'Grace and Frankie' Co-Creator Marta Kauffman on Her Baby Boomer Comedy, Fonda and Tomlin, and Sex After 60

Grace (Jane Fonda) and Frankie (Lily Tomlin) — who’ve been forced for years to tolerate each other because of their husbands’ law partnership — go on a double dinner date with spouses Robert (Martin Sheen) and Sol (Sam Waterston) and are hit with this news: Both fellas want a divorce. So they can immediately remarry. Each other.

That’s the jumping off point for Netflix’s latest series, the 13-episode dramedy Grace and Frankie, in which the titular characters, both in their 70s, are forced to start their lives over with each other as the only true support each other has.

The series, created by Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman and Home Improvement producer Howard J. Morris, premieres on Netflix this Friday, and Kauffman talks to Yahoo TV about why she wanted to do the series, assembling the all-star cast, what we can expect to see as viewers spend more time with the slow-build storyline (hint: sex), and whose Grace and Frankie reviews she’s most anxious to hear.

Why this particular topic? The obviously stellar cast aside, what made you want to tackle these topics, with these characters?
There’s a lot of really good TV out there, but there really isn’t much about the largest segment of our population: the baby boomers. There is nothing about what they’re going through. There is nothing about aging. There is nothing about, I don’t know, dry vaginas. You’re just not going to get it anywhere else.

We have, on television, explored families and doctors and people in their 20s and people just getting married. There’s nothing specifically about this age group. I’m hovering around 60, so I guess it interests me personally, but… I love what’s on TV, but it’s all a bit chilly. It’s not warm. It’s not loving. For me, television is something that when it comes into your house, you want people that you want to spend time with, because I think TV is very intimate. That was the other reason. I wanted to do something warm.

Did you have these cast members in mind when you thought about this project?
Yes, we had the cast first. At least we had Jane and Lily. We didn’t have Martin and Sam yet. And we wanted to do something that isn’t sad about that age. The idea was, what happens if you start life over? That seemed to be an exciting opportunity for us story-wise, but also for the actors. Hopefully, it’s a little aspirational, too, at least in the desire to be something else, the chance to be something else, that you can do it at any age.

I think that is one of the most unique and interesting aspects of the show; particularly this generation, the idea that you choose a certain path and don’t necessarily have the chance to waver from that, especially at this point in their lives.
That you have to be who you always were, and never had the opportunity to become whoever else you might have… finding out that your life can be better than you realized. Thank you for saying that. I think that’s not only very important in terms of what we wanted to say, but it also offers us a lot more story opportunity.

Yes, there’s a whole generation of people who grew up in the ‘40s and '50s, where everything was about conforming. Yeah, we had the '60s, but that generation was already beyond the point where it could have an enormous effect on who they were as people. We’re giving this revolution to these adult characters who never had the opportunity to ask themselves, “Who am I, really?“

Also, they’re complicated. Dealing with a major upheaval is incredibly complicated because you get pulled in many directions, including the way you were.

The examination of this female friendship is a rich part of it, too, and something we haven’t seen a lot of outside of The Golden Girls or Hot in Cleveland.
I agree with you. Part of that has to do with what pulls them together being that they each are the only other person who can understand what they’re going through. It’s a deeper connection. I don’t think they know yet how deep that connection is, and that it will bind them forever— that all the other crap, the stuff that makes them fight and tease each other, that it also challenges who they are.

I think they both crave it, being challenged. I think because it’s two women, they can challenge each other in a different way. There are things a woman can say to a woman that she would never say to her husband, especially a character like Grace.

How much of Jane’s and Lily’s personalities go into Grace and Frankie?
An enormous amount. I mean, you write it, and then an actor like Jane or Lily comes along and they breathe life into it that you didn’t see, that you didn’t experience, because it’s flat in your head. We can read it out loud, but we’re not actors, and we don’t inhabit those characters. They come along and breathe this beautiful life that is based on their own experiences, their thought processes, and it’s better. It’s better when an actor like that can do this to a character, because it gives it so much more dimension than what’s in my head.

Photos: Check Out More Pics From ‘Grace and Frankie’ Season 1

I’ve seen the first six episodes. I think you can see in the pace of the show that you want us to like these characters, to welcome them into our homes. This isn’t a joke-joke-joke comedy; there’s time to settle in with everyone.
The pace and the tone were the hardest thing to find. I don’t know if you felt this in the six [episodes], but I think it took us three episodes to actually figure it out, exactly what that line is, and that we could let it breathe. Coming from a sitcom, how many jokes are on the page? We need a joke to end this scene. We need this, we need that… we didn’t have any of those rules, and it was so liberating to let it breathe. To let it breathe without slowing it down so much that nothing happens.

Which, of course, is something you can do with a cast like Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin and Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen.
Wait. Let’s just stop there for a second. How lucky am I with those people? I mean, come on, that’s just ridiculous.

They are incredible. Ethan Embry is also really good, a bit of a scene stealer.
He’s wonderful. There’s something about him that’s heartbreaking.

You also have these great guest stars coming in: Christine Lahti, Corbin Bernsen, Mary Kay Place, Joe Morton, Barry Bostwick, Ernie Hudson, Geoff Stults. And Brian Benben, in a little Dream On reunion. Will he return, because his character is really fun?
Oh,my God! That was so much fun. It was so much fun to work with him again, and yes, we’re trying to figure out a way to bring him back.

And Timothy V. Murphy, from Sons of Anarchy, as a potential love interest for Grace. How much will we get into new romances for Grace and Frankie later in the season?
Oh, we get into it. Absolutely. They’re going to be sleeping with heterosexual men for the first time in their lives. So we see more sex. And the deepening of their friendship, and things that could really shake up Robert and Sol.

It is their story, too.
It has to be, because what happens to them influences the women. If it were just the two women, it’s single-camera… we just start to feel too claustrophobic. Also, 12-hour days are long to ask any of our actors to work. A five-day week of 12 hours each day, I think would just be impossible and unfair.

What are you most excited for people to see? Or what’s the feedback you’re most excited to get?
My family, my closest friends, and the Friends writers. It’s very meaningful to me, because these are people that… we all kind of grew up together in the business. Their opinions mean a great deal to me.

Grace and Frankie Season 1 premieres Friday, May 8 on Netflix.