A month ago, we reported on an upcoming NBC project from 30 Rock masterminds Tina Fey and Robert Carlock that will star Ted Danson as a rich guy who becomes mayor of Los Angeles “for all the wrong reasons” and then has to figure out how to do a good job while reconnecting with his teenage daughter. This seems kind of obvious retrospect, but The Hollywood Reporter now says that the project began life as a sequel to/spin-off of 30 Rock, with Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy being the rich guy who gets elected mayor for all the wrong reasons—though it would’ve taken place in New York and Tracy Morgan would’ve been the teenage daughter (we assume).
THR says Baldwin was in negotiations “for the better part of a year” before ultimately dropping out, at which point Fey and Carlock offered the project to Danson—who refused to move to New York, necessitating the Los Angeles shift. One of the interesting things about this, though, is that a 30 Rock sequel show was seriously in the works for a year and we never heard about it. We reported last April that Jane Krakowski had heard “talk” of a 30 Rock revival, but it sounds like this is unrelated to something like that. Either way, while this new show is no longer tied to 30 Rock in any real way, it does mean the guts of that classic show are present in this new one. That seems like a good thing.