NEWSFriends with Better Lives Star Majandra Delfino Talks about the Good Old WB Days with James Van Der Beek
Did you catch the first episode of Friends with Better Lives? It was new comedy pilot on CBS that debuted after How I Met Your Mother, so you may have been weeping or angrily tweeting when it began. Majandra Delfino stars as Andi, the stable gal in the group of friends on the show, as her character is married to Kevin Connolly's Bobby. You may recognize Majandra as the star of the late '90s WB show Roswell, which aired around the same time as co-star James Van Der Beek's Dawson's Creek. Ready for one more connection? She's married to David Walton, the cute actor who just launched his own pilot, About a Boy. What a busy bee! Get to know Majandra, then watch Friends with Better Lives tonight at 8:30pm on CBS.
OK!: Can you describe your character on the show?
Majandra Delfino: Well, gosh, my character on the show is the person who thinks she's the most grounded, but as life always goes, once she thinks she's got the hang out of it, she finds out she's pregnant. This wasn't planned. But she fancies herself the most together, which you just know there's no such thing in life.
OK!: But she's in the happiest relationship on the show. Will there be any threats to her marriage?
MD: They're definitely the most settled relationship, but she looks at Jules Brooklyn Decker and Lowell Rick Donald as the more happy people. And that's sort of the whole concept, everybody thinks that everyone else—Jules craves Andi's stability, and Andi is just concerned that she's doing everything wrong. And she looks to Jules and Lowell, who have sex three times a day, and thinks, My god, that's what we should be doing! But I'd much rather be in the Andy-Bobby relationship.
OK!: Are you like her at all, or do you relate to her?
MD: Oh my god. We even live in the same neighborhood. The only difference is that I'm not married to a doctor, by any stretch of the imagination. David Walton couldn't even be hired to play a doctor, unless it was for comedic purposes.
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OK!: He has been!
MD: Well he was Dr. Sam on New Girl. Oh, no, and was Dr. Rick on Fired Up, which was one of his best comedic performances of all time. No offense, David. He's literally looking at me, like, what. He's not Bobby McAllister by any stretch of the imagination, though I don't know how comfortable I would be being married to a gynecologist. There are a lot of similarities, in that we have the same age of children. The only difference is I wouldn't let that many people show up at my house. They definitely have to call me in advance! We're even dealing with the same dance school.
OK!: How is Kevin Connolly as a show husband?
MD: He's the best. Like I couldn't have picked a better person mnyself. He's just a phenomenal person. I've never met anyone with that combination of being so intelligent, so comedically gifted yet so grounded, and then such an actual good person. He's getting up there in sainthood.
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OK!: And speaking of the love fest, you're working with a fellow WB teen idol, James Van Der Beek. Did you guys know each other back then?
MD: We didn't know each other back then. He was secluded in North Carolina, I believe. Roswell was in Albuquerque. While Dawson's was happening, I don't think him or his castmates were aware of the phenomenon, because they weren't in LA. I was, so I was one of those obnoxious kids filming locally and going to whatever cheesy nightclub or whatever, so I could really celebrate the expense of the WB hey day. I never met him! We never crossed paths, I never laid eyes on him in life. At the time, while I was on the WB, I was all about Fiona Apple and Portishead, I didn't watch Dawson's Creek! I thought I was too cool for school. By the way, Kevin Connolly, he was a WB person on Unhappily Ever After. It's just really funny. laughs
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OK!: We have to dig up one of those WB commercials of you guys hanging out in the big airplane hangers.
MD: Yes! Totally! Us looking really cool, like wow, I have so many problems at 18. laughs
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OK!: In the pilot, you have a shocking moment, with a sex act. Were you nervous about filming that? I can't imagine breaking that to your family and husband and everything.
MD: Oh, my family gave up on me years ago. And my husband, he's in the business, he does all kinds of stuff. We forget to tell each other at this point, oh, last week I had to be half-naked with some stranger. It's just part of the job. But I was really nervous about the breast pump. That was a weird moment. You know when you're so in something you're not sure how it's going to come off? That was a thing where I was like, this is possibly strange. I"m still not sure.
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OK!: So your husband has a new show at the exact same time. What are the odds?! When did the news come?
MD: Well, we're pretty meditated about what we go in for. We won't do anything that shoots out of town. Our agents don't even send it to us. We have the ability to say sorry, we have ids. But if we love something, we'll try to do it. This was the craziest thing because we shot our pilots not exactly at the same time, then both got picked up. Also, I was pregnant and didn't know. Then our show got picked up, and I was like, I'm going to have to break it to these people. They'll kill my character off! Then I found out David's show got picked up. I had a one-year-old, not even, we're both shooting shows, how is this going to work? But the schedules just worked out.
OK!: But how are you dealing on like, sleep? You have two babies under two, you have a show, he has a show...
MD: I was due two weeks after the wrap date. I had a very, very early delivery, like I was three and a half weeks early. Showrunner Dana Klein is so brilliant, and first and foremost a mother herself. I don't know how she can give such detailed attention to every kid and run a show. She managed to, with all that, have a contingency plan if I went into labor early. I had the baby, and wrapped seven days later, and haven't had to shoot since.
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OK!: Do you watch How I Met Your Mother? I think people will remember your show as the one they were crying during the beginning of.
MD: That was so crazy to me. I've never seen How I Met Your Mother, but when I heard we were premiering after it, I was like what a bad idea. People are going to be hysterically crying, they won't be able to see a thing. There's going to be this profound moment, and then our show is so geared to make you come home from work and feel really good and laugh. Who knows if we'll move in a direction where there's deeper things going on, but it's certainly not supposed to be like a How I Met Your Mother finale! The whole cast got together to watch the show, and I caught the last five minutes of it. I was like, what is going on! Who is this guy with this instrument he's holding? I was so lost. But now I'm interested! I might go back from the beginning.
What did you think of the Friends with Better Lives pilot? Did you watch Roswell back in the day? How did you feel about the How I Met Your Mother finale? Tell us in the comments below or tweet us @OKMagazine.
