Here’s How ‘Abby’s’ Pulled off Taping a Multi-Cam Sitcom Outside

Almost twenty years after the peak of Must See TV, multi-cam is truly, finally having another moment. Networks have spent the last minute picking up classic-style comedies, some of which are actually classic. But the primetime schedule isn’t filled with just revivals of beloved shows like Will & Grace or Murphy Brown or headline-grabbers like The Conners. There are a lot of new series giving us all the classic TV feels while pushing the medium into bold and/or wacky places. There’s The Neighborhood on CBS, The Cool Kids on Fox, and now there’s Abby’s on NBC.

It’s true that Abby’s—a show set at a backyard bar that is definitely not up to zoning codes—gives the peacock network a new sitcom set in a drinking establishment, but Abby’s is way more than an updated Cheers. For one thing, the cast is actually representative of the kinda people you’d see at a backyard bar in 2019. Just look at the show’s lead: Natalie Morales plays bar owner Abby, a bisexual veteran that acts like a loner but deep down loves her found family.

But Abby’s is different from Cheers—and literally every other sitcom that’s come before—in one major way: it was shot outside. Yeah, outside outside. That natural ambiance isn’t TV trickery. It’s multi-cam sitcom magic performed by a skilled crew—and Decider found out how they pulled it off. We chatted with Abby’s creator and executive producer Josh Malmuth by phone and followed that up with a Q&A with Abby’s director of photography Gregg Heschong, ASC by email and learned how they took multi-cam where it’s never gone before.

Decider: Josh, you come from single-cam shows like New Girl and Superstore. What made you decide to go for multi-cam with Abby’s?

Josh Malmuth: I think because I started writing plays in college, I loved theatre. I tried to be a playwright. I moved out to New York—I can’t say I was very successful, but it did get me into writing television. I think something that appealed to me about writing sitcoms, early-on, was the multi-camera’s resemblance to theatre. You put on this little show every week. There’s something I find so fun about that. Also, multi-camera shows are the shows I grew up with and loved. I watched all the episodes of I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show. I was a big Cheers fan and Friends. For me, there’s something so durable about the multi-camera form, where you can just watch episodes whenever, it doesn’t need to be in order. So, I don’t know. You put on this show, you have the audience’s feedback, the actor’s feed off of that—it’s exciting.

Was there ever the urge to make Abby’s a single-cam show?

Malmuth: If we’d shot the show as a single camera show—which, because it’s one set, it’s all basically one space, I don’t really think it made sense as a single camera show, it seems like it is more meant for multi-cam. But if we had shot it as a single-cam show, single-cam shows for comedy typically mean a five-day shoot. It would’ve meant that we were doing five night shoots, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., five days of doing night shoots. That, from a production standpoint, is just incredibly grueling and never going to happen. So, in some ways, to shoot an entire show of night exteriors you almost have to be shooting a multi-cam, because the multi-cam shooting schedule is so much more compressed. The form of multi-cam, people think of as more restrictive. But actually, you can shoot it so much faster. We were able to do the entire show at night, which was really cool. And the first time it’s ever been done with an audience, which is great.

When you decided that you wanted to do Abby’s and multi-cam, were there any tweaks that you wanted to make to the formula?

Malmuth: I wanted to get back to a style that had fewer scenes. I wanted the scenes to be a little bit longer. I wanted you to kind of be able to breathe and relax and get to know the characters in the show and their relationships. I don’t want to say that I wanted it to be slow-paced, because that doesn’t sound like very much fun, but I wanted it to be a little more laid back, you know.

Also, just in a technical sense, I see a lot of shows now—for production reasons and stylistic reasons—they just kinda light the hell out of the show. Maybe it’s because of the rise of HD, you get this video-y, kind of blown-out look. I asked to shoot on film and everybody laughed at me. I think 30 Rock was the last show to film on film. Anyway, something we talked about a lot in the pilot was that we wanted it to be really intimate and warm and have kind of a glowing quality to it. And that, to me, meant that we didn’t want it to be blown out. That, to me, was one example of how I wanted it to feel a little bit more like an old school sitcom.

Gregg Heschong, ASC: Cheers was obviously a reference for such a show that, with few exceptions, all takes place in one setting. Technically Abby’s bears little in common with the production of Cheers save for the fact that we did strive to create a warm, inviting and inclusive atmosphere for these stories and characters.

When did the idea come to shoot Abby’s outside?

Malmuth: I’ve never seen multi-cam, fake-outdoor set done really well. It can be charming. We all remember the scenes in Home Improvement when Tim Taylor talks to Wilson and they’re in this obviously fake backyard, outside, at night. There is something kind of nostalgic about that look, that kind of outside-onstage look. But that was for one scene and for Abby’s, I didn’t want the whole thing to feel that artificial. So, in some ways, it just came out of, “We want the show to feel real. We want there to be authenticity there. We don’t want it to feel like it was shot on a set, so we kind of have to go outside if we want to get that authenticity.”

Heschong: I have photographed innumerable exterior sets for [multi-cam] shows over the years. Even if multiple cameras are employed, my approach to exteriors is not unlike shooting single camera features or episodic. The great difference in composing the approach for Abby’s was that this was to be a show with a live audience and shot in sequence as a traditional multi camera show. From that approach came all the challenges and adventure.

What was the reaction when people found out Abby’s would be shooting outside? 

Malmuth: [Gregg] was definitely surprised. I remember the meeting very clearly. He was like, “Oh, um, okay, okay, yeah.” To his credit, he was so game—it’s not just Gregg, right, it’s our director, Pam Fryman, it’s our sound people, all the camera ops, everybody. Everybody on the crew had to reevaluate what they do and how it changes with being outside.

What were the challenges of setting all that up?

Malmuth: I would say the big challenges were, well, sound obviously was the biggest challenge. You’re getting helicopter noise, airplane noise, traffic noise; you can hear the trams that go around Universal Studios, you can hear the announcers on the trams. You know, Hollywood Horror Nights. There’s all kinds of audio challenges. [The big challenges were] the lighting stuff, mostly, Gregg lit the show with a lot of practical light. They went to Home Depot and clipped lamps all over the set, to light the set, because we didn’t want it to be lit overheard, because we thought that would make it look like it was on stage. So we talked a lot and adjusted and Gregg did an incredible job.

Heschong: I asked [production designer] Glenda Rovello for many practical fixtures that we could photograph and then began the planning and design. I referred to this as our “home improvement center” production as we bought and used many common household and industrial light fixtures. I also employed theatrical units which took me back to my early days in regional and summer stock theater.

Abby’s fit perfectly with my affection and instincts for “found art.” From the pilot forward we created a very flexible lighting plan that would allow me to adjust and modify almost “on the fly”. This production called upon all departments to truly work as an instinctual team, and I believe performances and camera blocking truly benefited from this approach. One needs to keep in mind all this was done with no nighttime camera rehearsal under shooting conditions

Speaking of that teamwork, I imagine you had to work closely with the set design team in order to make Abby’s come alive.

Heschong: I worked very closely with Glenda Rovello, Production Designer, in creating the atmosphere for Abby’s. Glenda and I have done a number of productions together in the past and she is not only inventive but also a tremendous collaborator. The vision for Abby’s was that this was a place you would want to return to night after night. Josh, Glenda (along with her associate, Connie Morinos) and I kept bringing suggestions and visual references to the table. I had numerous conversations with Pam Fryman, who directed not only the pilot but many of the episodes, in the early stages of development about the look of the show and the practical considerations for filming outdoors. Pam was comfortable that I would work at a much lower light level than traditionally used on a multiple camera set.

There’s a wave of new multi-cam shows on the air right now. Do you think this is a phase or is multi-cam back?

Malmuth: I would say, in a lot of ways, it never left. The highest rated comedies for years have been multi-cams, Big Bang and before that Two and a Half Men. I think that you’re seeing more writers who have, perhaps, been in the single-cam world starting to consider multi-cam as an option. I think you’re seeing the pendulum swing back a little bit. For so long, single-cam was regarded as “cooler.” It was newer, it was fresher. I think maybe that perception is wearing off and now multi-cam and single-cam are being seen not so much in terms of what’s “new” and what’s “old,” but how the formats can serve different types of stories. I don’t think that one is better than the other in any, ultimate way. I think it depends what kind of story you’re trying to tell.

For a show like Superstore, it makes no sense for it to be multi-cam because it’s in a superstore. It’s a big store and there’s lots of little corners and spaces and I think that the strength of the show is that you’re able to find all this nuance in this big store. But I think for a show like Abby’s, the format serves the content.

Everyone I know who writes sitcoms grew up idolizing these multi-cam sitcoms. Multi-cam feels like TV to me in a deep part of my brain that single-cam never totally felt like to me. I guess that sounds weird, but multi-cam is recognizable immediately as television to me in a way that I enjoy. Also multi-cam is such a performer’s medium. It really is about the strength of your performers, the strength of your actors. That’s really who the audience is making a connection with. I love that our job as writers, on a multi-cam especially but really on any show, is to highlight the talents of someone like Natalie Morales, Nelson Franklin, Neil Flynn, Jessica Chaffin. We have these two, relatively new-on-the-scene actors Kimia Behpoornia and Leonard Ouzts who are so talented and incredible. I often think that my job is basically to get out of the way and just let them be as naturally funny and skilled as they are. So, yeah, I think multi-cam is kind of a purer platform for an actor’s talents and I think that’s one of its strengths.

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Abby’s premieres on NBC on Thursday, March 28 at 9:30 p.m. ET and will be available to stream on Hulu on March 29

Stream Abby's on Hulu