NBC developing sitcom based on Jessica Simpson's hilarious life as a privileged stupid person

Emblematic of the “big, breakout ideas that are incredibly unique” that NBC Entertainment president Jennifer Salke pointed to as the future of the network that everyone should begin preparing for, NBC has ordered a pilot for a sitcom based on the life of professional pregnant person Jessica Simpson, to be written by Paul Blart: Mall Cop’s Nick Bakay. Simpson, whose life already formed the basis of the reality show Newlyweds, will here be given more explicitly scripted situations and dialogue, doing universally relatable things such as “running a fashion empire [and] wrangling her public image as a new mom,” all while misunderstanding the common world, falling down, and farting. The series will also see Simpson’s character approach “a variety of ‘everyday’ circumstances that will get audiences laughing out loud,” chuckling at the recognizably human foibles of being an insanely wealthy person whose privilege has made it possible for her to thrive, rather than rightfully starve in the wilderness.

“I often find myself thinking that no one could ever make up the things that actually happen in my life—so between the real-life elements and a great team of writers, I think we’ll have people laughing!” Simpson said of the thinking she often does, in which she marvels bemusedly at her own blissful ignorance and the disproportionate amount of opportunities it’s somehow yielded, plus that one time she hilariously mistook tuna for chicken. The show’s co-executive producer Ben Silverman—whose return to the network that shunned him is a complex, Machiavellian endeavor that won’t be fully unpacked until decades hence—chimed in, “Jessica Simpson is truly a modern-day Lucy,” in the sense that Jessica Simpson is considered the equivalent of Lucille Ball in this bleak, desperate age we live in.