living more-or-less ordinary lives.”

Read the full story on Windsor Star

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]]> http://the-middle-abc.com/midwest-attitude-drives-middle/feed 0 Modern Family, The Middle and Cougar Town Renewed http://the-middle-abc.com/modern-family-middle-cougar-town-renewed http://the-middle-abc.com/modern-family-middle-cougar-town-renewed#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:42:52 +0000 admin http://the-middle-abc.com/?p=131 ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson said he was renewing ABC’s freshman comedies Modern Family, The Middle and Cougar Town so all three will get a second season.

Source: TV by the Numbers

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]]> http://the-middle-abc.com/modern-family-middle-cougar-town-renewed/feed 0 TV’s comedy gifts http://the-middle-abc.com/tvs-comedy-gifts http://the-middle-abc.com/tvs-comedy-gifts#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:17:31 +0000 admin http://the-middle-abc.com/?p=129
Patricia Heaton, 2008
Image via Wikipedia

California Chronicle talks about three strong comedy series that debuted this year and one of them is The Middle.

‘The Middle’

There’s no question that “Modern Family” is quickly becoming the best comedy on TV, but “The Middle” (8:30 p.m. Wednesday, WTAE) needs more support.

“The Middle” is a loopy, single-camera comedy about a family in Middle America that’s scraping by on luck and love. What makes the show unique among prime-time series is not its style of humor, which bears some resemblance to “Malcolm in the Middle” told from a mom’s point of view. It’s the emphasis on the children in the family. Other than the half-man on CBS’s “Two and a Half Men,” kids have been largely AWOL from prime-time broadcast network comedies for about a decade and they haven’t been a focus since “Malcolm.”

As relatable as the travails of mom Frankie Heck (Patricia Heaton) may be, it’s the stories and characterizations of the Heck kids that make “The Middle” so much fun to watch. Has there ever been as wildly accurate a depiction of teenage boys as Axl (Charlie McDermott), who moves with the leisurely speed of an unmotivated turtle and complains with a mix of whine and gusto? And upbeat Sue (Eden Sher) has a wild-eyed optimism no matter how many times she’s failed before. Oddball Brick (Atticus Shaffer), who looks a lot like Dewey from “Malcolm,” takes weirdness to a new level with repeated, under-his-breath whispers of single words he just said aloud.

So far, ABC seems supportive of “The Middle” despite its low ratings, largely the result of having horrible “Hank” (now-canceled) as a lead-in. But more people need to find this hidden gem and help it escape middle-of-the-pack obscurity. “The Middle” deserves to be nearer the top of the ratings heap.

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