The ‘Freakier Friday’ star shares two daughters with her husband, Christopher Guest
Credit: Errich Petersen/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty; Nicole Weingart/NBC
NEED TO KNOW
- Jamie Lee Curtis is an executive producer and guest star on NBC’s new sitcom Newlyweds starring Téa Leoni and Tim Daly
- Curtis says she’s always wanted to be a boss and created this sitcom opportunity after decades of waiting
- She calls sitcoms her favorite type of work and has dreamed of doing one since her first pilot in 1988
Jamie Lee Curtis is the HBIC!
While discussing her new sitcom, Newlyweds, on a panel on Monday, August 10, Curtis — who is executive producer as well as a recurring guest star — revealed she’s the one in charge!
“I like to refer to myself as the HBIC. Head bitch in charge,” Curtis said with a laugh. “I’m 68 years old. I’ve wanted to be a boss my whole life.”
She then added that her husband and daughters would agree with her assertion.
Credit: Todd Williamson/NBCUniversal via Getty
“They will tell you I’ve been a boss my whole life,” she smiled.
She went on to explain that she’s waited a long time to be able to bring her own ideas to a project and a set.
“I’ve been doing it not as a boss for a long, long time. And now I’m a boss, and I love it,” the Freakier Friday star explained.
NBC comedy Newlyweds stars real-life married couple Téa Leoni and Tim Daly as well as Emma Meisel, Ignacio Diaz-Silverio and Bill O’Neill. Per an IMDb synopsis, Newlyweds sees a free-spirited woman (Leoni) marry a reserved professor (Daly) after a brief, passionate romance.
Credit: Nicole Weingart/NBC
And lead O’Neill approves of his new boss, calling Curtis “the best kind of actor and boss to work with.”
The Running Man star continued, “She has so much wisdom and knows the answers to a lot of things that I don’t. And she also is willing to make mistakes and take chances on things that she doesn’t know about. And that’s exactly the kind of dynamic that you want to be working with on a show.”
Elsewhere on the panel, Curtis explained that after filming a pilot for a sitcom in 1988, she was “bummed” when the network didn’t pick up the show. Of course, A Fish Called Wanda came out that same year and made her an overnight star, but she still dreamt of making another sitcom, calling it her “favorite job I’ve ever had.”
“Every single year, all I’ve ever said to my agents is ‘I want to do a sitcom, all I want to do is a sitcom.’”
“I love the whole part of it, every aspect of it, the dance with the cameras, the idea that you actually get to rehearse something and work it and learn a joke and play it.”
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Curtis added, “I just never got to do it, and so I just decided to basically kind of create my own job. I met Gail [Lerner, Newlyweds‘ writer and executive producer], and that’s why we are all here.”
Credit: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty
Jamie Lee Curtis met and married actor and writer Christopher Guest in 1984. After experiencing infertility, the couple became parents through adoption, and they have two daughters: Annie and Ruby.
Ahead of the couple’s 40th wedding anniversary in December 2024, Curtis told Entertainment Tonight that the secret to a long-lasting marriage is that “you don’t leave.“
However, Curtis has been open about how she and Guest have gone through their fair share of ups and downs, too. During a 1991 interview with PEOPLE, she said, “I don’t think we have an easy marriage. We have a difficult, but successful marriage.”
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