Showrunner Lee Eisenberg doesn’t seem like an obvious choice for the AppleTV+ feminist ‘50s drama “Lessons in Chemistry,” since he’s best known for goofy comedies such as “The Office” and “Jury Duty.”
As it turns out, nobody from the show initially tapped Eisenberg, either.
“My wife read the book and said, ‘Oh my god, this is a TV series.’ So I started reading this book, and immediately saw what she was talking about,” Eisenberg, 46, told The Post.
“I thought the book was beautiful. The story moves in it were so surprising to me. The dialogue exploded off the page, and Elizabeth Zott as the protagonist was unlike any other character I had read before. I saw that Apple had optioned it and Brie Larson was attached. I have a deal at Apple, but I wasn’t involved in the show. No one that I was aware of was saying, ‘Hey, Lee, you should be involved!’ So I just cold-called and said, ‘If there’s anything to do on the show, I’m obsessed with this book, I’d love to be involved.’ They were looking for a writer, so the timing worked out. Within a day or two, I was on a Zoom with [star and executive producer] Brie Larson.”
Premiering Friday, Oct. 13 and based on the novel by Bonnie Garmus, “Lessons in Chemistry” follows Elizabeth Zott (Larson), a brilliant scientist in the 1950s who is living at a time when social norms were for women to be in the domestic sphere.
When circumstances see her accepting a job on a TV cooking show, she sets out to teach a nation of underestimated and overlooked housewives scientific topics and life lessons, in addition to recipes.
“With my background, with everything I do, I like to infuse it with a little bit of comedy,” said Eisenberg. “And Brie was finding those small moments. I think there’s the potential – when you hear the logline on a show like this – that it could be dry in some way, or feel like taking medicine. It’s entertaining all the way. We were so in love with the book, that was really the inspiration. But I loved ‘The Queen’s Gambit,’ that was in the back of my mind. There’s elements of [‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’], even though I don’t think tonally they’re the same. I love shows that transport you to another place. ‘Mad Men’ was another reference.”
He said he worked closely with Larson, even after filming ended.
[Brie is] an executive producer on the show, and often that can be a vanity credit for actors. And Brie was not that at all,” said Eisenberg.
“She was in pre-production meetings debating the color of the sets, and in the main title meetings talking about what song should be there. When we started editing the show, long after we finished shooting it, I worked on the finale for weeks and got to a place where I was happy with it. Brie called me and said, ‘I don’t think the finale is there yet.’ I wasn’t offended, I was like, ‘Okay, this smart person has notes. Let’s hear them.’ And for the next three days, we combed through every scene, and to her credit, we improved the finale, it made it better and tighter. I think we ended on a high note because of that collaboration.”
Eisenberg’s other show, “Jury Duty,” which made a regular Joe into an unlikely star, was a surprise hit, as the Amazon Freevee show starring James Marsden earned several Emmy nominations, and became a word of mouth phenomenon.
About whether there will be a Season 2, Eisenberg said, “We’re talking about it. I’m so proud of what Season 1 was. How do you replicate it? We’ll only go down the road if we can find the right idea, and the casting chemistry that created the magic we had for Season 1. We are talking about that possibility [of a Season 2]. We’re not sure, we’re exploring some ideas. But it’s too early to tell.”
