{"id":463585,"date":"2026-05-01T17:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T17:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/463585\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T17:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T17:40:12","slug":"eternally-yours-the-story-of-11-year-old-script-that-wouldnt-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/463585\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Eternally Yours’: The Story Of 11-Year-Old Script That Wouldn’t Die"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor those lamenting the slow pace of the TV development process, how about one that spans 11 years? That is how long it took for Joe Port<\/a> and Joe Wiseman<\/a>\u2018s new CBS<\/a> vampire comedy series Eternally Yours<\/a>, starring Ed Weeks and Allegra Edwards. Their pilot script, written in 2015, got a table read in 2019, a development room in 2024, a pilot order in 2025, and a series pickup in 2026.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 2019 table read was staged on Andrew Reich<\/a> and Ben Blacker\u2019s Dead Pilots Society<\/a> podcast, with Weeks as the male lead. Six years later, he would be cast in the same role in the CBS pilot that went to series for 2026-27. The podcast helped keep Eternally Yours alive through the various twists and turns that included an animation incarnation.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 2015 script of Eternally Yours also landed Port and Wiseman a job as developers and executive producers for CBS\u2019 adaptation of the UK comedy series Ghosts. Next season, the duo will serve as executive producers and showrunners on Ghosts and Eternally Yours, which have a 22-episode and 20-episode order, respectively.<\/p>\n

\n\tHere is the story of Eternally Yours, the first-ever busted script featured on Dead Pilots Society to subsequently make it to series. Its journey is intertwined with another vampire title, What We Do In the Shadows. <\/p>\n

\t\tFirst Sale To CBS\t<\/p>\n

\n\tEternally Yours centers on vampire couple Charles (Weeks) and Liz (Edwards) whose once-passionate romance has devolved into a pulseless marriage after 500 years together. Port and Wiseman, a writing team since meeting as assistants on the UPN animated series Dilbert in 1999, first came up with the idea for the show in 2015. <\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time, they were not aware of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi\u2019s movie What We Do In the Shadows, which had been released in the U.S. in February of that year, but were quickly alerted to it. \u201cWe watched it and loved it because it was incredible,\u201d Port said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for how Eternally Yours came about, Port and Wiseman were developing something else when the conversation turned to their 16 years together as writing partners.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe started talking about writing partnerships and the idea of a marriage and people stuck together forever, so the idea of a marriage on steroids, like vampires who never die, and what it would be like to be truly together forever is how we came up with that,\u201d Port said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe duo teamed with Two and a Half Men executive producers Eric and Kim Tannenbaum after working together on CBS\u2019 Odd Couple reboot. All four were under overall deals at CBS Studios at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat we loved most about the kernel of this idea, which is a couple trapped in an endless marriage. It came from Joe and Joe, as a writing team, feeling like a married couple, and we loved the fact that it came in with the Tannenbaums, producers who not only are married, but work together,\u201d CBS Studios\u2019 longtime head of comedy Kate Adler said. \u201cIt was super relatable to just about everybody, married or otherwise, but we loved that it came from such a real place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pitch went to the usual suspects at that time, the four broadcast networks. CBS Studios\u2019 main buyer, sibling CBS, was the most interested and already had an existing relationship with Port, Wiseman and the Tannenbaums, so the project was set there for development in September 2015.<\/p>\n

\n\tEternally Yours had been conceived and sold as single-camera. While CBS introduced a single-camera comedy series during the 2015-16 season, Life In Pieces, its half-hour slate at the time was dominated by multi-camera sitcoms. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhen pilot pickup time came in early 2016, Eternally Yours got a pass. Its format likely was a factor; CBS ultimately went with four new comedy series for the 2016-17 season, all of them multi-cam. <\/p>\n

\n\tCBS Studios made a Hail Mary attempt, sending the finished script to other networks, broadcast and cable, including smaller outlets like TV Land, but there were no takers, with Eternally Yours headed to the dead pilot script graveyard.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s where it was found by Reich.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAndrew Reich<\/p>\n

\t\t\u2018Dead Pilots Society\u2019 Table Read\t<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Port and Wiseman, Reich was a network comedy writer-producer and part of a writing team in the 2000s and 2010s with former writing partner Ted Cohen. The duo came out of Friends, where they rose to executive producers and co-showrunners and subsequently worked on a string of comedy series, creating the 2012 ABC sitcom Work It. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe same 2015-16 development season, during which Eternally Yours was bought, written and passed on, was brutal to Reich and Cohen too \u2014 they sold three projects and none of them got made.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s just feeling bad, and there was one especially where I was just really feeling like, I just wish I\u2019d gotten to hear it read out loud, I just wish I\u2019d gotten to have a table read,\u201d Reich said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s how the idea was born for the Dead Pilots Society, which gives scripts developed by studios and networks but never produced \u201cthe table reads they deserve,\u201d per its manifesto. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe podcast was launched in September 2016 with three table reads, including one for the rejected 2015-16 script Reich and Cohen were particularly fond of. It had two female leads for which the duo recruited Molly Shannon and Sarah Chalke.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince then, Reich has been reaching out to well-known comedy writers \u2014 many of them friends of his \u2014 to get some of their favorite unproduced scripts, cast them and stage table reads that are taped for the podcast, often at The Hollywood Improv. In 2019, he approached Port and Wiseman about Eternally Yours and quickly got their blessing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s amazing that they do that, because it\u2019s really fun,\u201d Wiseman said. \u201cEven if it doesn\u2019t become a pilot and a series, it\u2019s really nice to hear your pilot that you\u2019ve worked so hard on come to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was Reich who suggested Weeks for Charles. A couple of other actors had passed on the part, and Reich was friends with The Mindy Project alum who had done another Dead Pilots Society table read for him. (This is not a paying gig; the actors who participate in the table reads volunteer their time and do it for free.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe weren\u2019t thinking it was a British guy for some reason but after hearing him do it, it seemed like it was written like that,\u201d Port said about their reaction to hearing the Charles character interpreted by Englishman Weeks in his native accent.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rest of the table read cast included Briga Heelan as Liz; she was brought in by Port and Wiseman, who had just worked with her on a pilot, as well as Matt Walsh playing one of the children, Asif Ali, Vella Lovell, Tony Cavalero, Yassir Lester, Mindy Sterling, Brendan Scannell and David Fumero.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was a fun night, and it was very useful to us,\u201d Port said about attending the table read<\/a>. \u201cIn the years to come, we started using that recorded table read as a calling card for Eternally Yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe table read made an impression on Reich too.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s pilots we\u2019ve done that I think are great, but I totally see why they didn\u2019t get on, they\u2019re just too out there, there\u2019s other issues, but they\u2019re still worth doing a table read of,\u201d he said. \u201cBut this was one where it was like, oh, this was so good, and I can totally see it as a show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the Dead Pilots Society table reads are largely designed to give writers closure, Port and Wiseman would go on to use theirs as a valuable tool, not only sending it out to people but also using the feedback to punch up their script over the coming years.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Ghosts\u2019 (L-R): Brandon Scott Jones as Isaac, Danielle Pinnock as Alberta, Devan Chandler Long as Thorfinn, Rebecca Wisocky as Hetty, Utkarsh Ambudkar as Jay, Asher Grodman as Trevor, Rose McIver as Samantha, Richie Moriarty as Pete, and Rom\u00e1n Zaragoza as Sasappis. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBertrand Calmeau\/CBS<\/p>\n

\t\t\u2018Ghosts\u2019 & Animated \u2018Eternally Yours\u2019\t<\/p>\n

\n\tTaped in late 2019, the Eternally Yours episode of Dead Pilots Society was released on March 17, 2020, just a couple of days before the world was shut down by the pandemic. <\/p>\n

\n\tAlso in 2019, the Eternally Yours script helped Port and Wiseman land the job of adapting the UK series Ghosts, another single-camera supernatural comedy for CBS. They were top of mind for both the network and CBS Studios who pitched the duo to co-producing entities Lionsgate TV and BBC Studios L.A. (Port and Wiseman\u2019s writing samples at the time also included an out-there spec they had handed to the studio in May 2016, shortly after Eternally Yours\u2019 initial rejection, for People vs. O.J. Simpson Episode 201, envisioning a comedic second season of Ryan Murphy\u2019s limited series about the Simpson trial.)<\/p>\n

\n\tGhosts was picked up to pilot in February 2020, just a few weeks before Dead Pilots Society\u2018s Eternally Yours episode was released, but its production was delayed by the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, looking to capitalize on the attention Eternally Yours received from the table read, CBS Studios set out to repackage the show as an animated comedy, using the podcast table read as part of the pitch, along with Port and Wiseman\u2019s script and concept art.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were able to hire an animator, Arthur Jones, who was great,\u201d Wiseman said. \u201cHe did drawings of all the characters and big pictures of the family together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time the project was ready to be taken out in 2021, Port and Wiseman were working on Ghosts, which had been picked up to series in March of that year. The two did some Zoom pitch meetings for the animated version from a trailer on the set of Ghosts in Montreal.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce again, What We Do In The Shadows came into play, this time FX\u2019s series version of the movie, which had premiered in 2019 but broke out in a major way in 2021 with its third season that earned the vampire show its first Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy nomination. <\/p>\n

\n\tAnd once again, there were no takers for the animated Eternally Yours, with Hulu reportedly referencing the fact that it already had a vampire comedy with What We Do In the Shadows, which streams on the platform.<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking back, Port is relieved by the outcome.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe story of this pilot, and series now, is that things worked out for a reason,\u201d he said. \u201cEven as we were pitching it as the animated thing, we were starting to do Ghosts. It hadn\u2019t premiered yet but once that came out and did well, I was kind of relieved we hadn\u2019t sold it as this animated thing, because I was like, this seems like such a good Ghosts companion. It seems like there\u2019s an appetite for this single-camera genre, comedy with heart, for network TV now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Eternally Yours\u2019: (L-R) Allegra Edwards as Liz, Ed Weeks as Charles, Helen J Shen as Emma and Jaren Lewison as Max <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBertrand Calmeau\/CBS<\/p>\n

\t\t\u2018Eternally Yours\u2019 CBS Rebirth\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile CBS Studios executives would periodically bring up Eternally Yours in meetings with CBS executives, the project\u2019s comeback did not kick off in earnest until around April 2023, a few months after Amy Reisenbach was named CBS Entertainment President in November 2022. She championed the script which, a year later, emerged as a top comedy contender at the network. A development room was commissioned in August of that year<\/a>, followed by a pilot order in July 2025<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe series\u2019 second stint in CBS development took longer as Port and Wiseman juggled it alongside their showrunner duties on Ghosts, now headed into its sixth season. The Dead Pilots Society podcast made a cameo during the process with an unexpected January 2025 Eternally Yours episode re-release in the wake of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was really a sentimental favorite of mine,\u201d Reich said. \u201cIn fact, the one time we\u2019ve done a rerun, it was January of last year. With the fires and everything, it was just too hard to get an episode out. And so the one rerun we\u2019ve ever done was Eternally Yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the rerun did not necessarily impact the TV show\u2019s momentum, the podcast table read did influence the casting of the Eternally Yours pilot. Port and Wiseman, who kept hearing Weeks\u2019 voice as Charles in their heads, invited him and Heelan to audition for the roles they had performed at the table read. (The producers wanted to bring others too but a lot of them were unavailable, like Ali, who stars on Hulu\u2019s Deli Boys, Lovell, who is a series regular on Fox\u2019s Animal Control, and Cavalero, who was a series regular on CBS\u2019 DMV.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBoth Ed and Briga read, and they both did fantastic, Briga is an incredible actress,\u201d Wiseman said. \u201cAllegra Edwards, who ultimately got the part, just came in and made it undeniable. But having Ed and Briga in was fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Weeks and Heelan, Edwards was invited to test for Eternally Yours because of a pre-existing connection.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe was in two or three episodes of Ghosts, and was fantastic,\u201d Wiseman said. \u201cEveryone loved working with her, she was inventive. So, yeah, she was very much on our radar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe cast of CBS\u2019 Eternally Yours, which Reisenbach calls \u201ca big hearted, clever take on relationships, family and the fact that eternal love takes work,\u201d also includes Helen J. Shen, Jaren Lewison, Parker Young, Rose Abdoo, Tristan Michael Brown and Shylo Molina.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L-R): Tristan Michal Brown, Parker Young, Rose Abdoo, Ed Weeks, Allegra Edwards, Helen J. Shen, Jaren Lewison and Shylo Molina of \u2018Eternally Yours\u2019 attend the CBS Fest 2026-2027<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFrancis Specker\/CBS<\/p>\n

\t\tManifesting Resurrection\t<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier this month, Eternally Yours was picked up to series by CBS<\/a> 11 years after Port and Wiseman first came up with the idea, 10 years after getting the first rejection from the network, 6 years after the script was featured on the Dead Pilots Society podcast and 3 years after the project re-entered development.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor us, Eternally Yours was a project that never went away, it was merely hibernating,\u201d Adler said. \u201cWe were always deeply in love with it, I guess you could say our love was eternal. We always promise creators we won\u2019t give up on their projects, and we remain hopeful that a great project will ultimately find a home.\u00a0Obviously, no one knew this one would take 11 years!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPort and Wiseman, who have had their fair share of rejected pilots, also thought there was something special about Eternally Yours. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of dead pilots, but this one felt like it kept trying to come back; every few years, the studio would ask us about it and say, what about this?,\u201d Wiseman said. \u201cMost shows don\u2019t go, and most dead pilots don\u2019t go, so I can\u2019t say I knew this was going to happen but it did feel like people were supporting this project for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBefitting the supernatural nature of Ghosts and Eternally Yours, Port got a premonition once the former got off the ground.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI have a picture in my home office of the Ghosts poster,\u201d he said. \u201cI moved it over to the left, and I left an empty space for it for the past few years because I was envisioning putting up an Eternally Yours poster next to it.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For those lamenting the slow pace of the TV development process, how about one that spans 11 years?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[203715,816,434,203716,18,117,157731,19,17,203717,203718,163472],"class_list":{"0":"post-463585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-andrew-reich","9":"tag-cbs","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-dead-pilots-society","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-eternally-yours","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-joe-port","18":"tag-joe-wiseman","19":"tag-pilot-orders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116500550518144528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}