BY JUDY SLOANE

Front Row Features

HOLLYWOOD-From the creators of the popular CBS sitcom “Ghosts,” comes a new family comedy, “Eternally Yours,” centered around Charles (Ed Weeks) and Liz (Allegra Edwards) – a vampire couple, who after 500 years together, have a pulseless marriage. Living in a coven in present-day Seattle, their relationship is tested when Charles and Liz’s daughter brings home a human boyfriend, which forces them to address the fact, can love last forever or is it a prison sentence?

Creators, executive producers and showrunners Joe Wiseman and Joe Port address their 11-year journey bringing “Eternally Yours” to TV. The series premieres on CBS on Thursday, October 8^th (8:30-9:00 PM ET/PT)

Q: How did this project come about?

Joe Wiseman: The show has been a long time in the making for both of us. We wrote the script over 12 years ago. This actually is the script that helped us, Joe and myself, adapt “Ghosts”. So now because of the success of “Ghosts”, we get to revisit this. We were, I think, the only show that’s been on the “Dead Pilots Society” podcast, that not only made a pilot, but has now gone to series and has been brought back from the dead, which seems appropriate for vampires.

Q: When you first wrote this a long time ago, there weren’t many shows like this on TV. What was the reactions when you first pitched this to the networks 11 years ago?

Joe Wiseman: When we wrote this 11 years ago, we pitched it and sold it to CBS. It was, at the time, a very outside-the-box CBS idea. I think right after we sold it the movie, “What We Do in the Shadows,” had just come out. I think that helped people reframe that, like, “Oh, this could be a fertile comedic realm, as well.” It did not get shot 11 years ago, for various reasons, which I think turned out to be a blessing. Who knows if it would have gone on then? But obviously, now, with the TV show, “What We Do in the Shadows”, it’s less of a hill to have to climb up to convince people that this could be.

 Q: Are there any vampire tropes that you absolutely wanted to avoid for the sake of comedy? And are there any that you felt had to be in the show for the same reason?

Joe Wiseman: That’s a fair question. As we were building out the world and coming up with all the rules, we were referencing and researching a lot of other books, movies, TV shows, and it feels like there’s a lot of latitude. Some shows and/or books or movies, it’s sunlight kills them instantly, and others, it makes them sparkle. So we realized that we weren’t locked into a stringent thing.

In the pilot, there’s a joke about garlic, and we find out that that’s just an offensive stereotype that all the vampires hate. Just from a production standpoint, we wanted to make sure that our characters could go outside during the day. We didn’t want to do all location night shooting. So we did a couple of things. We set it in Seattle. We referenced that they watched “Twilight” and realized, “Oh, that was a good idea that they moved to Seattle,” and so that’s one of the reasons they moved there.

Joe Port: And the cloud cover.

Joe Wiseman: The cloud cover, yes. It’s always raining, cloud cover. And then we also are setting up early in the season that there’s a sunscreen that they discovered, like I think in the ‘60s or ‘70s, that actually provided considerable protection. So the sun is still a threat, but it is one that is under control.

Q: The family on the show lives in a very majestic home. The pilot spends a lot of time there. What’s a typical episode going to look like? How are you going to get them out of the house on a regular basis?

Joe Port: That’s a good question. We have become conditioned on “Ghosts” to never leave the house because none of the characters can leave the house. So it’s incredibly refreshing to have characters that can walk out the door and go to jobs and hold things in their hands.

A lot of the action does take place at the house. It’s about this coven of vampires and basically these two families that have come together to form this coven. Many of them have lived together for centuries, but we’re also going to see these people in their everyday lives. They have jobs and friends and we’re going to be out in the world a little more than we are on “Ghosts.”

Q: CBS loves a crossover event – is there ever a way to do a crossover with “Ghosts”?

Joe Wiseman: Yeah, we’ve been talking about that a lot. That’s something that we’re excited about doing. So it’s definitely a possibility. It seems easier since the characters on this show can leave places, it probably would make more sense that a few of them ended up at Woodstone Mansion.

Q: “South Park” famously did an episode called “The Simpsons Already Did It”. Do you have a “Shadows Already Did It” whiteboard in the writer’s room?

Joe Port: No, we don’t. We love that show, we’re fans of that show, and obviously there’s vampire stuff that there’s going to be some overlap at some points. But we’re doing our own thing. This is a show about relationships, mostly, and about marriage and family.  It’s about parenting and I think where maybe this show departs from that, even though it’s definitely a show for adults, it’s also a show that a family can watch together and really enjoy it.

Q: Any final thoughts you’d like to impart about the series?

Joe Port: I just feel so lucky to be working with this incredible cast. I’m so excited for America to meet them. We were talking about the long gestation period, I was reading an article this morning with Katie Dippold talking about the 18 years it took for “Widow’s Bay” to come to life, and I feel similarly about this. It happened when it was supposed to happen. We got the cast that we were supposed to get at the time that we were supposed to get it, and we’re thrilled.